Buying the Fresley/Preseley CD, I couldn't help thinking that both my parents would have gotten a kick out of seeing my sisters and me on this trip. Elvis had been my mother's favorite singer, and my father would have given anything to see the rest of the country where he spent so much time. Later, as I walked along Hanoi's street of shops, I imagined leading my father into the city. I would tell him he could leave his weapons behind this time, take off his tiger stripes, and put down the guns and rifles he could take apart and put back together blindfolded. He did not need to carry a hand grenade on his belt either. I would ask him to be our translator because he spoke the language of these people. And we would find out way from hamlet to hamlet as he suggested food to try and told us stories of people long gone, places now changed. He might ask me about my mother and how it was she survived after is death.

I would have to tell him that she didn't so well, that she wasn't good at finding the way on her own, that she had died and old woman at the age of 54. I'd tell him that she'd be surprised to know her daughters were traveling in Vietnam because back when she was alive we believed this place to be not a country but a war-you might as well have asked us to travel to the moon. But here we were buying CD's of Elvis Fresley/Preseley, buying the very music she had loved, the music that made her think of my father when he was gone for three tours in Vietnam.