I had once coordinated counterterrorism operations in a place where bombs went off every other week. Today, I could not transport groceries.
I’d spent twenty minutes waging a full assault on the bags vs. the moped, only to achieve twelve inches of movement off the kerb and into the street. Families on scooters streamed up the road in loose choreography as I rehearsed excuses for my lack of skill.
I was in Hoi An, Vietnam, hiding out.
There are worse places to hide. I’d rented a room near the beach, in a town of yellow walls and silk lanterns. Crime rates barely registered compared to most places I’d run around. The grandmother who owned my rented room insisted on gifting a fresh mango every couple of days.
It was quiet. I was restless. I figured transport might help, so I walked around until I found the smallest moped for rent. A little 50 CC beast that topped out at 30km on the highway. I named her Black Betty, to deflate my fear of driving her. The owner gave me a five-minute tutorial that consisted of pushing various buttons to show me their function and repeating, “You’re fine, just go.”
Due to the lack of alternatives, I took his advice. Three hours later, after driving around the rice paddies without incident, the ache in my hands from my initial death grip on the handles eased. With my new confidence, I stopped at the WinMart+ for groceries. Only after buying five bags of supplies, did I discover my newfound lack of fear did not result in competence. I drew my brow together, as much as my cheap Thailand Botox job allowed. I had no idea how to get myself, the food, and this hamster wheel engine back up the beach to my rented room.
God Mel, quite literally this is all you have to accomplish today.
It was February 2025. An executive order from the US President erased the profession that had anchored my adult life. I was untethered, along with more than 250,000 Washington D.C. colleagues. I no longer had my job advising the Department of Defence Africa command to distract me from the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted – I hadn’t known for a long time. Four years had passed since my husband died unexpectedly. Two years have dragged out since I quit hiding from the world in the anarchy of war zones.
I could not yet see my way out of this liminal phase of life. The years after early grief and the climbing steepest hills of healing were behind me. But having a vision for the years ahead of me required a level of hopeful I could not yet manage.
The other side of the world is a good place to hide from questions you are not yet ready to answer. I marketed this mid-career catastrophe as an opportunity. For my family, I emphasised that I was finally going to get serious about chipping away at the memoir. My friends heard about how I was finally going to embrace a spiritual journey, maybe even pray with some monks.
I imagined visiting holy temples and finishing my first draft. I bought incense and lit it twice. I never visited any golden temples. When I called home, I lied about how many cogent words made it onto the page.
As I listed all my inner unmet expectations, this new ineptitude with Black Betty, the moped, was just the cherry on top. I tied the handles of the plastic bags together in a bundle and balanced them between my legs, and two bags toppled before I could sit down.
Come on Mel, you’ve got this. You’ve gotten tractors out of the mud. You’ve driven a horse trailer. That mercenary with the good neck tattoo said you were ‘decent’ at driving the armoured truck.
After redistributing the weight of the groceries for balance, I hung the bags off the handlebars. The front wheel flipped left, threatening to lay down Black Betty on her side.
You think life would make more sense if you just went back to Somalia or any other unending war? It’s a fantasy. You ran back to conflict zones because you liked being the girl that bossed around dudes running counterterrorism programs instead of being the woman that was widowed at 40. You know you won’t stay sane if you go back. No one’s paying you to prove it.
I tried hanging the bags off the crooks of my arms. When I lurched forward, Black Betty wobbled beyond my control.
Dual voices competed in my head. Just leave them. You can’t get them home…Yeah, that is smart. You have no idea when you’ll ever work again.
A family of five, on their way home, zoomed by on a moped Betty’s size. A man on a bike with a rattling exhaust scooted past while his friend held the handles of a wheelbarrow transporting a six-foot-tall citrus tree to celebrate Tết. The duo’s agility deepened the bruise on my ego.
You’re a middle-aged woman, stuck on the side of the road, who can’t afford to abandon $20 of groceries.
The sharp tingling of the plastic bag handles cutting into my hands lured me out of my mind’s quarrel. A content, worm-bellied dog moved into my vision, yawned, and stretched out for a nap in the middle of the road, positioned neatly in front of my meltdown.
I hadn’t spiralled like that in two years.
The last time was in Kenya. I’d sat through a sunset, silently wishing for an emergency phone call from work while my stepkids delighted in watching mudskippers lumber across the mangrove. Living in a conflict zone was easier than learning how to be their stepmother without their dad. That moment forced a choice – hide forever under the cover of external chaos or force myself to look inward and learn how to live a full life again.
I put the bags down and shook out the pain in my hands, assessing how quickly my mind had gone looking for a fire. I wondered how much progress I’d really made in the last four years.
You trained yourself to not flinch in the calm. Purgatory is hard, even with this paradise backdrop. Five job offers vanished last week. That fact is probably relevant.
The dog woke up, turned around twice, and lay back down in the same spot. On my left, I clocked a later military-aged male on a Minsk motorcycle cutting across traffic toward me. The movement pulled me out of my head and returned my attention to the street.
His trajectory is not deviating. His intent is to approach me. This is rural Vietnam, with almost no random violent incidents. But, this behaviour is outside the norm. It is still daylight. My Muay Thai gym is 50 feet away. I made new allies in the grocery store 20 feet behind me. Families are still on the street.
Two years ago, hell even one, my jaw would have locked as I squared up against an obstacle. The surge of adrenaline would have steadied me. Old reflexes kicked in. I noticed my ability to clock details in my periphery. Now, the edge was gone. I’d spent years afraid that if I lost the chaos, I’d lose the usefulness too. I hadn’t. I wanted time to consider that thought, but the man on the Minsk had closed the distance between us.
I turned my back toward the store, left the bags on the kerb, stepped back from the bike, and prepared my best de-escalation smile.
The man did not smile back. His t-shirt sported an ad for a Texan accountant saying, “Woah partner, get ahold of your finances.” The motorcycle hopped onto the sidewalk. I said, “Xin chào.” The man tried to say something useful in his language. I shook my head. He said more and I made the universal shoulder-shrug relating ‘I am sorry that I am in your country, without knowing your language.’
He grinned and squinted one eye against the sun setting behind him, reflected in the shop glass behind me. Leaning forward, he scooped my problematic grocery bags off the ground and onto a hook underneath the steering column of the moped – the hook I had not noticed during the last 15 minutes of staring at Black Betty and reckoning with my life.
My laughter escaped loud enough to surprise us both. Unable to stop, I wrapped my arms around my middle and I bent over. The bloated dog was annoyed to be woken up and waddling farther up the street. When I could straighten up, I searched for words.
If he’d spoken English or I’d spoken Vietnamese, I would have told him my Texan Grandmother’s saying for overlooking the obvious, “If it was a snake, it would’ve bitten you!” Shared language wouldn’t have helped me explain why something that small made me feel like he’d just retrieved me from the lost and found.
I slapped my head to show I knew how silly I was. It was his turn to laugh.
Swinging one leg over the bike, I took over the handlebars from him and thanked him, “Cảm ơn.” He gave me two thumbs up and zoomed away. I watched him get smaller up the road and turn left towards the beach.
When he disappeared, tears replaced my laughter. I looked down at the hook and my groceries. The tears felt good and I didn’t try to stop them. Shaking the mosquitoes from my helmet, I slipped it on and twisted the right grip to scoot towards my temporary home.
The sun continued its descent. I took the long way home past the beach. I still had no tether, job offer, or grand answers at the foot of golden temples. But I grinned.
Clouds low on the horizon caught shades pink and orange, but the larger sky above glowed in gold.
