The Warp of Memory

MEMOIR (and) GRAND PRIZE WINNER, ISSUE 2 CONTEST

NANCY PENROSE

I am returning to Laos. It is 1993. I lived here as a child, a ten-year-old transplant from an Oregon farm. It was 1963. As the wing of the plane dips right, I press my head against the window. I see the silver snake of the Mekong, see rice fields of dry gold, see coconut palms that cluster near villages, see roads of burnt orange. I am home. I have loved Laos since I left—since before I left, when I galloped my pony on roads above the Mekong—and yet I have not missed it until now. War and revolution closed the country for years. Then the realization I could return reached me and drew me back. 

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According to the transcript of President John F. Kennedy’s statement on Laos before television cameras on March 23, 1961, he said: “My fellow Americans, Laos is far away from America, but the world is small. Its two million peaceful people live in a country three times the size of Austria. The security of all of Southeast Asia will be endangered if Laos loses its neutral independence. Its safety runs with the safety of us all—in real neutrality observed by all.” Laos as a domino that must not tumble to the Reds, the Communists: that’s why my family was there.

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