Home

When Vietnamese people talk about taking a trip to Vietnam they always refer to it as "going home to Vietnam". Going home. Back to The Homeland whence we came. Back to our Roots.


My last post really got me thinking more about my cultural identity, a matter of increasing importance as I've gotten older. There's no doubt that I am Canadian. I was born here, raised here, live here, and will likely die here. I speak both of the country's official languages. I don't have an accent. I am Canadian. But that's only half the story. There's a whole other side to me about which I know little. An entirely separate community with our own distinct look, language, food, costumes, customs, and traditions.


I don't know much about Vietnam. My parents don't like to talk about it. It has been almost 30 years since they left everything behind. Left a war-torn country in search of freedom. Left family and friends and history and homes. Traded their dongs for dollars, their white collars for blue. I can imagine how difficult it must have been for them and so many others like them. I admire their courage and resilience.


I've only recently begun to feel a desire to visit the country where my parents were born, and where they spent the first half of their lives. I feel a pang, a pull, when I look at pictures of the people, the landscape. I wonder what it would feel like to set foot on Vietnamese soil. Will it feel more familiar to me than to another tourist? I am proud that I am at once Canadian and Vietnamese. Even if I don't know much about being the latter, it is an inherent part of me. I respect it and hope to be able to preserve it and pass it on.


I have relatives even more "westernized" than me who, when they finally went to Vietnam, loved it so much they went back several more times. "It's like you never left, even though you've never been there before," someone once tried to explain. Another cousin told me a story about two little boys he met, aged 5 and 7, whose job it was to drive the buffalo. The older boy showed off the new uniform he got to wear as part of the job. What was I doing at 7 years old? How would my life have been different if I'd been born in Ha Noi instead of Montreal?


My aunt and uncle are going to Vietnam for the first time in almost three decades. My parents don't want to go. They are happy here. I think they left behind a lot of suffering and sadness as well, which they aren't eager to revisit. But they are glad that I want to go home someday. I'm not sure when that someday will be, but I take comfort in the knowledge that when I'm ready it will be there waiting for me. You can always go home again.