The Prodigal Father

My dad is in Southern California, wrapping up his life there.

The business struggled the last few years while he was in Thailand. The economy, poor decisions by those he’d left in charge, a number of factors, and it is clear the business should fold. The biggest name in building demolition and earth moving in Orange County, California is folding.

So is his marriage, of course. He’s on his third Thai girlfriend now, she on her second Californian boyfriend.

This is all regretable, but simply a part of the way things are.

My father wasn’t a perfect father. There were many choices he made, many actions he took, which were far from ideal.

But in his heart he is a good, though flawed, man.

His divorce papers have been filed, his heavy equipment auctioned. A couple of houses, a zillion personal items, details of outstanding bills and obligations are all that separate him from flying back to southeast asia for good. That, and his heart, which is “in pretty bad shape.”

He doesn’t want to go into a hospital here in the states. He is hanging on to check into a hospital in Bangkok.

I’m flying to Southern California this afternoon.

I’m taking a couple of days personal days and I’ll run whatever errands makes this easier for him. Chauffeur him around, deliver personal items to family members, file papers, pay bills, whatever makes it easier for him.

Faith is a big part of my life. But, unless he wishes to talk about it, I have no plans to talk faith with him.

He knows all that stuff. He went to church every Sunday when I was first entering school, before he had his first affair.

He always lived a little larger than was probably wise. World speed records on motorcycles, adventures dreamt in alcohol-fueled daydreams, or machismatic bravado... he lived a little large.

Cracks me up to think of that ambulance pulling up to him on the Bonneville Salt Flats, expecting to find a corpse but finding my father sitting on his ruined 400 horse power motorcycle, non chalant about dropping it at 165 miles per hour. When they told him to get on the stretcher for the ride in the ambulance he just told them to F off and asked for a cigar though half his teeth were missing.

He never asks for help, never complains about his health. Until now.

Which tells me that this time he is serious, he is facing some serious health issues. He may not make it to Bangkok by the 22nd.

Growing up I wasn't exactly the macho son he wanted. I read too much, drew or painted too much, thought and talked too much.

None of that matters now. I’m 53 now. I’m grown up and the ghosts of parental misadventures no longer haunt me.

All I want now is to help him, and for him to know he is loved.

Of course I am concerned about what eternity he faces, but it isn’t as if he doesn’t know about the elements of my faith, what salvation is. I think he is a believer of sorts, though of recent years he dabbles in buddhism.

No... none of that matters. He knows it all, and I will share of that sort of thing only if he wishes it. I’ll be glad to talk of angels and miracles and wonders of this world, this universe, and the surmises I have about the universes beyond this one, and the mystic imaginings I have cobbled together from reading of faith and science...

But I am more interested in simply being a help, being a loving son, offering what I can. I can’t really tell him anything about faith he doesn’t know, but I can tell him that the way I live my life is well grounded, enough so I am glad to drop everything to come help.

Dad is 72. A well worn 72. When it comes to aging it isn’t the distance traveled that matters, it’s the terrain.

He’s climbed a number of mountains, dangled from tree roots over dusty canyons and swum choppy predator-infested seas.

His exploits are many. He lived a prodigious life.

And prodigal as he is, he is running out of steam... physically, financially. He’ll probably have a half million dollars when this is over... enough to get him whatever he wants for this dusky time.

He went on his adventures, lived that prodigious life, but now I see him reaching toward me (he sent me on that adventure to Asia last summer), and I know that despite his mistakes, despite the fears he instilled in me, I love him.

The Prodigal Father has returned to me, and if I can help him find the Father who is truly prodigious by offering him a little help... Well... that will be quite nice.

Mecca

I apologize for the time between postings. I have been writing, but much of it I feel too private to share here. Which is funny because I have revealed and admitted much on these digital pages, but none of what I write lately seems appropriate here.

But... Here are some odd musings. I might share for the heck of it.

When I worship on Sunday mornings and I open my eyes between songs, I find myself facing a different direction than those around me.

Got me to thinking.

I'm not facing in any unusual direction for any particular purpose. I simply stand to worship and continue facing in the exact direction the chair was facing. Those around me seem to either be facing the screens displaying the lyrics of our worship songs, or in the direction of the central cross in our sanctuary.

I end up facing about ten degrees to the left of most.

Does it matter which way one faces?

It matters for some.

