Bombs, conspiracies, evacuations-oh my!
A few weeks ago, I began exploring a part of my past that has been purposefully secluded from my thoughts: my mother's experience during the Vietnam War.
As I scoured through paperwork, diaries and faded black-and-white photos, I lived my mother's nightmare in my imagination.
It is 1968. My grandmother was living in Phu Cam, in central Vietnam near Hue, with nine children-the oldest was 16, the youngest was barely 5 months-while my grandfather was fighting in the north as a major in the South Vietnamese army.
That January, the Vietcong had gradually seeped into central Vietnam, taking advantage of the fireworks set off to celebrate the lunar New Year to launch the Tet Offensive. As bombs exploded everywhere and bullets buzzed past, my grandmother refused to evacuate her family for fear of losing one of the children in the hustle and terror of escape.
The city was dead, except for the sounds of gunfire and bombs exploding daily. Most of the other families had evacuated at the initial sign of struggle, but my family stayed for another few months, surviving on meals of rice and salt.
At night, my grandmother stacked two bed frames on top of one another and the family slept on straw mats inside the crack between beds to block out the sound of gunshots.
Within months, the Vietcong had taken control of Hue and surrounding towns and a final evacuation order was issued. Ripping pieces of fabric into long strips, my grandmother tied a bundle of fabric around each child's waist before setting off to find southern Vietnamese trucks miles outside of the city. In each bundle was the child's birth certificate for identification and enough money to buy food if one of them got separated.
My mother remembered the sound of bullets whizzing above her head as she was piggybacked outside of town. There were bodies lying on both sides of the street, some covered with blankets, others with straw mats left by loved ones that were too short to cover swollen, blue feet or blood stained heads.
My mother was 5 years old.
As I listen to my mother's stories, translating from Vietnamese to English and typing at the same time, I can't help but be amazed by what her family endured-the terror and struggle they overcame.
"Does it make you sad to tell these stories?" I asked her. Luckily, she said "No," smiled and continued. While I was genuinely worried about whether these stories were bringing my mother's nightmares back to life, at the same time, the selfish writer in me is thinking, "Lord, this is good stuff."
As a writer, I've been blessed-or cursed, depending on the day-with enough heartbreak, drama, oddities and love to write about for a lifetime. Those struggles and joys have served as phenomenal inspirations for some of my strokes of slight genius.
This idea has become particularly applicable as I've dabbled in creative non-fiction this past year, exploiting my own reality for the purpose of writing something (hopefully) meaningful. Some of the stories I've written are those that I've been wanting to write for a long time, but never had the heart-or maybe had too much heart-to write until recently.
While writing all of these stories, I've felt a sense of guilt in the idea that I was somehow exploiting my own misfortunes and misfortunes of those around me for the sake of writing.
Recording my mother's story made me realize that writers can be exploiters of reality and imagination. The writers who succeed in life are the ones that fuse both aspects into something intriguing. While fiction leaves room for fabrication and fantasy that is often intangible in the real world, reality is somewhat restricted by opportunity and ability-things that are idealistically inconsequential in fiction.
Sometimes plausibility is more readily available in fiction than it is in reality, as is in my life. This past year has made me recognize that my reality is sometimes so absurd that it is more believable as the product of an overactive imagination than a result of unnaturally bad luck in life. But for me, misfortune in life has been quite a blessing for my creative mind.
A friend recently asked me why I write, to which I replied, "I like making sh*t up." But in all seriousness, I write because I like imagining how life could be. I've found that life can be a lot more disappointing than stories, so at least when I'm writing, I can live vicariously, carelessly or happily through someone else.
Writing stories-such as the one mentioned above-can also be a way of reliving, remembering and celebrating the past, which is what I hope to do.
