LaoAmericans

I didn’t know that my name was Saymoukda Vongsay until I started preschool at Headstart on Dale Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I also didn’t know that the ‘u’ in my first name was interchangeable with the letter ‘o’ because no one ever corrected me when I wrote it either way.

I spent nearly two years focused primarily on one thing: to travel to Laos for the first time. When I finally went this February, I felt like the whole of my life had built up to that moment. I don’t know how I can describe the enormity of the experience with only words …

As I struggled with much effort to recall the memories of my Laotian youth, I discovered that they were slowly becoming flashes and short blurry images, fading into the unrecoverable depths of my mind. I held on to the ones I could. I oftentimes could not distinguish between my dreams and my real memories, for the amount of time that I focused on dreaming of Laos surpassed that of my actual time in Laos.