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Imagine: i got some beers in the supermarket today and was asked to show identification – i’m 35 today. And imagine the coincidence: Leta and i have our birthday on the same day. We weren’t actually born on the same day, i’m a year older than she is. And when she was born it might actually have been the 7th of june where i was born. But still the coincidence is amazing. |
| Leta was born in Saigon, airlifted out of the place soon before the U.S. army withdrew completely from Vietnam. A war time baby, put up for adoption to an American family. Some years ago, i think for the 30th birthday of that war time generation, Time magazine did a reportage with a group of young Americans going back to the place they were born. The coverage included accounts of life in Saigon 30 years ago, and one day Leta found herself opening Time magazine and reading a detailed eye-witness report by an American soldier or journalist or observer of some kind of the morning of the 8th of June in Saigon. A cloudy sky, raining bombs and artillery. A strange read when you know that at the very same time, under the very same sky, in some house in Saigon you were born, Leta added. |  |
Some years ago she travelled to Vietnam, to Saigon, to seek that house where she was born. Finding that house shifted the story she had constructed for herself up till then. Who was giving up children for adoption at the time? Vietnamese women who expected a baby from an American soldier. And then it seemed that her biological mother was not Vietnamese, but a Chinese migrant into Vietnam. And that her biological father was not American, but French. A different story all together, which Leta still wants to pursue (the neighbors told her that her mother moved to Australia many years ago). Easy to get dizzy when one begins thinking about all those billion stories that weave connections between people and places and how they meet, in such ordinary things like a house or on a birthday.
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Today was Leta’s Santa Cruz b-day thing which i eagerly joined: a bonfire on the beach. My first one since i’m here actually. We went out early to get ourselves a beautiful spot on the beach, and installed ourselves with food and drinks (alcohol must be hidden) and a cake for the evening (hm, till 10 pm, when the police comes to stop the fires). I had expected the sunset to be really something, but it was nothing compared to the rising of the moon (not so far from full) and her pearl-like pale light playing on the waves of the ocean. What a beauty just to watch. |
A brief homecoming at Berna’s place after leaving the bonfire crowd (always a good idea for me when i’ve passed hours in an American-only crowd). You smell of bonfire, Berna laughed when i greeted her, and as i wrap my black woolen shawl around me while i’m writing this, i hope the scent stays with me for a while.