Sông mới Christina Ta
There are endless things I want to ask my parents though my lack of courage
wills me mute. I search and scan for the letters and words that would allow me entry into their past and understand their sorrow, but they seem to dissolve on my tongue the moment I part my lips. I try once, I try twice, three times, but I am mute. All that appears is a lump in my throat and mist in my eyes. But I promise you if I ever do muster up the strength I have a million and one questions to ask them:
Will you please tell me what your dreams were before you were to leave your country behind? I am desperate to know. Did you ever wish that things were differet? When you first stepped foot onto that airplane what did you envision waiting for you on the other side of the Đaị Dương? I imagine you saying with a smile of wonder, “Một cưộc sống mới.” Did you ever wonder what your life could have been had Việt Nam never been bastardized by colonization and war? Had never witnessed the deaths and peltings of bombs from above?
Please tell me, for I am desperate to learn.
Ba, how much anguish and anger did you feel when your father, without warning was thrown into the re-education camp for seven years?
Mẹ, how much heartache and pain and fear did you carry with you at nine years when you Baba left you for America without the promise of return?
The monstrous waves that crashed and calmed and the new ones that washed you ashore to your new lives.
