Chapter 36

The doorbell rang and Lanh answered it, she was just finishing up painting the nursery a perfect pastel pink, a color she and Don agreed upon years ago, before she found out that she was ... that she couldn’t ... before they started the adoption process. She opened the door and saw a full bird colonel and a lieutenant colonel standing there both wearing flight suits along with the first sergeant, Senior Master Sergeant David Olson. Dave’s wife was a good friend of Lanh’s at the Enlisted Wives Club. “Mrs. Campbell?” the colonel asked in a polite tone of voice.

‘It’s ok,’ she told herself when her heart started fluttering, ‘they’re smiling. People who tell you your husband is dead don’t smile at you and they always bring the chaplain.’ She opened the door wider for them to enter. “It’s Doctor Campbell,” she corrected. She loved doing that, and she often wondered if she went through all that schooling just to be able to say that.

“Yes, that’s one of the things that we’re here about Mrs. Campbell,” the lieutenant colonel said.

Lanh pointed to herself and said, “Doctor Campbell if you don’t mind lieutenant colonel. We have both earned our titles.”

The full colonel’s eyes opened wide. “I’m sorry, we didn’t realize that you were a doctor also.”

“Also...” her eyes suddenly brightened, “also? You mean my Don made it?” She squealed with glee and threw her arms around the colonel and kissed his cheeks.

“May we come in ma’am ... sorry, doctor?”

“Yes, please, come in...” As they entered, they took off their flight caps and stuffed them in their leg pockets. She gave sergeant Olson a good-natured fist bump. Both of them ended the bump by spreading their fingers out wide to simulate an explosion. “Can I offer you some coffee?”

“Only if you have some made, otherwise we’re good,” said the full bird.

“It’s a shame, I was just getting ready to make Vietnamese coffee.”

“We will all take some,” said Dave as he sat down at the dinner table. The colonels looked at him in shock, but he said, “Believe me sir, if you like coffee, you can’t miss this.”

“Dave and Lydia have been here before,” said Lanh.

“Her Vietnamese fried noodles are outstanding!” said Dave.

“Those were Don’s fried noodles. My folks have a Vietnamese restaurant in Minnesota,” she said as she started making coffee for her guests. “Don’s the real cook, they put him in the kitchen because he can’t wait tables.”

“You guys wait tables?”

“Everyone works. In my family, counting the spouses, there’s two lawyers, a psychologist, a doctor of agronomy, an agronomist, two accountants with MBAs, a doctor of speech pathology, and now a Doctor of Education. We all work for má and ba unless we’re on the farm working for Don’s dad.” She sat a cup in front of each of the colonels then bustled back into the kitchen saying, “We also have a professor of ancient English literature, but he’s blind so he takes care of the kids when we’re working.”

“And you all work at the restaurant?” asked the full bird colonel.

“Uh huh, my folks are semi-retired now so my oldest sister Tam, she’s the chair of the psychology department at Bemidji State, she’s the official manager, but my sister-in-law Rosa is the real driving force there now. She’s the only one without a degree, but the only one that can get the rest of us to show up to work on time.” Lanh placed a small cup of coffee in front of each guest, topped each one with canned, evaporated milk, and gave each man a spoon. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your names.”

“Lanh,” said Dave, “this is Colonel Daniel Gilliam, the wing commander, and this is lieutenant colonel Joseph Dawson, five twenty third fighter squadron commander.”

“So, they accepted Don’s doctoral thesis? He’s going to be so happy,” smiled Lanh. “I knew writing that book was going to amount to something!”

“Book?” Lieutenant Colonel Dawson looked perplexed.

“Don and I are published, hang on a second...” Lanh got up and went into a storage room and came out with two copies of Journey to Freedom, then autographed each copy and handed them to the colonels. “It was a high school term paper that he wrote. We had a teacher that didn’t like Vietnamese and he wrote this paper to show her what my family went through to get here. A previous commander thought it was a worthy work so he submitted it to the Air War College and they accepted it.”

She smiled a dreamy smile as she sat down. “Don called all of my relatives, my siblings helped him with translations as he took down their stories and he did it all as a surprise for me. Our school was so impressed that they made enough copies for my family at our wedding, and it was in such demand they went ahead and published it. I helped edit and bump up the narrative while he was in basic training.”

“Wow,” said Colonel Gilliam. “I lectured from this book at the Air War College! Just ... wow.” He read the back of the book’s jacket, “State record in 200 freestyle?”

“It still stands,” nodded Lanh as she pointed to Don’s medal and certificate on the wall.

“And you were his coach?” said Lt. Col. Dawson as he read further down on the back of the book.

“Yeah, unofficial, but Coach Mach asked me to help coach him and another swimmer, she won gold too and is now running my parent’s restaurant. She ended up marrying my brother Bao.”

“Just wow,” agreed Lt. Col. Dawson. “So, what are your plans for the future, Mrs ... Doctor Campbell.”

“We’re going to travel. England, Germany, Italy, and then we’ll head to Asia ... Misawa, Osan, Kadina. Don says the fireworks at Kunsan on the fourth of July are incredible, so we’ll go there too.

“Kunsan is isolated remote, there’s no dependents on base, Doctor Campbell,” said Colonel Gilliam.

“Oh?” said Lanh. “Was it like that 3 years ago too? Funny.” That left the officers wondering what she was implying, but Lanh was just stirring the pot. She continued, “so why are you gentlemen here? Just to tell me that Don’s doctoral thesis has been approved?”

“Well ... no. That is part of it, however. Doctor Campbell, in the past, did they ever prank your husband when he got promoted?”