Re-
Meaning again, implies a cycle. It implies an inevitable destination, an inescapable course. This is how I feel in my connection to my homeland. I am drawn back to where my heart belongs. I am propelled towards the land in which my ancestors are buried. I, despite war, despite time, despite distance, reunite with my roots. I, teetering on the hyphen between Vietnamese-American, reconcile the two and the intertwined history that makes up who I am, who my family is. In this forgiveness -- of the past for its pain, of the future for what it may never become, and of myself for running for so long, I reawaken as a more whole me,
a Vietnamese me.
Reunion:
of Prodigal Son and Motherland
Stepping foot off of the plane at Tan Son Nhat airport, I was hit by the same blast of hot, humid air I had grown to miss over the last 5 years. As of June 2022, it had been over 5 years since I had last been in my homeland. This time, for the first time, I would be traversing it alone.
Everywhere I went, I saw glimmers of the past almost superimposed on the present. On the way to my apartment in District 5, I realized I barely recognized the streets anymore. In District 1, I saw glass highrises piercing the sky like newly sprouted stems reaching towards heaven. Vietnam was progressing. It was modernizing. It was aweinspiring. It was odd.
This was not the Vietnam I was told about. I remember growing up hearing both of my parents' struggles just to survive in these back alleys. I was told life would be rough and unsafe alone. That the Vietnam my parents purposefully left behind was wartorn, decrepit, and impoverished. I stood there informed by the past I had heard so much from as part of my parents' immigration traumas, hesitant to take the first step forward; to give up so much of what all my life I had assumed Vietnam to be.
This time, I did not have my mom or my dad by my side. So I chose to take the leap of faith, to see my homeland for what it is now and what it could be for me and not just what it may have been before. I opened my arms, my mind, and my heart and stepped into its warm (and humid) embrace. The prodigal son, who had spent 21 years cowering behind the past, has chosen to return.
Reconciliation: Dissonance and Forgiveness
In order to embrace the present, I was forced to reconcile with the past. Not just my own, and the assumptions that I had carried with me, but also my parents' and my grandparents'. My family fled from the fallout of the war. In doing so, they were forced to forsake the one homeland they had ever known in exchange for insecurity and a slim chance at stability in a foreign land.
My father, at 17, left behind his family. A proud and stubborn man, he often is found frowning about the past. At 61, this habit has become ever more apparent in the sadness in his eyes and the wrinkles lining his forehead.
"Dad? Why do you look so upset all the time?"
"If I knew the answer, I wouldn't be here, con."
With this forced abandonment comes resentment of circumstance and of his reality. He left behind his home, his loved ones, and everything he knew out of hope for a better life. He found himself working in a job he was unhappy in. He felt personally the American economic recession in 2008 and rued his choice to have ever left Vietnam. He lamented all that he had lost, all that he would never be, and blamed his country for its abandonment of him.
My mother, having gotten to actually experience growing up in Saigon, speaks of it a little more fondly. She grew up on the streets of our district; she walked them to school everyday or sold tea every day by my grandma's side after the schoolday. She left Vietnam at 18, in 1991. She left behind her friends, her loved ones, half her family, and her dreams of becoming a physician. She speaks of Vietnam not with resentment, but with sadness. There is grief in her voice and in her eyes, for the bright future in Vietnam that she has given up for the sake of my family.
It is these feelings that I am forced to reconcile with the present. As I explored Vietnam on my own, I was happy. I was connecting with my homeland and my culture. I found myself and made my own history. I am forced to understand that my history and memories are nothing like my parents'. The Vietnam I had always been told of, the Vietnam of which solely my parents remember, stands in stark contrast. I have forgiven time, distance, and now my homeland for what it couldn't give to us. As I walked down the main street in District 1, marveling at how different everything seemed to be now, I began to understand. I cannot change my parents' pasts, But to heal, to grow past, just as Vietnam did itself, and to not pass their trauma down, I must learn to forgive.
Reawaken: the Importance of a Name
In the United States, my parents were forced to awaken from their pipe dreams of what the American dream was supposed to be. Instead, they found themselves unsupported, with language barriers and difficulty even getting themselves started as refugees, let alone as citizens.
Their emigrations from Vietnam to the United States did not go the way they had idealized it: landing in a land bountiful and filled with opportunity. The reality was much harsher. It was of a refugee, a permanent outsider, and one for which the current American system aims to crush all hope for.
They consigned all of their hopes and dreams to me: their eldest son. This terrified me. I am to be the culmination of everything they worked for. I was to make up for everything that, in their immigration to the United States, they had chosen to forsake. In returning home to Vietnam, I was able to understand what my parents had lost. In forgiving it and myself and of the past and of impossible futures, I have finally been able to fully understand what my name means. I have been able to reawaken. My name is Minh Huy. Minh meaning brightness, intelligence. Huy meaning brilliance, with the splendor of sunrise at dawn. I am the bright, brilliant dawn that they gave up so much for. I am the tomorrow my parents chose. In living up to my name, I choose to embrace my homeland, embrace their past, and our future -- as a child of immigrants, of those who have chosen loss and who are able to love despite.