When I lived in an ashram I oriented everything in my rooms eastward. There are some Hindhu concepts there, but I always thought it cool to face the direction that the world is spinning toward. I liked the idea of aligning my face to exactly the same direction Earth itself is trying to face.

My second favorite direction is north. I almost always know where north is. The top of the world. The fount of the magnetic field, the axis upon which the earth turns.

Still, in church I am not facing east or north or at the cross or at the lyrics. I am simply standing up, with my eyes shut, in the same direction my toes were pointing while I was sitting in the chair. Simply standing up.

I know the spot on our planet that is directly beneath my feet. It's a little over a thousand miles south of Perth, Australia. Waves in the Indian Ocean are rolling beneath me.

I almost always know where the moon is at any given moment. If I don't, I can estimate it in a moment, for I always know what phase the moon is in.

Knowing my directions became an obsession for me in 6th or 7th grade. I was certain my stepfather was going to leave me somewhere and I would have to find my own way home.

So, it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago I was not facing the cross or the lyrics, or the center of the stage as others were. I thought... why I don't face in any particular direction?

Did you know that on December 22 the earth is directly ahead of the sun as the sun races at 155 miles per second around the galactic center? On September 22 the Earth was exactly adding its speed around the sun to the exact direction in which the sun races.

"Ok Will... I think I understood what you are trying to say, but I gotta say, I can't for the life of me understand why you sit there and think of this sort of stuff."

That's what you were thinking, right?

Well there it is. I noticed I wasn't concerned the other day about what direction I was facing when I stood during worship.

Those who practice Islam know exactly where the city of Mecca is, for they kneel and pray in that direction five times a day. And I know where I am, but I make no move to face anywhere in particular when I worship.

I suppose if I were to choose to face any direction during worship, I think I would prefer to turn and face the others worshipping with me. I think it would be cool to think of my worship reflecting off someone on the other side of that group, and together our mutual worship might channel into the direction He is. But since He is sort of everywhere... seeing him as a part of the body of Christ, The Church, is as good a direction as any.

When I worship I do consider where God is.

I love to do that.

Scares the snot out of me.

The cells of my body are made up of all sorts of enormous chains of atoms, grasping onto each other with ionic bonds that make them useful for all sorts of things.... bonding oxygen so it can be carried to my cells, water's slightly imbalanced molecule acting as a perfect little magnet to make things flow together and drag them around.

It's cool to imagine one of those atoms in one of those molecular chains. Those massive neutrons and protons expending all their energy just to balance the tiny negative charge of the electron racing around it so very far away... If we considered the proton the size of a world, the little moon of the electron is circling around as distant as the furthest planet.

All that emptiness there.

I seem so solid. So here. But in reality I am far more nothing than I am something.

And, in the deepest part of who I am... I look at those protons in the center of those atoms, and imagine the tiny one dimensional threads which make them up. I imagine them as tiny violin strings, singing a song of existence... the vocal chords of God. I think of matter as the spoken Word. They exist because He sings them into being.

And then my mind, and heart, do a flip, and I think large. I think about this spinning galaxy, the Milky Way that less than a century ago we all thought was the entire universe. I see that pinwheel piece of jewelry spinning madly about, every 250,000 years, and how it is dancing toward other galaxies, and all of us...

the Milky Way and Andromeda, and the large and small Magellanic clouds, and dozens of other galaxies, all performing a dance of gravity in which we are all headed into the direction, Ursus Major, the direction of our supercluster, which in turn is a part of the virgo supercluster, which is too far/close for us to understand it's exact mechanisms.

But we have seen whole super clusters off in other directions, and we can discerned how they throb with a pace that is in the billions of years, and we can see the quicker heartbeat of those superclusters, an enormous blackhole in an enormous galaxy, shouting its beats of merely 10,000 years.

I think about those structures when I worship and I imagine that there are millions of these things, each with billions of galaxies, each filled with billions of stars.

I think about that when I worship.

I imagine that amazing universe observed by a being of pure joy, pure love. I imagine it moving to His breath, and sparkling beneath His mighty gaze as He views it all at once, from it's bright birth to the moment of it death (which only He can see), and it feels like He is immensely happy with it. I imagine a joy He feels, a love He shares within Himself, a trinity the muslims do not understand, and I feel Him through it all.

