I was a strange kid.

I finished the daycare program early
because I had been attending since my twelfth month.
After graduating from nursery,
I suddenly had nothing to do.

I remember…

That summer before my special primary school life began.
Calculating back, it was around 1992.
I stood by the window in my grandparents’ house,
feeling anxious about this weird state
of having nothing to do.

Knowing I was bored,
or maybe just to keep me from messing around,
my family enrolled me in an unofficial first-grade class.
That’s why I ended up attending
two first grades in my life.
The first one was really
a kind of “advanced preschool year,”
just to pass the time and learn the ABCs
at the local primary school
with children one year older than me.

I did well:
second or third place in the final exam,
even though I didn’t concentrate much.
Most days
I went there just to play.
Really play.
I annoyed the whole Miss Yen’s class everyday.

I remember…

Every trip to school
and every walk back home
was a small journey.
Grandpa walked me to school.
(He was famous in the community for never knowing how to operate any kind of transportation.)

If it rained, dad rode me to school,
and grandma biked to pick me up.

Eighty percent of the time,
the 6:00 a.m. morning road
and the 11:00 a.m. return home
belonged only to grandpa and me.
Especially the trip from school:

I remember…

The road was dusty,
rough under the tropical standing sun.
It was only 1.5 kilometers,
yet I could rarely walk
the whole way by myself.
Grandpa walked beside me.
He was the shade,
and I was the shadow.
If I became too tired then crawled along the road,
he lifted me onto his back.
Suddenly we became taller together,
moving slowly down Nguyễn Văn Tư Street.

That was every day
of my first school year.

Later it became more than just my memory.

It is…
grandpa’s pre-retirement “nightmare,”
grandma’s favorite story,
and my family’s shared memory.

Perhaps…
because
I was the first grandchild.

Perhaps…
that is why
it stays.

Today,
that first grandchild
has gone far away.

Today,
I miss Grandpa
and the long road
where the shade walked besidemy shadow.

• April 18, 2026