I was one of Johns saved babies in Vietnam, but neither of us knew until now
John had been a regular in my office for years.
silent, polite, and always placing the same order.
“Just another customer,” I thought.
Last week, I mentioned in passing that my girlfriend and I were organizing a trip to Vietnam. That was when everything changed.
His face froze.
“I was there,” he muttered.
during the fall of Saigon.
I helped load orphans onto rescue aircraft.
My heart sank.
I came from Vietnam and was adopted as a baby.
I told him.
He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and his hands stopped in the middle of his stride.
“Then I might have held you,” he mumbled.
We were silent.
Now I was up against a guy whose hands had saved my life before.
We talked for a long time.
The children’s cries, the anxiety, and the rush to get them on aircraft were all part of the turmoil he remembered from that day.
Before he left, he touched my shoulder.
“I will sleep better tonight knowing that you made it.”
I thought we were done talking when he turned around.
He said, “There’s another thing.”
“Something that I haven’t discussed in decades.”
John rubbed his hands together and leaned back, as though he was struggling to find the strength to speak.
Then he looked at me with a very vulnerable expression.
“I had a baby there. In Saigon.”
Something weighed heavily on my chest.
“You had a kid?”
He gave a nod.
“Her name was Linh. We fell in love. We had a boy.
When I tried to take them with me, everything broke down.
They were never seen by me again.”
His voice cracked.
“I searched for years. No record. A name, a disappearing memory, and this.”
He pulled out an old picture.
It showed him with a dark-eyed, caring Vietnamese woman as a young guy with a baby.
“I don’t know if they made it out,” he said.
“If they’re still alive. But even just knowing that they are okay would mean the world to me.”
I examined the image. The baby’s face. John’s innocent smile.
It didn’t seem like a coincidence to me.
“What if I assist?” I looked at him and inquired.
He blinked, startled.
“That’s what you would do?”
“Vietnam is where I’m going. I know people who work to find war families.
Forward the photo to me. Everything you remember.”
For the first time since we spoke, John looked hopeful.
For an hour, we discussed everything, including Linh’s haircut, the hospital where their son was delivered, and her neighborhood.
I wrote everything down as if I were conveying his final prayer.
In Ho Chi Minh City, I got together with a friend who works as an archivist.
She made a copy of the photo and provided it to researchers looking into soldiers’ ancestry.
Days passed. Then a week. Two.
The telephone then rang.
“We think we’ve discovered someone.”
My heart was racing.
The man’s name was Bao. His mother’s name was Linh.
She often talked about an American soldier who tried to take her and her children with him.
My hands trembled as I knocked on the door.
Someone in his late fifties answered.
He obviously shared Linh’s eyes and John’s jawline.
I inhaled deeply.
“Bao?”
He hesitated.
“Who are you?”
I removed the photo.
“I think this is your father.”
He stared at it, stunned.
“I’ve never seen something like this before. My mother never took a picture of him.
But he tried to stay because he loved us, she insisted.”
“She was right,” I told him. “He never stopped looking for you.”
I called John.
He answered in a hesitant tone.
“Any new information?”
“I think I’ve found your son.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
Then he exhaled shakily.
“Are you sure?”
“Come look at this.”
A week later, John stepped off an aircraft in Vietnam, visibly frightened.
Bao approached cautiously.
Then, as if attracted by a magnet, the two men moved closer until they were facing each other.
Then John hugged his kid about fifty years later.
They both went crazy.
Bao wept like a child in his father’s arms.
Holding him, John, who had been stoic and silent, sobbed.
Later, over coffee, they shared stories.
Holding a current photo of Linh, who had passed away years prior, John stroked her face.
“I never stopped loving her,” he said.
They were planning their first vacation to America as father and son, regaining the time that the war had stolen, while I was departing Vietnam.
And I brought with me something extraordinary: the belief that no matter how much time passes or how far apart we are, love always finds a way to come back.
