I read my posts from the beginning of last month, days before we left for Tokyo, and I feel like they were written by a person from another time.  Not another person.  I am the same in many ways.  Still mothering Julia with a lot of resistance, still looking for what she will do when we get home (You can email from anywhere although responses are no quicker from far away), still bickering with Julia which is doing neither of us much good, still trying to figure out how to deal with her body dysmorphic perseverations, still trying to inspire her to desire to do something, anything.  

But there are other “stills.” No, perhaps, still is the wrong word, the wrong idea.  

Three weeks into this journey and I acknowledge that I feel challenged on many fronts.  In these wee hours of a night time becoming morning, I acknowledge that watching Julia fit into our Asian adventures brings a certain amount of pleasure.  I have not technically brought her home, not yet anyway, but we are somewhere where she is much more related to the dominant culture than I am and that feels right.  I’ve found a way to get her drawing and painting, at least somewhat.  A few days every week we trade a very small notebook back and forth, taking turns drawing and painting.  Not great masterpieces but some simple pleasure.  It is also wonderful to have a traveling companion who likes to do so many part of travel that I love—long and sometimes multiple visits to museums, days when we are closer to just living here than sightseeing and being tourists, and reveling in the unexpected which lies around almost every corner.  It has meant that I have to give up control of everything but there is comfort in that too.  Not that releasing my killer grip on travel plans has been without discomfort.

Tonight, we are hosting a dinner party.  Hosting in the sense the we are providing the space in which to have dinner with Ed’s Vietnamese “daughter,” Tra My and her family.  Tra My is cooking with the help of her mother.  Her brother brought over the food—chicken, fish and ribs, vegetables and rice—this afternoon. Our contribution is the dessert we bought from a fancy ‘French’ bakery—very pretty confections that I have no idea what is inside each as well as some tiny donuts for fun.

To take a step back.  Ed has been to Vietnam three times before over the last 20 years.   On his first trip here, he met and subsequentially kept in touch with a young woman, Tra My. During this visit Tra My and her family are our family here.  Few of them speak English but that seems to be besides the point.  I admit to having some reservations to being absorbed into this big, noisy family, but then, that is what this last year has been like.  Ed has a very large Boston Irish family that has welcomed Julia and I into their midsts for holidays and get together.  Entering these kind of boisterous gatherings here and at home has given me pause in the past. I am more naturally of an introverted nature.  The quiet holiday dinner with a few chosen family and friends is much more my bailiwick. I am, however, so much more willing to explore, open to what I have always been uncomfortable with. Tonight, this journey around the world feels like punctuation on this still new chapter of life.

There is a level of chaos  in the house that mounts as cooking and figuring out where  ten of us will eat in this apartment kitted out for 3, maybe 4, people can stay.  However, Tra My has planned for the serving and eating as well as the cooking.  We move furniture, spread plastic sheets on the floor and sit, picnic style around an incredible spread of dishes.

When they leave, we have a fridge full of leftovers and rice in the cooker.  This last is very satisfying to me.  After three weeks away from home, my delight at eating out has somewhat dimmed.  I’d like a few mornings and evenings eating from our own larder, perhaps warming leftovers up.  I don’t have any means of making coffee at present or any tea bags but that feels like a minor inconvenience tonight.  

I add that the pho stand a half block from our house where we have become almost regulars for either a breakfast or supper every day for almost a week does feel somewhat like an extension of the house.  And I note that the low plastic chairs and tables that are so comfortable for Vietnamese of all ages continue to be a challenge for my old bones.  I have resolved to begin a regime of getting up and down from the floor every day multiples times, getting back to sitting on the floor cross legged fashion until it feels good again and incorporating squats into my daily routine.

Finally, I note that because we live at the end of a street, down another albeit wider and better lit alley, we come and go passing the same shops and people and pho stands and motorbike riders.  We are not located where there are other foreigners, either tourists or expats, and so we are known.  The neighborhood people now say good morning or hellos and I am sure, keep track of our comings and goings.  I did not notice this for a number of days, but in the last two days, it has been very clear.  I am sure that many people know of tonight’s dinner party!  Of course, it could be that they have become friendly, perhaps sooner than they usually would because  we are connected to Tra My and her family.

These thoughts are not as well expressed or as clear as I’d like, rather, they are growing and developing even as I tap on my keyboard.