A bowl of pho

y grandmother made homemade egg noodles, thick, soft and a little chewy, and served them steaming in broth with chunks of chicken, fragrant with herbs and onion. Her noodles could hold their own against any grandmother's chicken and noodles.

As I got older, I ventured out beyond my family's culinary roots: French Canadian, Pacific Northwest/Yakima Valley, Pennsylvania Dutch, Midwest and Southwest, the latter via geographical exposure when my family moved to Arizona for two years when I was six years old. I discovered many other cultures offered soups that tasted as though they had been cooked up with love by generations of grandmothers.

Since the winter of 2003, I will always have a special place in my heart for a little pho place in White Center, which shall remain anonymous. My then 21-year-old son was about to deploy to to Iraq for a year with the National Guard.

On the eve of his deployment, I told him I would take him anywhere in Seattle for a meal, no expenses spared. I thought he would pick somewhere downtown, with steak and alcohol, or an upscale place for a truly memorable meal.

I wanted something to carry him through a stretch of training and war certification with his brigade in the California desert, then on to more training and exercises in Kuwait, a long drive to Baghdad, followed by a year of MREs, and the most expensive cafeteria food in the world, courtesy of the military and Kellogg, Brown and Root, aka KBR. (Occasionally augmented by shawermas from nearby vendors, and chai tea, instant faux pho, prefab meals, dried nuts and fruit and other food sent in care packages from home).

But of all the restaurants in Seattle, he chose his favorite pho place in White Center, the one where the owner remembered him. When I went back for a few solitary bowls later that same year, attempting to feel closer to my son, the owner remembered me and asked about him.

A couple of months into my son's deployment, when I told him people were asking about him and asked how things were going, he emailed back: "Just tell them i'm dying of boredom and i have no pho."

About eight months after my son deployed, a KBR Halliburton mess hall was hit by an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker. He hit during the lunch hour. It killed 22 Americans, four Iraqis, and wounded 66 Americans. Many of those in the hall were from Fort Lewis.

From then on, my son rarely went to the mess halls run by KBR, sticking instead to MREs supplemented by energy bars, juice, and similar food he purchased at the base equivalent of mini-marts, or from local vendors.

When he returned home with his unit, his hands still occasionally reached for a gun that wasn't there. It was as though only part of him had arrived back in Seattle, and his eyes were still somewhere else.

The first restaurant he wanted to go was to the little pho place in White Center. As we walked in, the owner looked up and greeted my son warmly, welcoming him back.

My son looked around, looked at me, relaxed, sat down, and ordered his favorite bowl of pho.