The normalizing of U.S.-Vietnam relations marks the death of a 20-year old identity in America -- and the start of a new phase in the Vietnamese diaspora. Vietnam-born Andrew Lam is a San Francisco writer of fiction and a journalist.

SAN FRANCISCO -- As President Clinton announces diplomatic ties with my homeland Vietnam, America embraces an old enemy as a long-lost friend. But the diplomatic ties also spell the end of a 20-year old identity in America -- that of the Vietnamese in exile.

At my parents' house in San Jose, California, the relatives gather and mull over the idea of national reconciliation. One uncle who spent several years in a communist re-education camp before coming here asked whether we Vietnamese exiles should laugh or cry.

Indeed, ever since the first wave of Vietnamese refugees arrived in America, the wave that brought me here as a child, a common tragedy has bound us together. We were losers in a civil war, remnants of a defeated army and society, almost a million lost souls transplanted to a completely alien environment.

In time, Little Saigons were born, predicated on our extraterritorial passion. We mourned and protested and composed poems about our epic loss. The saddest date in the Vietnamese exile calendar was, of course, April 30, 1975, known as "Ngay mat nuoc" -- the day of national loss. The exile narrative begins on this date. It tells of families torn apart: fathers lost in communist gulags, children drowned at sea, sons executed by Viet Cong in front of distraught fathers, wives and daughters raped by Thai pirates on crowded boats, sons and daughters abandoning senile mothers and now wracked by sadness and guilt. In Vietnamese coffee shops in San Francisco, songs with titles like "Mother Vietnam, We Are Still Here," and "Those Golden Days in Vietnam" still echo nostalgically on the speakers.

It is well known that losers of epic struggles cling to the past. Every Vietnamese mini-mall across California flies the South Vietnamese flag -- gold with three red horizontal stripes -- as a testimony to a country that no longer exists. And in the Vietnamese exile's home, memories of the war are relived on a daily basis.

In the home of my father, an ex-general of the South Vietnamese army, the past hovers over the dinner table. After a drink or two my father reminisces easily about our homeland and the battles he fought and won. How many times, through my father's war stories, have I seen napalm fire light up the night sky?

But the years pass. And the gap between father and son, between generations, grows wider. Ironically, while my father's generation find it harder to return home, we children have returned many times, searching for ways to help and influence the future of our homeland.

A while back, facing a classroom full of Stanford students who identify themselves as Vietnamese Americans, not as exiles, it occurred to me that they were too young to remember Vietnam. What could these young, bright faces make of, say, "Those Golden Days in Vietnam?" For many, Vietnam represents not a nostalgic past but a glowing future.

Of course, I have no illusions that Vietnam is some tropical paradise. Far from it! The country still arrests political dissidents and religious leaders and Vietnam still denies its people freedom of expression, the most basic of human rights. But I strongly believe that America's presence and proximity will hasten political change. Vietnam, after all, still wears the hammer and sickle on her silk sleeve to placate her old and weary communist rulers, but her heart throbs for pluralism and democracy. As knowledge of the outside world permeates the culture, it is only a matter of time before the political barricades give way.

In the meantime a friend, once a boat person, calls from the East Coast to tell me he has gained a second address, a second home, a second country. Another friend who already opened an office in Saigon last year suggests that normalization marks a new phase in the Vietnamese diaspora -- a reverse exodus. The ocean, he notes enthusiastically, once swallowed up Vietnamese lives. Now it's a familiar carpet understand his jumbo jet's wings. A third friend who plans to open a law office in Vietnam quotes the American proverb 'You can never go home again.' to tell me it's no longer true. "I see my future as going back and forth," he says.

And so do I. Vietnam and America, two divergent ideas, are converging. I see an old legacy ending and the hyphen of my identity stretching like a bridge across the deep blue sea.