Of cicadas, she would say that they looked like dead leaves fluttering, felt like paper crackling, sounded like fire roaring, smelled like dust rising, and tasted like the devil frying in oil... You see, in five ways she could sense the world... But it was always the sixth way, her... sense of importance, that later caused troubles between us. Because her senses led to opinions, and her opinions led to conclusions, and sometimes they were different from mine.
I looked at her and saw she was crying. And I also began to cry again, that this was our fate, to live like two turtles seeing the watery world together from the bottom of the little pond.
I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment.
What happened in Nanking, I couldn’t claim that as my tragedy. I was not affected. I was not killed.
Kwan saw what she believed. I saw what I didn’t want to believe.
I watch them continue to argue, although perhaps it is not arguing. They are remembering together, dreaming together.
Auntie had a tongue like hungry scissors eating silk cloth.
But my main motivation is fear of regret.
But my main motivation is fear of regret. I worry that if I didn’t go, one day I’d look back and wonder, What if I had?
In two years’ time, my scar became pale and shinny and I had no memory of my mother. That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.
Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what she did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.
Her mother looked pleased at the prospect of being vital to her daughter’s success. Ruth sighed, relieved yet sad. Why hadn’t she ever asked her mother to make drawings before? She should have done it when her mother’s hand and mind were still steady. It broke her heart to see her mother trying so hard, being so conscientious, so determined to be valuable. Making her mother happy would have been easy all along. LuLing simply wanted to be essential, as a mother should be.
But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear, and loneliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.
Too much happiness, said the man who returned, always overflows into tears of sorrow.
Chinese people do many things,” she said simply. “Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture.
After a while I didn’t think it was a terrible life, no, not really. After a while, I hurt so much I didn’t feel any difference.
The best metaphors appear unexpectedly out of the deep blue by means of intuition and my infatuation with nuance.
So this is what my mother-in-law taught me: To protect my husband so he would protect me. To fear him and think this was respect.
This is beauty, and this is beauty, and you are beauty, and love is beauty and we are beauty. We are divine, unchanged by time.
I realized I am self-centered, that I’m used to thinking about me first. But I also realized that you tend to think about you second. It’s as though I had permission from you to be less responsible. I’m not saying it’s your fault. But you have to learn to take back, grab it when it’s offered. Don’t fight it. Don’t get all tense thinking it’s complicated. Just take it, and if you want to be polite, say thank you.