I returned to Vietnam in February, 2016 with my daughter Lena, her husband Lee, my Granddaughter Lynda, and her boyfriend Joey Huerta. It had been 44 years since I was last in Vietnam. We spent the first few days in Saigon visiting Lee’s family, but the moment I got off the plane in Da Nang is unforgettable. As I breathed the still familiar air, I felt like I had come home. From that moment forward the journey was a torrent of returning lost memories mixed with new adventure.
The Letter was postmarked simply “North Texas, USA”. The Letter was addressed to “Mr. & Mrs. Richard Allen”, handed to me by my mother, Joyce Allen, with a look that over the years I knew meant “make this go away”.
I pulled the one-page letter from the envelope and read:
Dear Mr. And Mrs. Allen,
I hope you read this letter with the same joy as I feel writing it and I so hope you can help me find my father. I was born in Vietnam in 1972,…
The reading of The Letter was to be the start of a journey that would indeed bring joy, but because our life fate insists on balance, the journey would also bring sorrow, loss, understanding and misunderstanding, and the searing pain of intensive introspection.
Lena Huynh is my daughter. That was settled the moment we embraced at the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport that July afternoon in 2013. Friends had warned that we should do DNA testing immediately to be sure about all of this, but that idea evaporated in the moment Lena and I met. There was no mistake, we both just knew.
letterfromlena 