Tonight, squished on the top bunk, Emily and Alicia and I. It was a simple gathering. In the center of the room, attached to the ceiling, hung a single dusty light bulb, and its glow created shadows of our profiles along the back wall. So we made shadow puppets, me a snake, and Alicia a spider, and I ate her over and over and over again. And gradually snacks would appear and disappear beside us. First a gulpful of honey-coated peanuts, and then a bag of barbecue chips. Emily gave me a satchel of blueberry poptarts. They smelled like breakfast and home and happy. Alicia and I watched as Emily ate an entire apple in five bites, even the core. We talked about heel calluses, and fart putty, and flowers, and how we three are little girls in Asia. God’s little daughters. Squished on the top bunk with blueberry poptarts in Hong Kong.
Two weeks ago our program director in Shanghai asked us to think of a moment in time, a memory, in which we were truly happy. So I did.
I was in Los Angeles with Craig and Tom and Gifford, and we were celebrating our unbirthdays before Craig and I left for China. We went to Olive Garden and shared garlic bread and cranberry juice for communion. I remember our table, and the clear sparkle of our drink glasses, and the laugh on our waitress’ face when we asked her for grape juice. We went bowling afterward, and we stopped and danced in the road on the way home.
These memories, these pockets of happy, seem to be little snippets of a world that could have been, a world that is yet to come. It is in these little gaps that I forget time, and trouble, and worry, and Chinese literature essays yet to be done, and I rest fully in the present, knowing there is no place I would rather be.
Our director calls them memories. I call them my fields of green.
Who are you? Honestly... First of all, you are such a talented writer. Second of all, your heart is otherworldly. Third, you're beautiful inside, outside and all-around-side. KEEP ROCKING SISTA!
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