Familiar and First

Ma and Pa are visiting from the States. Thanksgiving is a nice time to be together for me—I first set foot in Thailand 20 years ago, almost to the day. I remember calling home from the Bangkok central post office (back then making international phone calls was a big deal), reporting that I had arrived, had celebrated Turkey Day with some other Americans, and had found a job, all in the space of a week.

This year we marked the holiday overlooking the Mekong River. Jip passed on the chance to do some touring along the Lao and Cambodian borders, but she gave the three of us her blessing as we headed off for nine days away—the longest time she and I have been apart for several years.

On the first morning I went for a run on a small road near our hotel. The cooking fire smells, and the kids heading to the river with their little baskets full of toothpaste and soap, and the rooster soundtrack—all those things took me back twenty years, to life at the Cambodian border, where Jip and I met.

But I also experienced a first. As I ran between two villages, I caught up with an unaccompanied herd of cows, trotting along the road with their cowbells in full swing. They seemed surprised but not alarmed that their party had suddenly grown by one, and so I jogged along in the middle of the pack, feeling like I was in Pamplona, keeping an eye out for lunging horns, enjoying the music, very thankful to be on the road, out of the big city for a while, surrounded by family.