'I’m openly weeping now, hunched over my bowl and what remains of my new favorite dish. I can’t stop crying, and I can’t understand why I started.'
mostly because he made them on special occasions: when his parents came to town, after I won a roller skating competition, before a drive to nearby Sequoia National Park.
We were waiting for my dad to come home. When at last he'd arrive, he’d kiss my mom on the cheek, and together we’d eat and watchThis ritual ended right before my 10th birthday, when my dad stopped coming home at all. Soon after, my parents divorced. My dad remarried and my mom got a second and a third job. Lines were drawn, sides were taken. I was not on his. We rarely met, and when we did, we masked our hurt with small talk and wooden smiles.
He didn’t tell me this. My mother did. I recently read somewhere that over a quarter of a million Vietnam veterans still have PTSD. I’m not sure if my dad ever had any psychological trauma relating to his service. Like so many veterans, he never talked about the war. Even now, the subject of Vietnam remains private, off limits to everyone, perhaps even to himself.
These thoughts became especially vivid while researching routes and transportation between Laos and Vietnam. If I heard a laugh like his, I thought of him. If I saw a man with a mustache, I thought of him. If I smelled pancakes on the street—they are ubiquitous in Southeast Asia—I thought of him. Vietnam’s proximity was stirring my emotions. By the time I left Laos, my dad was the only thing on my mind.
Hungry, I turn off the main road and enter a bungalow with a sign that, I hope, says “restaurant.” There’s an upper deck and a small bar and two wooden tables set with unlit candles. In the back, a pond with a bird feeder at its center. There are no customers.
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