I have just realised that today is exactly 15 years since my mum and I left Vietnam.
Haven't returned since. Most likely can't return now.
Soon I will have spent more than half my life away.
April is the cruellest month.
PS: In 8 days, 30/4, is the 49th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
I was in the U S Navy and partipated in the Easter Offensive on the gun line at the DMZ in Quang Tri Province for the better part of 1972. I hope that your new life the past 15 years has been good to you.
ReplyDeleteOh hello.
DeleteYes. I would have become a very different person if we hadn't left.
Their loss our gain...Thank you for sharing your enthusiasm for literature.
ReplyDeleteHaha, thank you.
DeleteThis is almost a poem!
ReplyDeleteDon't you mock me! Especially on Shakespeare Day!
DeleteHmm yes, April was when I was born, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory & desire & all that. If I could leave Britain now & never return I should be delighted, but I've now spent most of my likely life here. If I'd had to leave in my teens or twenties I'd have been seriously pissed off. I still thought it was the best place on Earth.
ReplyDeleteWell, I do love the UK.
DeleteMany people originally from other places do, to the bafflement of the benighted natives. I am reminded of the series called "Them" (recommended), where a black family move to 1950s Compton, then a middle-class white suburb, and insist on staying despite the unpleasant efforts of their neighbours to drive them out. As a viewer, you are flummoxed by their staying put, until you see flashbacks of the black family's life in the Deep South. Then it's a no-brainer. (I'm not saying your experience is anything like that, obviously I don't know: it's a general point.)
DeleteOne of the problems of Brits, compared to Norwegians (I have lived in Norway), is that Britsh don't realise the freedoms, rights, and privileges they do have.
DeleteNorwegians know quite well how shitty it is in many other countries.