Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was always mesmerized every time she saw those high gleaming buildings in downtown Saigon. Especially at night when those billboards were lit up and luxury hotel windows just brightened the night sky and then every single lamppost was turned on endlessly. She could feel something dynamite about the nightlife in the city.

And so every time her father drove her to the riverbank, they would come across those hotel windows. She remembered that she insisted to her father, "papa, can you buy me those beautiful houses?" He did not laugh nor responded in a serious way, simply he just said, "you have to grow up and buy them yourself."

Then off he drove them both to this bank of Saigon river on an old bicycle, he would light up cigarette after cigarette and let her play with wildflowers on the pit dark tinted with such golden city light grass field. She still remembered the melody from an old song, "Dau chan Dia Dang", written by Trinh Cong Son and performed by Khanh Ly singer, played on the radio by a street vendor who was also the one that sold those single cigarettes to her father. From the vivid canvas of her cinematic memory, she could effortlessly imprint a snapshot that flawlessly encapsulates the scene – the quiet atmosphere along the river bank, the scarce glimmers of light emanating from the distant side of the city across the flowing river, and the wisps of burnt cigarette smoke gracefully dancing before her eyes…

"Hey!" Suddenly he would call her, breaking the stillness of the moment. "Do not linger too close to the edge of the river," he would caution. With a swift and protective motion, he would reach out and rescue her from the precariousness of a potential fall, pulling her back into the safety of his embrace.

My mother and father, each of them had their own "century" melancholy, and from there they found each other, from there I was born. I wonder how a little child about two years old could remember such a conversation and those picture-like memories, even those haunting melodies of the old song could keep playing in one's mind through a single "tap" into reality. As if I were someone else who kept recording these vivid scenes without realizing that I would have to carry all of those fractional yet crystal-clear events throughout my life.