The Trip Back to Hometown with My Parents

My father was born in Hải Phòng in northern Vietnam. As a reckless teenager he fled south and settled in Đà Nẵng, where he met my mother. We are eight siblings; I am the youngest. War and poverty kept him from returning home for decades. In 1983, thirty years later, he finally went back to find his mother long gone and his father blind. Now 81 and frail, he insists on one last journey to Hải Phòng to bring the family ancestral altar to Đà Nẵng so it will rest with the eldest son and be cared for by his descendants. The trip is complete.