05.27.25 | Phrae

When I see the tree that stands amidst the rice paddies in front of my childhood home, I feel it does not know me. I lived in this village for six years--middle school to high school. I watched this tree change with the seasons. Boughs reflected in the flooded paddies waiting to be planted with young sprouts of rice. Its large leaves becoming flushed with the youthful green of new growth as the juvenile rice flourishes around it. Its vegetation darkening as the rice matures, heads bowed with grain. Then the paddies dry, yellow, and are harvested leaving rough brown squares scattered with straw. And we would fly kites by the tree on the cool wind that came down from the mountains.

And the tree had forgotten me.

I had not been recognized throughout the trip. At the church, my parents’ friends greeted Mom, Dad, and my little brother with enthusiasm and fondness. Their gaze slid over me in confusion. I was a baby-faced college student, or recent graduate, the last time they saw me with my perennial cropped haircut. Now they saw a 30-year-old man with a full beard and long curly hair. My parents had to introduce me. “This is our oldest.”

I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed I’d been gone so long. Ashamed of my broken Thai. Ashamed I was unrecognizable.

Too much had changed.

But then they hugged me. Faces alight with surprise and joy because they had known me then. And they were glad to know me now. Hugs are not common in Thailand. They are reserved for those you have great affection for.

This scene repeats in Rong Fong, the village of the tree. Celebration of my parents’ and brother’s return, my reintroduction, and hugs. One friend weeps. She loves us dearly and missed us. Her daughter, Nam-pung (Honey), played often at our house. Now she has a child. A neighbor video calls her son, Sam, an old playmate and friend. He is at work teaching at a school. And he smiles when we are handed her phone and sees us. My parents pepper him with questions: how are you, what do you teach, do you have a girlfriend?

We can’t find our house when we first arrive. We see the tree, aloof, the crematorium where we attended buddhist funerals, and the tractor turning the soil of the rice paddies--our view for six years. There are new houses on the street. The trees have grown taller and wilder. So we assume we missed it. We search. And find a familiar fence. With a familiar mango tree laden with fruit. A familiar coconut tree that towers. And a patch of grass we certainly played badminton on with the village children. But no house.

Only an empty concrete pad where it once stood.