Let it rain

Growing up in Asia, I often had to stay indoors, since it was either rainy or dry season.

Downpour forces you to activities e.g. reading, singing and playing an instrument. I often looked out across the alley, past a curtain of waters, and watched a Franco-Vietnamese family of 9 playing among one another. Being the only kid left (after older siblings had flown the coop), I succumbed to loneliness and life reflection.

Bonjour tristesse!

Our ongoing war did not help. It made one pause, perhaps for a moment, before the tape started again: the rushing and bustling of a city bursting by the seams (taking in refugees almost daily). Inflation was a constant, drove the price of everything up (the Vietnamese dong couldn’t hold against war-time US dollar).

So let it rain, and “it” here stood for : PX’s black-market rations (still in Army-green wrappings), a-go-go bars, English schools and political upheavals. Newsweek and TIME were in. Old Chinese-language translated books, out.

Of all the things the war did to Vietnam, the worst was morale (on top of mortality). It had been (and still is) an agricultural society, a village society the size of California. Then boom! overnight, a new taxonomy, turned the 3-regions colonial country into a four-war-zones south of the DMZ, whose map fit neatly on an easel at the Five O clock follies press briefing, at which Western journalists ridiculed or refused to attend (unlike the interests showed today at Biden Q&A about Ukraine).

Women took up arms while men back and forth from the front, either via AWOL or R&R rotation. Everyone was on war-footing. Including us, me. We jumped classes, skipped classes and short-circuited men passages. We read about assassinations and resignations in the US, Nixon’s china card and Geneva/Paris Accord. Weren’t we fighting to hold the “domino” line? Then what’s with the handshakes and back-dealings?

Tell that to today’s Ukraine. Tell that to future fighters.

Tell that to everyone. Meanwhile, it rained. A lot as far as I can recall.

So we, kids, got restless. Hit the book (English idioms) instead of the streets to delay the draft. The inevitable.

So let it rain. The British Invasion and the North Vietnamese Invasion.

The invasion of the body snatchers and the invasion of the US greenbags.

Everything and everybody got invaded. No more norms. No more regular scheduling of the 6 o clock news program (“We interrupt our regular broadcast for breaking news”). War-time propaganda. Peace-time propaganda. Truth Social. Truth anti-social. Truth hard to get at. Multi-faced and multi-versed truth(s) ; to be aimed for but never attained.

Like animals,..by instincts, we aimed first for survival.

In apprehension and anticipation.

Meanwhile, it rains. Let it. Let it be. Let it pour. We got no choice as to the seasons of time, seasons of conflict and seasons of life. Growing up in war time, I had to juggle many balls in the air with only two given hands. Bonjour tristesse!

A hurried child, with only that much time to grow up: French? Vietnamese? English? which was which? Vietnamese dong? US dollars? Gold? Always living with your back packed (wished there had been such thing as granola bars). And bang. One day, it proved to be true. Couldn’t go on forever. Unsustainable. War has a beginning, a middle and an ending. Just like any story, sad one.

Mine had a sad ending. Not hopeful as I’d like to. You can’t bend history to your liking. You can’t cheat the rhythm of the rain. When it gets so dried, water gets heated up. What goes up must come down. Seasons in the Sun. War and Peace. Guerre and Paix. Chien Tranh va Hoa Binh. Dry and rainy season. Turn-taking to keep the world go round.

Let it rain. So I can lift my chin up – face uncovered – self unhindered; clearing the deck (they pushed a lot of helicopter steel down to the China Sea that day) and wiping the slate clean. “Finally, it’s over!” (the heat, the temperature, the unbearable lightness of being, of struggling, of wanting , of unfulfilled potential, of anticipation and apprehension).

Let it rain.