From outside the largest of all structures, including time itself, all the way through the world I know, and on down to the tiny strings singing existence on levels below the realm of light, for light itself needs more room than the spaces where He is.

And I think about this strange spark within my breast, this turning, flopping thing I think of as my spirit, and I feel it's joy in worshipping this grand spectacle. And how it sings toward Him, and He is somehow here, aware of me.

So the direction of the building, the cross, or the stage, or the lyrics, or the direction of the moon, or the rising sun, or the axis of the spinning Earth, mean nothing when I consider who it is I am standing before and offering a song of praise.

It doesn't really matter which direction I face.

:)

The call had begun about Rocky... She was telling me bits of info she had gathered, how his death wasn’t my fault. His symptoms matched a neighbor’s dog who had died of hepatitis B. That she had also heard of cancer of the liver that had moved that fast and his lumps had been near his liver.

Then she began to cry.

It began with a text message to her. Apparently I have been insuring her car. I sent a message asking she send me info on how long she has been insuring her car herself.

A text back... sympathy, regret, offer to provide info to help me get refunded.

Then a phone message at home.

Then the call just as Isaac and I were finishing BBQ ribs and Elsie’s Famous Egg Salad.

She told me she was sorry... that she didn’t want to hurt me. She was sorry.

She also said she had heard I was seeing someone and she hoped I would be happy.

I’m a bit of a sap; I do not want to see anyone hurting... but... there is a hint of vindication, an element of hearing that she knows I was not, am not, what she said I was, that she had run off for excitement, lust, that is perversely validating.

I imagine it is starting to run out. His words to me that he did not lover her, that he had tried to get rid of her, must ring more in her ears now that the dance music isn't playing so loudly.

Yes, I’m seeing someone.

She is kind. She is intelligent. She has great kids and a great heart.

I don’t know she is the one for me... After the trauma of watching a three decade marriage decay into a caustic sludge that ate and rotted every aspect of my life it touched, I am cautious.

But... I think of her all the time, and when I do I smile.

Perhaps it’s a part of being a sap, but I’m sorry to hear Brenda cry, to hear her sinking in regret.

The year is as begun great.

I love teaching English again. And I still get to teach technology... most of my day is spent being creative, thinking of new ways to help children learn how to better communicate, become self learners, discover who they are by providing opportunities to explore.

Isaac has been hired for his first job. He was told he will be trained to work in the projection room of the new theater in our formerly rural community.

Jeremiah is enjoying Special Olympics bowling. I’m enjoying coaching it.

Isaac is enjoying the early stages of adulthood.

Curious Servant is enjoying falling in love.

Permission to Fail

Life is a mess.

Or, rather, life is messy.

I'm hoping to get together soon with my moon howlin' buddies, talk about life's messes.

I'm not saying I'm a mess. Just messy.

I start back to work tomorrow. It is exciting.

What a great job I have. It is a lot of work. Demanding work. Important work.

Teachers get a couple of months to recharge their pedagogical batteries, continue their education, and simply catch their breaths.

I am ready!

I teach an interesting age, middle school. That is 6th, 7th, & 8th grades. Aside from the first three years of life, I think these three years cover the greatest changes of their lives.

Now I strongly believe in teaching my subject, delivering what I am charged to bring to them. But I think there is a more important thing for them to learn. They need to learn the skills that will bring them success in high school.

They need to learn to take responsibility for their learning... homework, study skills, meeting due dates, simply doing the work of a student.

If there is ever a time for a student to trip, to make mistakes and learn from them, it is middle school. No prospective employer will ask about their 6th grade marks, no college transcript will reveal their GPA from 8th grade.

I think this is true of life in general.

I would love to be successful at all I do. To be the perfect father, to shrug off my divorce easily, to be an always obedient follower of my faith.

13.7 billion years. That's how long this universe has been around. It's a long time. I whole heartedly believe my "future" will be longer than that. I'm comfortable with that idea.

God doesn't expect perfection. He knows me, knows us, better than that

It's OK to think of life as process.

My Boys

Wanted kids... like just about everyone else.  Basic instinct... procreate... replicate.

Wasn’t in the cards.  I guess.

When it was all too clear we weren’t having kids of our own...

First there was Willy.  Pretty exciting, having a newborn in the house.  Scary.  Fragile. 

At any rate... we lost him and a year and a half later adopted two boys from Haiti.

