“I inherited my love for music from your grandfather who had been composing and performing music for his fellow soldiers on the road,” my father, Lam, reminisced as I asked him about his start in music. 

“He taught me how to handle a guitar ever since I was a little boy hiding from frequent bombing in the city. I joined a band when I was in college, shredding impromptu electric chords though more than occasionally distracted by your mother singing at the center of the stage,” he confessed. He met my mother when he was a senior in the College of Architecture and she was a freshman at the College of Medicine; they got married right after my mother finished medical school and became a doctor.

A sad thing happened during this great love story: my father broke one of his finger and although it healed, he could never play it like he used to. After college he became an architect for the Ministry of Foreign Affair, overlooking national projects to accommodate foreign diplomats in Vietnam.

My father has sacrificed a lot since accepting his post in the Mission of Vietnam at the United Nations, having been struggled to readjust with life in a foreign land while reaching fifty year old, half of his life. Even though he is swamped with works at all time of the day, every now and then father picks up his guitar to play some of his love song or playfully finger the electric piano we found in front of our apartment.

“It’s never too late to start with music nor does it worth to give up melodies,” he always tell me. His life story has proven so…