“The moment”: Feeling grateful and sad all at once

Moments after this photo was taken, I turned on my phone and was flooded with text messages and emails: All Fulbright scholars in Vietnam (and worldwide, we would learn) had been asked to return home while international travel was still possible.

I’ve read and listened to a lot of stories in the past week about “The Moment” when people realized that the global pandemic was going to change their lives forever. While we’d been living with the impact of the crisis for months, for me, everything changed within minutes after this group photo was taken a year ago today.

I had just finished up another workshop at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, in Ho Chi Minh City, where I was working as a visiting professor through the Fulbright Program. Instead of teaching journalism classes as I had been invited here to do, I was instead teaching my colleagues what I knew about how to teach classes online. I remember being so excited as the class ended. Through these workshops, I was meeting new people, exchanging ideas and making plans to visit classes and talk with students and faculty. This was why I’d come to Vietnam.

I walked out of the office and into the sticky-hot Vietnamese air. I turned on my phone and the flood of messages came in.

“Did you see the email? What are you going to do?” was the first message that caught my attention from a fellow Fulbright Scholar.

I had not seen the email. I opened my in box:

“URGENT: Fulbright Voluntary Departure.”

The message from Kellee Farmer at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, had been sent to everyone in the Fulbright porgram in Vietnam: “We encourage all Fulbright grantees in Vietnam to make arrangements to voluntary depart Vietnam as soon as possible.”

Two hours later, we had booked our flight back to Minnesota. We had three days to pack and say goodbye to all of our friends and neighbors.

Upon being told we had to leave Vietnam, we spent three days saying goodbye to our favorite people and our favorite things in Vietnam. We treated ourselves to an elegant dinner at the same restaurant that Michelle and Barack Obama visited when they were in Saigon and even posed for a picture at the same table they sat at when they were there.

Heather-Marie and I make one last visit with the journalism faculty at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities before saying goodbye.

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We tried to do a few more of our favorite things before we left. We went to our yoga class. We went with another Fulbright Scholar, Emi Koch, to the restaurant that Michelle and Barack Obama ate at when they were in Vietnam years ago. We even sat at their table.

Heather-Marie sits in an empty airport in Narita, Japan, as we wait for our connecting flight back to the United States.

On the flight back to the United States, I watched the movie, “Jojo Rabbit,” that ends with this quote. It struck me at the time as a message I was meant to see.

And we said goodbye to all the people we had met. On March 16, we boarded a plane bound for Japan and then on to the United States.

Instead of spending 10 months in Southeast Asia, we left the country four months early and spent two weeks quarantined in a hauntingly empty downtown Minneapolis. We spent our days making plans and going for long walks along the Mississippi River.

A few days later, we found ourselves quarantined in an Airbnb in a silent, empty downtown Minneapolis. We tried to figure out what to do. We had no place to live and no idea what our next move would be.

A year later, we are living a dream we could not have imagined. We are the owners and stewards of a 40 acre farm in Barnum, Minnesota, where we live with our cat, Eleanor Roosevelt the Cat. He is named in honor of one of our heroes, even though the gender doesn’t quite match.

Life has worked out in ways we could never have imagined. I am aware that I enjoy great privilege and even some luck. The life Heather-Marie and Eleanor Roosevelt the Cat and I have just one year later is hard to imagine. I am a grandfather and a teacher and a writer and a farmer. I have more than anyone could ask for.

But, a part of me will always be sad about the life that didn’t happen. We still had four months left in Southeast Asia. Friends and family were coming to visit. I was going to meet with other journalism scholars and give a talk in China. We were going to fly to Australia to work with a journalism program there that was bringing Vietnamese students to their university.

Back home in Minnesota, I confessed to a friend that I felt guilty that I have so much in my life and yet still felt sadness.

She said it is okay to feel both.