I never admitted, to my wife, to friends, to anyone, my reservations about adoption.

A couple of people had the courage to say what many, including myself, were thinking... can adopting fulfill that inner need for children?

I told everyone how wonderful it was having these two boys.

And it was.

OK... I had secret doubts.  My children didn’t look like me.  They’re black, I’m not.  I love science, literature, art... they... well... they aren’t equipped to... appreciate such things as much as me.

The other night I was watching a movie with my son Isaac (and a friend and her kids).  The climax of the movie came... the music swelled... the schmaltz swelled... Isaac started making his goofy happy noises, practically vibrating and jiggling, worked up at the emotional high of a happy ending.

I understand that.  Even though the ending was predictable, I felt it too.

I’m the sentimental sort.  I love art and literature and happy endings.

Watching Isaac, gleeful over the ending of that movie, I saw a bit of myself in him.

Isaac doesn’t carry any genes from me.  He can’t read the sort of things I like.  He can’t... well... doesn’t matter.  There are many differences between he and me.  And between my other son, Jeremiah, and me.

Through all those years I so loved those boys.  Sure, sometimes I wished I had a biological child... But when I think over all those years...  well... I like, Isaac does... like making goofy happy noises, vibrating and jiggling, worked up with an emotional high of a very happy ending.

Yeah... things got screwed up.  My wife, frustrated over her role in this family, frustrated over a lack of biological children, frustrated over the... the... well, the things our children will never achieve... 

But... though things got screwed up... it was all wonderful.  Full of wonder.

These are my children.

These are my boys and I see parts of myself in them.  In their hearts, in their actions.

These are my children, and I am a proud, very proud, father . 

Quick Update

Been too long since I wrote here...

I think partly it's because I've been settling back into the non-routine of the teacher during summer vacation, and partly because I wasn't sure what I should and should not post.

That isn't to say that I haven't been writing.  I wrote several pieces.  I wrote something poking fun at a friend of mine, but he has done me a couple of good turns of late and I felt it ungrateful to have a laugh at his expense (though in the end that piece held him up in a good light, honest).

It was good to be back home from my trip to the other side of the world.  That trip gave me much to think about.  I brought back many stories and have shared most of them with family, friends, and even a few on these digital pages.

I could write more of that now, but I think I'll give it a rest.

I've been spending time with my sons.  They are both doing well, settling into more independence than I expected of them.  Ambiguous feelings there...

One other reason I haven't written is because I am unsure how to write of the larger changes in my life... matters of heart.

I'm a very great distance from where I was a year ago.  I have traveled farther than the 7500 miles to Bangkok, or the temporal distance of once around Sol.

Brenda is far from my heart now.  I am not just relieved of being on a new road, a direction other than hers, but I am so much happier than I would have believed.

Over the past year I began a little dating... I tried dating a bit to just get out of myself, out of my funk, meet new people, smile a bit.

I've found someone in particular who makes me smile quite a bit.  And there's the awkward part to writing lately.  There is a huge part of this that isn't mine to share.  Though there isn't much there in terms of what is a secret, not known by friends and neighbors, it still isn't wholly mine, and therefore not something I feel comfortable in freely sharing.

But... I am free this much... she makes me happy.

OK... that's all I wanted to say there... for those of you who have been following this sentimental soul's little journey of heart break... there's been quite a bit of healing.

My gardens have grown wildly.... I have my vegetable garden.  The corn and pumpk

in have outstripped the weeds, but not by much.  The bees buzz happily between the purpled artichokes,well past being edible.  The strawberries are sweet and too plentiful for Isaac and me to eat by ourselves.  The other garden, what I call my metaphor garden, is a wild combination of flowers, shrubs, and even vegetables.  There is a sunflower there that rises over ten feet from the ground.  A mole is circumnavigating it with his tunnels, and so I am waging another small war between the clever little beasts.

I've been doing a lot of reading in scripture, placing my summer's experiences in the context of my recent travels (of asia and my heart) and though I have difficulty articulating what that means, there has been growth there.

I've made some new friends as well.  People of kind hearts and similar faith.

I've tried a lot of new things this past summer... and it's been, on the whole, very good.

The largest change has been my smile.  It is larger and more frequent than it has been in a long time.

