It has been more than twenty years since U.S. forces left Vietnam, long enough for a generation to grow to maturity with no direct knowledge of the war. But for those who fought there, and for their children, memory and history may produce painful silences. "Maria Taylor" is the pseudonym of a recent college graduate who is interested in teaching literature.

E-mail from my father. October 29, 1996.

"Ogre says :

Signatures have been affixed,

checks written,

oracles consulted,

all systems go-----

This is not a drill----

launch the jets

Estimated TOT

(time on target)

mid-January,

you are clear to drop when eyeballs on target.

Where are you going for Turkey day?

-Semper Fi

Ogre"

Translation: he has written checks for my tuition, called the airlines to arrange for a ticket home, and wanted to know where I planned to spend Thanksgiving. Ogre was my father's call name in Vietnam.

My father was a pilot, a Marine lieutenant in the Vietnam War. The war was over twenty years ago and yet it lives. It lives in the eyes of the homeless man holding a cardboard sign, "Help a Vietnam Vet." It breathes in the houses of the vets, in the blood of their children, despite the silence of their voices. The war is not to be discussed. Their experiences surface only for moments and are quickly hidden again.

I grew up with Vietnam. There is a picture of my father giving me a bottle, while reading a copy of Newsweek with a Vietnamese soldier on the cover. I imagine him whispering with a nursery rhyme voice about paratroopers jumping out of planes on a secret mission.

I was twelve years old the first time I realized that my father killed people. We were sitting around the kitchen table after a dinner with one of my dad's old Marine friends. They were joking, telling old war stories, as they had always done, laughing about a bombing mission that went awry. They bombed people, killed people, and they were laughing! I wanted to kill their laughter. I asked them what the hell they were laughing about. I didn't understand.

The war was about camaraderie for them, about brotherhood. I grew up as a child of that brotherhood, a child whose close friends and relatives were all tied by the bonds of the Vietnam war. Our fathers served together, became brothers together, cried together, and now laughed together. We went on camping trips, ski vacations, had barbecues and birthdays together.

But it changed.

As we grew older, we began to have questions about the war that we were afraid to ask. A knowing silence filled our homes. We saw our fathers' medals, memorized their war photos, listened to their tales. Occasionally we saw them cry. We were comfortable in the silence because hearing about Vietnam was painful. Dad told me once he beat children who had attacked him with razor blades, trying to rob him. I understood the circumstances, but it was awful imagining my father beating children. It was war, though. I didn't like to hear some of his stories.

As I grew older I started to notice my father's reactions to war. Desert Storm had an enormous impact. He became depressed watching the news. Comparisons to Vietnam distressed him. The house became quiet.

We studied the Vietnam war in school. We watched movies like "Platoon" and "The Deer Hunter." We asked if that was what the war was like. We were trying desperately to understand.

"No!" he would answer. His war was different.

We didn't push, but when our father offered to give us a story about the war we sat and listened, and rarely questioned. We were afraid of making him cry. We were afraid of seeing his pain, pain that was always there. He cries when he hears the "Star Spangled Banner." He salutes the flag. He gazes at jets as they soar over, and you know he is thinking about the war.

I am afraid to ask. I am afraid of yelling in the silence. Any vet's child will tell you it is taboo to talk about the war. "You just don't." We are afraid of opening something we can never close again. We suspect our fathers are keeping a great deal from us, knowing probably it would be too painful for us to live with.

I find myself being patriotic and defensive about the war because I feel a need to justify our father's pain. You can't say the war was for nothing, or you admit the dying was for nothing as well.

My father is the first to say that the Marines should not have been there, or that we could've left sooner. He is the first to criticize the government, the military and the war. Yet, he believes in what they did. There is no way for him not to.

These feelings, this silence, I can hope will fade, although I am almost certain they won't. There is no way for us to understand what our fathers experienced, no way to understand how they hide it. I wonder if the vets ever talk about the pain with one another.

I know their children take solace in each other. I know we are proud of our fathers.

I know we carry their pain.

I know we want it to end.