Things My Father Carries: (cont'd)
Reverberations of the Vietnam War Through the Generations
by Pauline T. Nguyen, Staff Writer

After the North invaded the South, Southern families who had members who fought in the War had to destroy all evidence of their loved ones' existence. Yet, this obliteration of identity works both ways. My grandmother burning all evidence of my father's existence in Vietnam also erased a part of my father's identity that I have never been able to fathom. To this day, I have never seen a picture of his life in Vietnam. My grandmother died in October of this year, but I have never heard her voice nor seen her picture. She remains an enigma. She is the missing link to my father's identity as he is the missing link to my identity.

An erased identity of a father means an incomplete identity for a child. For any child, their identity stems from their parents and the values instilled in them. What happens when you have values but do not understand where they came from? Do you still accept them as part of your own or do you dismiss them? How many things does my father carry from the war? Is his order for discipline, his restlessness, his emotional avoidance, and solitary life consequences from the war experience? When my grandmother died, he did not shed a tear. Did he experience so much death in those fields that he could file his mother's death among the casualties of the war?

What do I carry from his war experience? Being born and raised in Houston, I sometimes feel displaced from my Vietnamese heritage. There have been times when I would walk into a store and people would look at me and know that I was Thom Van Nguyen's daughter. Yet, when I look at my father, the foundation of my identity, while I can see the physical resemblance, I question the origin of the other aspects of myself. What about the stubbornness and the fleeting feelings of isolation that plagues me? What about my resolve to not show vulnerability or my corny sense of humor that I use to draw attention away from myself? These are all things that I know I have inherited from my father. I have accepted them, but still I question them. I feel that I only know part of myself because of my father's missing history.

As long as I could remember, he has always been a disciplined man. I used to say that my father still believed he was in the army. At times, he seemed obsessive about control, over his emotions and actions. I have never seen him cry. I think he has told me that he loves me twice, once in the form of a question. Is he scared that everything will be taken away from him without order and discipline? Will he fear that if he expresses an emotional attachment to somebody, they would be taken away from him? Were these also things that he carried from the war? So many answers demanded from a 19-year-old mind; so much silence from a 51-year-old man.

From the stories he has told me, he used to be a prankster. What happened during the War that matured him into a cynical man? Will I ever know? Will I ever ask him? There is a part of me that desperately wants to know. Do I care that he may have killed somebody? No, it was war. Do I want to know how he lived as a soldier? No, it was war. Do I want to feel that he can trust me with his wartime memories? Yes. I may not be able to understand everything that he has to tell me. Yet, the idea that he would be able to crack that emotional shield and confide in me brings me unspeakable joy. While he may carry many things from the war, I want him to know that I am here. I will help him shoulder those things if he wants. I will help him dispel those things that he wants. He does not realize that what affects him, eventually affects me. In his state of ignorance, he has bequeathed me the burdens of his war experience for me to unravel.

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