I was fascinated by my parents’ grown up rituals — shaving, make-up, getting ready for their adult world. I reached for the mystery of it, so present in my daily life, yet so far away from my own childhood routine. Religion was the same in my family’s experience. I observed my father’s prayer practice, hands cupped around his Buddha charms, moving with his breath as he kneeled. When he wasn’t looking, I fingered his display of small Buddha statues and ragged postcards next to his bed. My parents observed my world, too, taking me to Catholic mass on Sundays. Somehow, our different experiences came together, shared but not shared, connected by our interest in each other. 

In the mornings,

I watched my father shave.

Perched on the edge

of the toilet seat,

I studied the glide of metal

over skin,

cutting rows through

white cream.

And my mother,

with her dots of lotion

and colored powders.

Opening eyes wide –

like an upright doll –

for the wand of inky mascara.

Lips stretched,

smacked,

dabbed.

I reached into their adult world

in the same way I reached for prayer:

watching the blur

of my father’s praying hands,

the quick slip of Buddha charms

inside his undershirt,

where they beat

alongside his heart.

They watched, too.

Perched on the edge of pews,

they watched over the

prayers of my world,

committed to observation,

and something more:

to reaching toward my life

a little, to stepping

just barely inside –

not into knowledge or

understanding,

but simply into view.

Do you remember the feeling of the swing set, legs pumping, head tilted back, heart beating? I remember it well, and the moment of daring, of jumping off and flying through the sky, not knowing exactly how I would land. That memory  inspires this poem, but another memory as well. I was just four years old and I remember my mother telling me we would travel soon to Thailand to visit our family. We were standing at my bedroom window, looking out at the night and the swing set in our backyard. At four, that swing set was the edge of my world. I must have known that night that those borders were about to change.

From my bedroom window,

long past goodnight,

I watch the metal chains

sway in the moonlight.

Creaking the sound of air on steel,

bending lazily in the invisible wind.

I remember the power

of a summer afternoon

and take off:

the ground paces slowly at first,

then slides below me.

Legs pumping, heart beating,

I tilt my head back, look up:

the sky blurs by,

a sparkle of blue and sunlight.

Close my eyes –

fly through this life.

The arc of the swing is this world’s

revolution.

Air streams by, brushing against skin,

my stomach soars, then dips.

I jump off,

waiting for the moment

when body is at the edge of the sky,

suspended above my whole world,

and I decide where to land.

I traveled to Thailand, my parents’ homeland, several times as a young child. To me, home was a small white house in Omaha, Nebraska. The only people I knew who looked like me were my own family sharing that house. So Thailand was both foreign and familiar, and waking up there after sleeping through a long plane trip, was like waking to a dream.

My eyes opened to a sun-filled street,

a river of movement and color,

and noise:

honking cars, tinny bicycle bells,

and voices calling.

A current of people pushed by,

pulling with them

nets of string bags

filled with shopping.

Children, too, were pulled

into the current,

hands hooked to hands.

And in my dream,

the children looked back at me.

Our dark eyes met.

Our scalps, hair pulled tight into pigtails,

tingled with recognition.

I wanted to keep looking,

but the current was so strong,

it pulled me, too.

Aunty plunged into the traffic,

gripping me with one hand,

the other hand raised to stop the flow.

I knew then that I would wake soon,

to the rules of traffic,

and to the world I knew,

but did not recognize.