One day during casual conversation with a soldier she learns the soldier had just been in conversation with a man who shared the same name as her Uncle. She digs deeper and is led to believe it is her Uncle, and she begins a search. There is a check-in booth at every zone and each day she goes to ask and seek out her family. Days pass and no one is found. She knows the odds are slim and fights hopelessness. One afternoon during her search she stops into a bathroom to take a moment and breathe. On her way out of the restroom she looks up and sees the sweetest image she will ever have: her Mother and her Grandma are standing outside before her. Tears flow. Both in the moment of discovering her family, and in the moment of her sharing this story. Tears in her telling voice, tears in my listening eyes. We reach across the table and I put both my hands on hers. 

The children, parents and grandparents reunite and one of the first things her parents have the family do is go find the woman who had abandoned them in Guam… to thank her. I am floored. Thank the woman who you paid and entrusted to care for your children, and who then left them, abandoned and alone? This blew her mind, too. Culture, she explained. Culture. After all, she comments, the woman did get them to Guam… 

Furthermore, she shares that the night before the woman abandoned them she had heard through others at the camp that the woman was planning on fleeing. Before leaving Saigon her parents had given her $1,000 for her and her three siblings and she had asked the family friend to keep it safe during the travels. She approached the family friend and pretended she needed the money back to buy jackets, covertly retrieving it so that if and when the woman left she wouldn’t take the money, too. When I asked why she didn’t call the woman out she shook her head and again said, “Culture.” She didn’t want to shame the woman. Unbelievable.

I never got the woman’s name. It never came up. It was never important. Sharing names comes secondary in the world of movers and shakers. I’ve had hundreds of conversations with fellow travelers who’ve shared some of the most important moments of their lives, their hearts, their thoughts with me, and whom I’ve never swapped names or contact information with. This is one of the most magical parts of traveling. The surface dissolves and we go straight into the deep. In a matter of one breath we are friends, in a matter of one breath we move forward in different directions. I’ve come to really appreciate the encounters where no follow-up is sought out or desired, where there is a mutual respect and understanding that everything shared was made for the moment, and for the memory of it, nothing more. 

To fearless optimism. 

To respect, and culture, and surviving. 

To being 60, or 26, or 95,  and continuing to discover yourself and the world around you. 

To Her. 

 Modern day Saigon – now known as Ho Chi Minh City