I return to work soon.  I am so looking forward to it!  I will be teaching a class of language arts this year.  It has been five years since I taught that subject.  I know this year will be the best year I have had in a long time.  I am already biting off a lot of new responsibilities so it will be a busy year... robotics, local access TV, study skills training, probably teach a class at church, and I'm ushering back an annual event that has been missed for half a decade, "Untalent Night" (a conglomeration of silly skits, awful musical performances, and pretty much anything that might illicit more groans than applause.

So... a quick update on the strange journey of the curious servant.

Life is good.

My Metaphor Garden

Remembering

Lamai Road, Koh Samui

Dad

Tools of the Kmer Rouge

Deep in Chinatown, Bangkok

Roadside Shrines

Monk on a Bangkok Street

Kid in the village floating on Tonle Sap

Baptist Church

Bangkok

My trip to Southeast Asia was beautiful and mysterious and exotic and good and bad and joyful and fearful and freeing and confusing and evil and...

I spent most of my time on Koh Samui, an Island off the southern portion of the isthmus of Thailand. I also went to the north end of Thailand, to Cambodia, spent a day in Paris.

I walked much of the city. Communion in the cathedral of Notre Dame...
art of ancient Greece and Egypt in The Louvre’, escargot and wine at a sidewalk cafe.

Bangkok was similar. I had four days there. I spent dozens of hours strolling crowded streets, riding subways and sky trains...Girls on Sky Train... Many wore masks, hoping to avoid Swine Flu

The government was advocating them.

exploring crowded markets and royal parks.

Bangkok at Night
Bangkok Dtuk Dtuk Driver
This fellow did amazing feats of transportational acrobatics on three wheels.

I'll never forget that turn on that busy street...

He saw the intentions of another driver...

He used a regular taxi as a shield, slinging us across six rows of streaming, tightly fitted knot of vehicles.

I did my best to fully experience the cultures. Snake head soup, fried garlic frogs, mystery meats... Delicacies... I’m unsure of what exactly some of them were.

The architecture was full spectrum. I loved examining Notre Dame, and the ancient temples of Buri Ram... and Angkor Wat. Bangkok had skyscrapers and hovels, colonial french structures decaying slowly into hidden canals, temples old...
and new... Chinatown felt like I’d slipped into yet another country.

Cambodia... Rice fields and a too empty landscape.

Rice Tractor

Cambodia is a country limping back from genocide. Fifty percent of the population is under 21. Those who are older are either illiterate peasants who’d avoided ethnic cleansing or currently are low level officials, resentfully performing duties, exuding malevolence... probably former Kmer Rouge officers who’d avoided the U.N. Tribunals by flipping to the winning side just in time.

Genocide, 1974-1979

Cambodia... extreme poverty... the young population competing fiercely for foreign dollars or sinking into hopelessness.

One evening I hired a fair sized boat to take me out to the large lake to watch the sunset.

Sliding through the floating village... A School in the Floating Village

I felt guilt over the money in my pockets, the possessions in my home. Some used that guilt to pry my wallet open a little. I didn’t mind. In fact, I found opportunities to help a few who did not expect it, spread a little farang money...

The memory which looms largest from Cambodia is of a young girl at the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat. She is between ten and twelve, selling postcards, beverages, and herself. She was angry at me for refusing to buy any more than the postcards.

Sex is big business in Southeast Asia, as is anything utilizing labor. When poverty is combined with a large population, many things grow cheap.

This isn’t to say the people I encountered were promiscuous or immoral. They had their standards, their sense of what is and isn’t appropriate.

I was a little surprised at how modest most of them are... even those who sell their bodies. Showing too much skin, or showing too much affection in public, embarassed them. I saw locals embarrassed by the antics of foreigners.

I spent much of my days zipping around seeing unusual sights: performing tigers, taunted cobras, butterflies bred beneath netting...
beautiful beaches and jungles...
coconut picking monkeys, temples new and ancient filled with exotic sculptures, paintings, and mummies.

I spent evenings either sitting on the bunglaow porch reading while listening to geckos chirping, or drinking juice and beer at the bars along Lamai Road (and I hitting internet cafes, writing blog posts and communicating with those I love).

In sitting at those bars, playing board games with the girls, I learned a little about them.

First, I found these were people who, for the most part, have big hearts and do what they do through nescessity.

I had assumed some sort of nefarious organization behind prostitution... run by seedy men who’s wealth made it easier for them to prey on the poor.

