I spent the morning pacing restlessly around my guesthouse room. With a thirteen hour time difference, No one in Virginia would be awake until at least five p.m. my time. The afternoon hours dragged by.

Five o'clock, at last. My feet had already found their way to the local post office. I gave the woman behind the counter my parents' number, then sat in one of the tiny, superheated booths while she dialed the Hanoi operator. Half an hour later there was still no connection, so I handed in a second number - a friend in Boston who I hoped might come to visit me in Vietnam. Another hour passed. Finally, the main phone rang. "Boston," the woman called, "booth four."

It was Larry. "Hi," he said across the static. "Have you talked to your Mom?"

Strange question. "Not yet - what's up?"

"She's had an accident."

My world went gray. It didn't spin around or get fuzzy. It just drained of all its color.

"What kind of accident?" Please God, don't let it be a car.

"She fell down some stairs."

My knees turned watery with relief. She was strong and fit. The stairs at home were carpeted. A sprained ankle, some bruises, perhaps a broken leg - certainly nothing more.

"Those stone steps out in Williamsburg," Larry was saying. "It was pretty bad. She broke her collarbone and both wrists, I think, and cut her head and had some sort of seizures. I don't know if she's still in the hospital or not."

"How long's it been?"

"About three weeks."

Three weeks in a hospital? Intensive care? She might have died and I would still be writing her letters. Three weeks. For the first time I felt inconceivably remote, a millions miles from where I wanted to be. "Larry, call my folks, please. Tell them to call me here. I need to talk to them. I'll keep trying from this end."

"Will do," he said and hung up.

The next two hours refused to pass. A month, a year went by and still I was sitting there, waiting for the phone to ring. The post office was supposed to close at nine. At seven the woman behind the counter began to shut the doors; I was her only customer and she was bored. I begged her to stay open. I chatted with her endlessly in cheery Vietnamese. I looked at her photos of her children and told her how handsome her husband was - and all the while my mind was numb.

It just didn't make sense. I was the one trekking through the jungles, facing poachers and parasites. She was supposed to be safe at home, ready to welcome me back. It had never occurred me that she might one day not be there. I felt utterly lost, directionless, like a kite without its string.

I had always wanted to have a home. It was something I thought I'd missed out on with all the moving and family turmoil growing up. Now I knew how wrong I was. Mum was my home, my roots, the reason I could set out with confidence and explore the world. If only I could tell her...

I should have stayed home.

The phone rang. It RANG! It was Mum, her voice strong and clear over the line.

"I'm fine," she said brightly. "Dad says I'm always charging up and down the stairs. From now on I'm to hold the rail."

She did indeed have two broken wrists and a fractured collarbone. She had lost fifteen percent of her blood through the gash on her head, and had been unconscious for hours. After several days in the hospital they had let her come home. She was recuperating under my father's care. "I'm typing all your letters now," she said, "but it's rather slow. I can only use one finger."

At last, I started to cry.