Stories from the Road – Bangkok, Thailand
Once we settle in the taxi and get the address up on the map, I start asking the driver about his night, whether he’s eaten his rice yet (see page 228), how long the rains might last this season, and if he thinks the military junta will allow elections soon. Bangkok city lights cast reflections on the wet streets. My hair begins to swell in the humidity. We talk easily as our taxi floats on the raised highway, built since I was last here. I turn to check in on the kids behind me. Wide-eyed silence. They’re stunned.
“Mom, you speak Thai!”
“I told you I did.”
“But, like . . . you speak it, speak it.”
My husband laughs.
I had lived and worked in Thailand for almost two and a half years with the US Peace Corps right out of college. Work and life brought me back and forth until I was almost thirty. This was a home to me, a home that I had been away from for seventeen years.
My kids look me up and down. They turn their heads and squint from the side, as if I’m a spy, or at least someone very different from their mother. I feel very different from their mother. I feel like the girl I was when I first came to Thailand, started my career, and first tasted mangoes and sticky rice. This whole Wonder Year is about learning from the world, but it’s also a time to remember and share parts of myself with my kids. They could hear me say that I lived in Thailand in my twenties, but to introduce them to my Peace Corps site, share fried noodles wrapped in banana leaves, show them how to offer early-morning alms to the monks, or talk to a taxi driver is about sharing a piece of my heart.
Out of the context of home, I am recalling previous chapters of my life that brought me joy and a sense of accomplishment. Perhaps this remembering shows me an unabridged, more integrated version of myself. I’m more than the laundress, more than the lunch packer, more than the carpooler. I can’t help but wonder what this time will mean for me as a mom.
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