Mother hadn't been back since she fled right after the Vietnam War ended. When we arrived at the house there was an old man standing out the front gazing out onto the street. Mother turns to look at him and said "that's my uncle". I had no idea mother still had relatives in Vietnam. Crippled by the fear of fleeing he never fled. So he welcomed us into the house where he, his 2 children and 2 grandchildren live.
With so much trauma from her past she never faced it in her future. And to her, her children was her future.
But she held so much trauma from her past and from the generations before her, that it eventually dripped down onto her children, and they could feel it. Now face to face with her past, she doesn’t acknowledge it and wants nothing to do with him. I still don't know this man’s name. Only known to me as "uncle". He is my grandfather’s brother, lives in Vietnam, sits on motorbikes like it's a normal chair, spends a lot of time observing his surrounds, and wears button up shirts and suit pants with sandals like a boss.
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