WHAT MY FATHER LEFT ME: PART ONE

In the back of my closet sits a pile of photos, film, and slides—fragments of my father’s life. He passed away eight years ago, and I’m still sifting through his past, like pulling loose threads from a pair of shredded jeans. Most recently, I dusted off a three-inch binder full of slides. I don’t have a projector, and I’m hesitant to hand them over to strangers for digitization. These aren’t just family vacation photos—these are slides from a camera my father secretly brought with him to Vietnam during the war.

When I was very young—maybe six or seven—I sat beside my brothers on olive green shag carpet while our dad manually clicked through these same slides on an old carousel projector. I was too young then to grasp the weight of what I was seeing, though I’m sure he was careful not to show us anything too graphic. Still, I’ve never forgotten the one slide he got stuck on: a large white box truck riddled with bullet holes. I don’t think he meant for me to see it—he froze.

He stammered through a story about driving along the Ho Chi Minh trail with a truck full of orange juice for the troops when he was ambushed. Despite bullets flying, he kept driving. He was lucky, he said—but the OJ spilled all over the jungle floor. It was one of many stories he kept tucked away, only surfacing much later when I was grown and he was loopy on pain meds from yet another surgery.

This past week, I’ve started shopping for a slide projector. Another thread pulled.