Illustration by Vian Wrya
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For two weeks, I travelled through Vietnam and Thailand with my son and grandsons.
My son arranged the flights, accommodations, timing and the small details that make a journey possible. More than that, he made room for me inside something he was sharing with his sons. In doing so, he gave me a gift I will carry for the rest of my life.
My grandsons, now men, did not know I was joining them. They had already started their trip with their dad when I appeared at the transfer airport in Taiwan as a surprise.
There are moments when time opens.
In their faces, in the welcome and the sudden widening of the journey, we became three generations stepping into the same story.
On the second day, the meaning of our journey appeared in a place no guidebook would send us. It was a narrow lane behind a tennis court, about 25-feet wide and 65-feet long, with one way in and one way out. Plastic tables and chairs lined the right side. Halfway down, on the left, a small opening led to what seemed to be a sidewalk café or beer stall, with kegs stacked in the background.
At least 100 men of my vintage were gathered there. We counted the tables after we sat down: 26 of them, with four or five men at each. They were sharing memories, beer and time. Nothing had been staged or translated for us. It was life continuing in its own rhythm.
When we joined the group, the men turned. No one spoke. They simply smiled. The welcome was unmistakable. Something human unfolded.
There was one plastic table open with two chairs. Before we could settle into the awkwardness of being outsiders, two more chairs appeared, lifted from other tables and carried toward us.
And that was everything.
The men made room for us. Sit here. Be with us. There is space for you.
We didn’t feel like tourists. We had been received.
The beer, laughter, nods, smiles and rearranged chairs carried a wisdom deeper than language. Sometimes belonging is a plastic chair pulled from another table, or a smile from someone whose language you do not speak.
When we left, the men nodded and smiled again. Nothing more was needed.
Vietnam and Thailand were beautiful. But that alley revealed the deeper journey.
I had been made room for. And once I felt that, I began to see the same quiet welcome everywhere.
That moment became the lens through which I saw everything else. I was travelling as someone who had been made space for: by my son’s care, my grandsons’ openness, the bond between brothers and another culture’s ordinary humanity.
For two weeks, I watched my son not only as my son, but as a father. One of the great privileges of later life is seeing the child you once carried now carry the lives of his own children with confidence, humour, patience and love. His care was everywhere: in the planning, the checking-in, the adjustments and the lightness with which he carried responsibility.
Through my grandsons, I saw the life my son and his wife have built over many years. Their sons are men now, with their own independence and ease. I saw respect and the kind of love that does not need much explanation because it has been lived long enough to become natural.
And I saw them as brothers. That may have touched me most deeply. They were laughing, teasing, waiting, helping and knowing one another in ways only brothers can. Their bond was visible.
For two weeks, I didn’t feel like I was watching my son’s family from a distance. I was inside it: the meals, the movement, the laughter, the tired evenings, the decisions, the silences and the beginning again each day.
T.S. Eliot wrote that the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. I travelled through Vietnam and Thailand, but in some way I returned to family, to father and son, to brothers, and to the long, living thread between generations. I returned to what I had always known, but now saw differently.
The journey ended where it had widened: at the transfer airport in Taiwan.
Saying goodbye meant stepping out of a shared rhythm that had held all four of us together. Final hugs, last looks, small waves: the moment when something deeply shared had to become something quietly carried.
On the plane ride home, I thought about family less as something we belong to, but as something we continue to discover. We were carrying what we shared forward, each in our own way, into the lives waiting for us.
And somewhere inside me, the invitation remained.
There is room for you here.
Hugh MacLeod lives in Sidney, B.C.