The truth I saw was a little different.

It’s true many of the women had been brought there by bars who charged a “fine” for taking a woman away. They had invested money and expected a return. The bars provided low quality shelter and food (by the way, it seems most bars are owned by women). The women I got to know had very practical reasons for doing what they do.

I talked to many of them, and when I had known them enough to pry a bit into their lives, I found them to be extremely focused on family. They weren’t there to party. Well maybe a few of them were... Mostly they were there to simply get money to send home.

Each one I got to know spoke often about their homes. I tried to convince them how it would be better for their hearts if they left what they were doing and returned home.

I convinced one. I got a couple to waiver. Most simply shrugged... they felt they had no choice. Perhaps they don’t.

Anne was such. One evening she and I had a long conversation (one I had paid the bar fine for so she was freed for a bit, though she made it clear that she could only spare an hour or two as she hoped to find a customer who would pay her for more than talk).

Anne told me she wanted love. She told me she wanted a family... husband, children... She told me that what she did was just business. It was what she had to do. The night before I left I spoke with her and others I had befriended and Anne insisted I take her picture.

“Will! You take my picture! You take it to America and you put it on internet and find me husband, OK?”

“Sure, Anne! Any particular type of man you want me to find?”

“Yes. He needs to be 27 and handsome.”

“Twenty seven and handsome. Got it. Anything else?”

“Oh yes! He must have a good heart. Oh yeah. He should have big muscles and lots of money!”

I promised I’d do what I could... so for anyone out there who is interested, here is that picture of Anne...
Let me know if you meet her criteria.

I pressed Miw hard to leave. She was new there... in the three weeks I had known her she had not had a customer yet (as was true of several others).

Miw hesistated. She considered my words. But in the end, she simply could not leave.

“Will. You make my heart big, big, big. You make me see mans can be good to peoples like me. I understand what you say. I understand why you say this not good for my heart. My mother cry when I come here. My mother love me and miss me. But my mother need money. She old. There no work in my village. She told me, with sad in her heart, I come here so I send her money.”

That is the truth of it. So many of these women do their work because there aren’t other options.

As a teacher I asked many questions about schooling there. I found that most of those I met had only four years in school. They haven’t any skills. Any bill I received, if it contained more than one item, was added with a calculator. Seriously, every bill. I bought two items at one place, one was 20 baht, the other was 30 baht. They did not readily believe me when I told them it was 50 baht all together.

They need skills.

I did talk Yom into leaving, into going back home.

Yom is a good example of how women are treated there. Yom was married to a Thai man once. An angry man. He beat her into a coma when she was seven months pregnant. She woke to being a mother, the doctors having performed a C section on her. Her fourteen year old daughter was what convinced her to go home.

When I last saw Yom she asked me to write a love letter for her, trying to convince the German she had married to return from Europe, or at least to send her a little money. (Gerhardt! Remember Yom!)

This trip to Southeast Asia was wonderful. It did me a lot of good. I find myself smiling broadly and often.

I feel as if I should write about all the wonderful and mysterious things I saw there... the exotic foods and sights, and people.

But such a post would be thousands of words long, and still fail to do the trip justice. So I wrote this piece which focuses on a few people clinging in my memory.

After getting to know some of them, I feel the urge to defend them to my fellow westerners, pointing out that the prostitutes I met had large hearts, were sweet people stuck in terrible circumstances. I feel the urge to explain how they so desperately need other skills. They need education.

I remember the smells of the jungles, and the stink of the hidden canals of Bangkok, the scent of spicy food, the salt of the sea. I remember sights and sounds and flavors.
I remember the people more.

Somnang, my Dtuk Dtuk driver for two days in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Ponlork, the young man at the internet cafe desk putting himself through college. I helped him understand Charles Dickens a little. The starving woman with three children in a little boat floating on that lake. Phon, Ai, Miw, Anne, Miw at left, Anne in Mirror

Yom, Pym, Koh, Gai, Wat, Alung, and others at the bar. I remember the horribly burned beggar in Bangkok, and the many other beggars there who often never looked up, they simply lay on the sidewalk, their faces pressed to the concrete, stubs of arms and legs stretched out showing their encounters with landmines.

Perhaps I remember that girl selling postcards at Angkor Wat the most.

I wish... I pray... for so much more for the people of Southeast Asia.