The Tet market vendor near my aunt's house in Hanoi sells nothing but kumquat trees for exactly two weeks a year, then disappears completely, same stall, same spot, same silence the other fifty weeks. "Where does he go?" I asked my aunt, genuinely curious, watching the man haggle fiercely over a small potted tree with a customer twice his size. "Nobody knows," she said. "Somewhere south, I think. Comes back every year, same corner, right before Tet, gone the second it's over." I asked him myself eventually, my Vietnamese rough enough that he had to repeat himself twice, patient about it. "The trees only matter for these two weeks," he said, wrapping a small kumquat tree in red paper for a waiting family. "Full fruit, full luck, symbol of a good year ahead. After Tet, nobody wants a kumquat tree. So I don't sell kumquat trees after Tet. I do something else." "What else?" He smiled, didn't really answer, just gestured vaguely toward the south like the answer wasn't really the point. "Doesn't matter what I do the other fifty weeks. This is the two weeks people remember me for. This is the two weeks that matter." My aunt bought her tree from him, same as every year, same stall, same brief exchange of money and blessing for the year ahead. He was gone again by the following Monday, same as always, corner empty until next January, whatever fifty weeks of his life happened elsewhere staying exactly as private as he wanted them to.

Newly freed prisoners of war celebrate as their C-141A aircraft lifts off from Hanoi, North Vietnam, on Feb. 12, 1973, during Operation Homecoming. The mission included 54 C-141 flights that brought 591 POWs home to the US.