The plane is shaking, and I am gripping my seat. But gripping my seat doesn’t do much to steady the so-called ‘rough air’ - because it isn’t only my seat that’s quaking, but the entire metal cylinder we’re inside of, which is currently hurtling through the atmosphere very, very high above the ground, completely at the mercy of invisible powers like the temperature of the air and the laws of physics.
I look around – people are sleeping, watching screens. I seem to be the only one silently panicking. Oh, okay. Cool.
As I often do on planes, I imagine our little winged capsule suddenly taking a nosedive, through clouds and then through nothing, crashing in a lush forest somewhere in fiery flames. In the minute or so before death, plunging toward the earth, I would think of my parents, and my brother, and everyone I’ve called a friend or something like it, and brace for the end. There would be no time for teary goodbye voicemails because there is no signal on the plane.
After weeks of anticipation and preparation, of uprooting my decade-long life in London and moving back home for the interim, I’m finally going to Taipei – how ironic it would be to die on the way! The one possibility I hadn’t considered, amid all the visa documents, trips to the bank, the packing. Life sure got me in the end!
After a while, the shaking stops. I open my eyes, take a breath, and resume watching Notting Hill.
--
A few days after Christmas, Grandma died after suffering complications from Covid. She was 90.
She died alone in her nursing home, surrounded by none of her many friends or family members, the latter of whom were self-isolating after catching the virus themselves.
Grandma, who was such a big personality, so involved in everything and everyone, who was intensely sociable and crafty and can-do, who called out cooking instructions from the bedroom while recovering from hip surgery. Grandma, who was alive through so many things that I always meant to ask about, but didn’t. Grandma, who doted on me the same way her grandmother did her. Grandma, who became one of millions during the pandemic whose final years were sacrificed for nothing at all.
Who would Grandma have been in an alternate reality, with more shoulders to stand on, and better avenues for her talents? Maybe my little moves and unconventionalities are a way to honor the choices she did not have.
The borders did not open in time for us to mourn together. Dad sends a text, to no one in particular: “RIP mom”.
--
It’s summer in London, and Lauren is visiting. We’re walking out of Haggerston Park.
I’d recently become a huge fan of Mieko Kawakami, a literary star in Japan. We were talking about her new book, All the Lovers in the Night.
I just love her writing so much.
What is it that you love?
I don’t know. In her books, nothing really happens. Her characters are just everyday people doing everyday things, like going to a café. Drinking at home or at a bar. Signing up for a night class in the center of town. But it never feels empty. In the end, it somehow adds up to something. It feels like a life.
People were passing by on the pavement. We hugged goodbye. I walked to my bike, taking my time to check my helmet and shift my bag into a comfortable position. I barely remember the cycle home. It must have been quiet.
--
Will I list my anxieties about Taiwan?
Will I be able to handle the heat and humidity? How much heat and humidity will there be? Will the heat and humidity make me irritated and difficult to be around? What will happen if there is no A/C to combat the heat and humidity?
How will I adjust to traditional characters? Will I need to start from scratch with traditional characters? Are traditional characters hard to learn? Will I get traditional characters mixed up with simplified characters?
Will my classes go well? Will they have a language level suited to me? Will I get along with the other students? Will I become friends with the other students? Will the other students be too young for me to befriend?
How will I make friends? Am I too old to make friends? Is making friends too hard? Will any of my own friends visit me? Will that just make me lonelier when they leave?
What will I eat? Will I struggle to read things off the menu? Will I stand out and feel self-conscious all the time? Will I feel at home in some way? Will I feel foreign?
What is the protocol for US citizens in case of invasion? When might an invasion happen? Will they starve us out day by day? Will escape be possible under such circumstances? Are my parents worried? What do my parents really think about me moving there?
Will life be the same, just in a different place? Why am I doing this again? What am I doing?
--
After my brother says that Seattle is dying, I start to see it. The city is laced with an air of decay.
I spend my last weekend before leaving in the city center, hanging out with friends in town. We stay in Capitol Hill, once the center of local youth culture. We dabble in middle-class delights: a farm-to-table restaurant, concept stores, a weekend farmer’s market. I go to a new yoga studio, walking coffee in hand past stately homes on leafy streets. We are blessed by beautiful weather all weekend.
Everywhere there are people without homes, roaming each neighborhood like specters of what we left behind, or maybe what we stepped on to get to the lives we have. I see them as I walk down the road to repair my purse, or step into Whole Foods to see what they have, or come back from buying a third pair of earrings at an Insta-famous boutique. Their misfortune used to seem miles away, but now it feels like there is only a thin layer of separation between them and me – as if, over time, a wall was eroded into a clear sheet of glass, so delicate that it would shatter with just a gentle tap.
--
Maybe I could write a screenplay. It could be about a famous Chinese actress who is banned by her industry after doing some explicit sex scenes in her last movie. (It would be inspired by what happened to Tang Wei after Lust, Caution came out.)
After her ‘scandal’, she goes to London to study English. The first scene could be a shot of the back of her head, floating through a crowd just outside Marble Arch station. Maybe she has a plastic bag full of groceries in her hand, and it is cutting into her fingers. Maybe someone passes by muttering, and she isn’t sure what they said, or whether it was about her. She could be imagining things, given everything that’s happened to her.
Maybe she talks to her parents without saying anything. How is it over there? It’s good. How is your course? It’s good, the teacher is nice. Very experienced. Oh good, good. How are things back home? Fine, same as always. No news. Your mother is out shopping. Your grandmother is well. Maybe there is a silence and she tears up, but doesn’t know why. Thanks for calling. Then she hangs up and starts unpacking her groceries.
--
Grandma talking nonstop at the classical garden. I could be a tree, and she probably wouldn’t notice, I think.
Grandma at the morning market. This is my granddaughter. That’s your granddaughter? She’s so tall! This is my granddaughter. Wow, she’s giant!
Grandma’s look of shock when I show up at her door on a surprise detour during a business trip.
Grandma peeling live shrimp while I look on anxiously.
Grandma’s perpetually worried look – she cared a lot.
Grandma patting her friend’s hand at my cousin’s wedding.
Grandma pouting when I said no, I didn’t want her to buy me the necklace.
Grandma’s voice on the phone, loud and clear, only months ago.
Grandma
--
My brother and I are doubled over laughing because we cannot make a single basket. We have tried a dozen times now, throwing the basketball from different places on the court, layoffs, three-pointers, free throws. The ball bounces off the rim, or misses it entirely and lands in a puddle. The net is still.
I don’t remember being this bad at basketball.
It must be the basket! It’s too far from the headboard!
I don’t think it’s that.
It is!!
It eventually goes in a couple times.
It’s in the wrist, I’m telling you!
Dad wanted to come too, and paces the perimeter of the court slowly, head toward the ground, looking up once in a while to laugh.
--
I go for a run at the local park, a restored marshland with some trails into the woods. It’s often misty, and smells like freshwater. Cattails lean over the path. Moss thickens on trees.
Somehow runs at this park feel less tiring, more buoyant, than usual. I listen to k-pop and cycle through my thoughts, and try not to stop running even though I really, really want to.
It’s sunset when I climb the hill back home. Behind me, the sky is a vast yawn of pink and purple, bleeding its splendor for no one in particular.
Wow, I really loved this piece <3 <3 Relatable in so many aspects. Beautiful writing.