During the last weekend, we brought the kids to one of the places where we used to go as students here. We brought them to one of the Vietnamese streets to enjoy the famous beef pho (rice noodle or vermicelli).The street has not change much. The food was just as fabulous as it was almost 20 years ago. The kids enjoyed the food - or at least we hope they did as much as us.
Sometimes I feel I miss this food for too long. And I would gladly go back as often as I can.
But it is more than just the food that I have rediscovered here. It is also the memory and the years that we spent here. It is the memory of the night where I knelt before the empty blank wall and surrendered my life to my God and the joyous surprise when I first met my wife. It is also the cold winter nights spent preparing for exam or the long working days in the hospital.
There is a strange sense of familiarity with the whole city here. Sometimes when I drive home at night, I would almost be momentarily confused. Some of the roads looked like what they were 20 years ago. Some of the roadside buildings have not change for the last 20 years.
There is a strange sense of familiarity in this street. Somewhere along the dirty alley and the crowded noisy restaurant, time seems to have stood still. And somewhere between the loud conversations of the patrons and the smell of mint and beef noodles is a doorway back to my youth, a doorway through 20 years of time.As we count down another year, another decade, and another station of life, perhaps what seems to have gone for good is not lost forever. Perhaps what is lost is the doorway back to where we were. Perhaps if we could only find the way; the tiny restaurant hidden behind the crooked alleyway, or the fresh smell of pine in the early morning sun, or the drizzle in the cold dark winter night, we could once again turn the hands of clock back, and live again what was thought lost forever.
