Kieu,
It has been a long while. Too long. How are you?
You know, for years I’ve been trying to find you. I walked by your house whenever I could, lingered at the places where time once bent around us. Our spot—where we stole moments, hid them away like treasures, moments that were, that could have been, that should have been.
The past has a way of making us, doesn’t it? Of defining us in ways we never agreed to.
All these years, your face kept slipping through my fingers, like trying to catch sunlight in a clenched hand. And still, I held on. Held on to the wanting, to the wondering—how are you? How has life treated you?
As for me, I married the kindest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known—outside of you. We had three children, wonderful little beings who make me question how I got to be this lucky. Sometimes, on those long-haul flights—fifteen hours through the quiet hum of an airplane, where everyone else is asleep—I sit there and wonder how life charts its course for us all. I would have never, not in my wildest stretch of imagination, pictured where I am today.
My eldest, my princess—she’s becoming a thoughtful, responsible young woman. She got accepted into four universities. She wants to be a teacher. Of all the things, she wants to stand in front of a class, guiding young minds, just like you once dreamed. I laughed at you then, do you remember? Laughed at the thought of you, standing there, trying to wrangle the troublemakers, getting dirt thrown in your face. And you’d run to me, tears brimming, swearing you were done—but the very next morning, there you were, walking right back in. Because you believed in something bigger than yourself. I hope my daughter has that same fire. I think she does.
Did you ever leave Korea? Did you give that old man a son, like they always expect?
Kieu, I miss you. I tried not to say it. I tried to be strong, to be brave, but time has a way of stripping down a man’s pride. And I’ve come to learn that the strongest ones are the ones who can say what they feel.
I’ve thought a lot about life—what really matters in the end. And there are only two things: life and death. Everything else is just the noise in between.
My coffee is getting cold now. Funny how little things remind you of bigger things. Some moments in life, they split you down the middle, carve you into the person you were always meant to be.
The day you got married—that was one of them. The second was the night I was chased down a dark alley by three goons. But that story, Kieu, I’ll save for another time.
Love, Tuan
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