VISITING MOM

VISITING MOM
Those having Moms must visit them. I was away from mine for 4 years. While visiting her, I had a trip that nobody could imagine.
Once my sister from the new economic zone- Long Dat passed by my Technical Educational University to pay me a visit. She told me where our Mom had been living, the join section of Quan Thong canal, Sos Soai, Hon dat district, Kien Giang province where I promised to come just right after my graduation. Being accepted from Sep 1975, I swore to be on my own not to be affected by the family matters and not to see my Mom till my graduation. While waiting for the university’s decision, I asked the dormitory superintendant for a permission to see my blood mom Sep 12, 1979.
At around 4 o’clock, at the Western bus station, I had to be on line for a Rach Gia ticket. With so many small bridges, so many big holes and 2 over-loaded ferries made the trip so much longer than a desire of a normal son visiting mom like me. I arrived at Rach Gia bus station at 4:30 PM. Knowing there was no boat left, I caught a carriage to the Lam station. Waiting for some late coming passensers, the driver hoped for some extra money. I wished to have that amount to offer him to urge him to start earlier.
Outside, It was going to rain cats and dogs while inside I felt a big concern. If I had not found my Mom’s house that night, I would have been considered a bad guy, an escaping prisoner.
The Lam made me feel more miserable that evening. It ran unsmoothly as a sicked chicken, a drunk- driver. It down poured as a water fall did in a rainny season. There were no single souls nor things seen one on both sides of the road. The weak oil lamp- lights reaching out the ignoring doors of palm- made cabins made it more scary. There were 7 on the Lam. They got used to it but it was the most terrifying situation I had ever been in. The sounds of the engine the lightnings and the heavy rain drops clashing on the top of the Lam, the whistling wind through the windows and the uneven beats of my heart created the most haunting symphony ever heard in the world of music. To keep myself calm, I imagined what my Mom was doing at the moment. She probably sat by an openned- oven, in a no-window, no- room unfurnished cabin. She would probably lie sighing on a bed made of chopped bamboo sticks with a mattress made of grass, with 4- piece of chopped wood- legs, which rarely had young painters been able to paint. I wished I would be travelling on a 52- seat bus on the 20th national road. I wished there would be a magical power to push the slow old lobby Lam fast forward immediately. A passenger asked to get off the Lam reducing the weight but increasing my worry. Another on the road could stop the Lam but he would also be the one to ask me in a hard voice,
“How come you are here at the time? Going overseas?”