On war, survival and privilege

I promise it’s not an oxymoron

Recently, while we were at the grocery store, my mom and I had a brief conversation about Vietnam, the country we came from.

I was trying to convince her to go back with me. Since leaving the country in 1995, I’ve only been back once, before I had kids, and she’s been back a few times. But she wasn’t entirely interested.

“What’s the point?” she said. “Almost everyone has left.”

By ‘everyone’ she means everyone in our immediate family—her siblings and in-laws (the ones who aren’t dead, that is)— my direct aunts, uncles, and cousins have left. Both sets of my grandparents are dead and buried in our village cemetery along with my dad.