🔵I WAS ONE OF THE BABIES JOHN HELPED IN VIETNAM — AND NEITHER OF US KNEW UNTIL NOW, John’s been coming into my work for years.
Same order, same quiet nod. He’s the kind of person you don’t think twice about—until you do. Last week, I mentioned to him that my girlfriend and I were planning a trip to Vietnam. Just casual conversation.
But then something shifted in his face.
“I was there,” he said. “Back in the day, near the end.
We were helping get orphaned babies onto planes, trying to make sure they got out safely.” My heart skipped a beat. I was one of those babies. I told him. Watched as his hands froze on the counter. His eyes began to water.
“Then I might’ve held you,” he said softly. We both stood there in silence for a moment. All my life, I had wondered about the people who helped me back then.
The ones who got me out. And suddenly, one of them was right in front of me. We talked for a while. About what he remembered. About that day.
The emotion in his voice said everything. Before he left, he put a hand on my shoulder, his voice thick with feeling. “I’ll rest easier tonight,” he said. “Knowing you’re here.” I thought that was it. Just a powerful, unexpected moment. But as he turned to leave, he paused. “There’s… something else,” he said quietly. “Something I should tell you.” And that’s when…
…he reached into the inside pocket of his worn jacket and pulled out a small, yellowed envelope.
He looked down at it for a long moment, like he wasn’t sure if he was ready—or allowed—to let go of it. Then he extended it to me.
“I was supposed to give this to one of the babies, but we got rushed. It was chaos. I never knew which child it belonged to. I kept it… all these years. Just in case.”
I took it carefully, hands suddenly unsteady. My name wasn’t on the front—just a date and a word written in soft, slanted handwriting: “Mẹ.” Mother.
With a nod from him, I opened the envelope right there.
Inside was a single photograph: a young Vietnamese woman, holding a baby—me, maybe? Her eyes were full of strength and sorrow. Tucked behind the photo was a folded piece of paper, worn and brittle but legible.
It was a letter.
“To the one who may raise my child,
If you are reading this, it means I could not leave with my baby. My heart is broken, but I trust that you will love and protect this little soul when I cannot. Please tell them, if they ask, that their mother loved them deeply. That their name, before the skies roared and the earth burned, was Mai Lan. That they were born under rain, to the sound of singing.
I will never stop singing in my heart for them.
— Mẹ”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was stare at the letter and try to steady the storm inside me.
John looked away for a moment, his jaw tight. “I kept it in a fireproof box. I don’t know why. Just… it never felt right to throw it away.”
“You didn’t,” I whispered. “You saved it. You saved me.”
He gave a quiet, half-smile. “I guess some part of me hoped this day would come. I just never thought it actually would.”
That night, I went home and sat with the letter and photo in my lap. My girlfriend curled up beside me, holding my hand in silence.
John and I met again two days later, not at work, but at a park bench nearby. We sat for hours, piecing together fragments of a story I’d never known was mine to finish.
And in the weeks that followed, I began learning Vietnamese. I framed the letter. I called the adoption agency to dig deeper.
John and I still meet often. We don’t say much sometimes, but we don’t have to. There’s a quiet reverence now—a shared truth between us.
He didn’t just help save me once.
He saved a part of me I never even knew was lost.