Vietnam

I found myself reading frantically online about Vietnam - food, weather, environment...you name it - ever since I found out I might have a chance to go back there sometimes this year, the first time in almost 10 years, the first time all by myself, as an adult, thinking about more than simply what I am going to eat for the time I am there.

I think I am afraid, though I am not very sure at this point how to name this feeling building up in my gut, choking at times, when I imagine myself stepping off the plane. The one thing that I can still feel on my skin from the last time I was there is the gust of hot air that instantly engulfs you and would not disappear, until you step on the plane again, to leave. Maybe that is the way Vietnam loves me, intensely and suffocating...

I think I am afraid, to meet many people again, to really see with my own eyes how very small my grandma has become, shrinking every day in her longing for my mom who is away and for my uncle who can never come back. After years of not having the time to do anything but work and raise the ones who remained, she finally found time to mourn the ones she has lost. I am one of those people.

I think I am afraid to meet my cousins again, the ones I played with in the field the last time I went back, 2 of them already married with kids, 2 other working everyday to save money...for a house, a wedding, a new motorbike. I have not talked to them in a long time, all news about them are channeled through my mom talking to their parents about us. And now that I am about to meet them again, i wondered how did we became so far apart, when all it takes these days is to log on to chat, or pick up the phone. Why did I never find the time to talk to my niece who is now almost 1, to ask about her mother's name.

On one of the searches online for Vietnam, I found a youtube video with Anthony Bourdain, talking about his love for Vietnam, a love with no reason, but which brought him to tears when he drove from the airport to the hotel in Hanoi. And somewhere in my memory is a an image of me crying when the plane left Hanoi that last September, for no reason, just tears falling as the city falls further back. And sometimes, at random moments I would think back to that moment and wondered why I cried. Was it for the time being there that has come to the end, or for the time being away that has started again and from which I could never wake up as if from a dream. Or is it because every time I leave I know that something is forever lost, childhood, friends, family, memories, and I am afraid that if I don't start mourning I will end up like my grandmother shutting up all her pain and loss in a world with no sounds.