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Memoir Book Review: Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There — Reviewed by Tracy Kauffman-Wood

Memoir Book Review: Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There — Reviewed by Tracy Kauffman-Wood

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Happy Birthday

We arrived safely in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam around 11:30 PM on Thursday, December 16th. I turned 55 (Philadelphia time) in the air above the Alaskan tundra on a flight from Chicago to Tokyo. I just finished watching a wonderful movie called 'I Am Sam.' You have to see this for the great writing, and Sean Penn's stellar performance. I was deeply moved and soaking in tears when all of a sudden the flight attendants surrounded me with Japanese accented birthday wishes and three big bowls of some kind of choppy, pale, water ice. It was citrusy sweet, refreshing and definitely good enough to eat! Too bad Amity was totally dead to the world at this point. So Tony had two bowls of the sugary stuff. (??!!) The flight attendants presented gifts of candy, playing cards and an inflatable airplane. It was all so unexpected. They made me feel great. I was high all the way to Saigon. By the time we landed, my birthday was just about over, (Saigon time.) I lost 12 hours of the day, but a fragrant bouquet of flowers waited for me at our hotel room. It was the shortest, sweetest birthday I've ever had. I think, flying through the sky, watching movies high above the heaviness of the world, is the best way to celebrate life.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

We slept late on the 17th and eventually ventured out on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. We stayed right in the heart of things. Street life starts very early here and sleeps very little. Night and day our greatest challenge was racing from one curb to the next. Amity was cowering, crossing the street in a slouch with her hands over her ears until she discovered that the best way to manage this was to get right out there with your hand in the air and stop traffic. It works well. You become the rock around which the river of motorcycles flow. The motorbikes are everywhere, brazen and unafraid, but rarely is there an accident. You try to remember this as you dodge for your life. Ben Than Market is a trip. Stall after stall, row after narrow row of souvenir chachkes with the most persistent sales people in the world stepping on your toes to wrap you in their wares. Right now it's about 20,000 dong to the dollar. Try to calculate that conversion within the chaos of this airless, stinking, claustrophobic, makeshift, seething, heavy-breathing, self-contained city. One visit is enough but somehow you can't stay away from the market. There definitely are bargains here.

Chi Chu Tunnels

On the 18th we went to the Chi Chu Tunnels but not before stopping for a bowl of Pho first thing in the morning. Pho is a bubbling broth into which tons of exotic and undeterminable vegetables and meat has been tossed. It really is a great way to start the day. There's no mid-morning lag after this. Especially if you chase it down with thick, strong Vietnamese coffee. The sweetened condensed milk turns it into almost a coffee pudding. I like mine over ice. The Chi Chu tunnels were where some people lived and found safety during the Vietnam War. They are narrow, dark, airless places where 200 babies where born and grew up. This includes the famous 'napalm girl' who now is living in comfort and fame in Canada. God bless her! The tunnels have been widened for the tourists who tromp through them day after day but I came up short of breath, feeling blanketed top to bottom and grateful to be able to emerge from the darkness. Imagine only knowing this as life. By the way, the tour guide on this trip told us that there are 9 million people in Ho Chi Minh City and 7 million motorbikes. In the afternoon, we met with Mr. Thanh (Amity's middle name but no relation that we know of. In fact it is a very common name. )Mr. Thanh accompanied us to the school and orphanages. (More on that later.) He speaks English, arranged our hotel reservations and permission to photograph at the school and orphanages. He's an affable, good-looking man of 35 who works with Paul's Kids-the foundation formed to help Vietnamese children. Mr Thanh has a wife and two sons. He lives in a modest, one-floor, three room house next door to his parents', where he grew up in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

Mekong Delta

On Sunday and Monday the 19th and 20th, we went on a two day tour of the Mekong Delta. The best part of these tours are the people you meet on the bus. There's a lot of down time to gab and share war stories of being spoiled, American 'Ex-Pats' in this strange/familiar, rapidly developing, third world country. We toured a coconut candy "factory" along the river, really just some big bowls of bubbling sugar stirred by men with oars over open fires and a line of women cutting and wrapping the taffy by hand. We got to try everything and spent the rest of the day picking it out of our teeth. We also saw rice noodles and rice paper being made-everything labor intensive and definitely not automated. We learned that most people live on boats where they fish for a living or farm and bring their wares to the floating market early in the morning. Actually, the reason they bring them to the floating market is to sell to the tourists! That's the industry which sustains. The tourists are urged to come and see the floating market. People from all over the world float by on rickety old boats everyday to buy pineapples and a cup of coffee from the people of the Mekong. Otherwise they just get by farming or fishing to keep their lives afloat. No money, no technology, just the sunshine, the wind in your sails and your family surrounding you. Perhaps they've got the right idea. Perhaps they are less stressed out. Life is certainly simpler but most would choose to have more. And many do leave(or some of their many children do)for more education or to find opportunity on the crowded streets of Ho Chi MInh City.