Scorchingly intact

A Serialized Essay. Part I.

In May of 2008, I quietly placed a little egg into the nest that my parents built, and tucked her in between the other baby birds and the bounty of their catch. I was 29 years old and it never occurred to me that there could be a different way; after all, I had brought many precious things back to the nest, big and small, and there was always enough space. A quick stop for dog food on the way to the violin lesson? Driving 50 miles up 101 to see a feline eye specialist? Totally normal. I don’t think we even discussed it when we left the hospital at 2-days old. Hana’s father, Tim, made a hard right onto Park Presidio and drove straight onto the Golden Gate Bridge and into the big nest hidden behind the wrought-iron gate up in the woods, away from the city and our tiny one-bedroom apartment without a washer/dryer. That night the three of us hid away in my childhood bedroom, twin beds pushed together, and I felt safe. 

I will table my childhood for now because those first 18 years are tangled up in a ball of wax that I need to melt down carefully so that the pieces can be excavated intact. But the decade before my baby bird’s arrival (birthed in unthinkable circumstances that I may share about down the line) exists mostly in disconnected photographs, nothing I can touch or hold but hazy snapshots that gain form only when I try as hard as I can to find them.

Me (center), my beloved popo and my happy little sis.

It wasn’t me or him, it was just us, uniquely and achingly us. So flawed from the start that I am amazed we even gave it a shot - but we were two charged magnets with no other options. I don’t want to zoom in too closely right now because I will get stuck.

For now, this is what I think: My memories are only accessible when my spirit is totally recognizable, a being whose every emotion mimics my own. But for those ten years, from 19 - 29, I animated a version of myself that was manifested behind his light blue eyes and unblinking stare. It was she who tagged along for his adventures, who slept on cardboard boxes in a convenience store in the Mekong river valley, who bought a trove of surf gear never once to catch a wave, and who said yes with tears flowing, as he proposed with a purple flower and a homemade silver ring at 18,000 feet in the Indian Himalayas. Afterwards, we scrambled down a scree field to find the rest of our trekking group and passed a dead horse. I think we should have lingered by his rotting body a moment longer. 

Now I fall to my knees in gratitude because I believe I disentangled from Tim just in time. But he is not the sole villain here; we were culprits and victims alike, achingly and fatally us. In the end, someone unexpectedly came into my life who had the effect of accelerating the train and flying it out of the station. I have more to say about that, but for now I will share that having nothing to lose fosters a level of reckless experimentation and discovery that I wish my sisters and my closest friends may someday experience. 

My memories since 2015 have been crystal clear, and I return to them daily and in my dreams. Mostly, I am so grateful that the really important things in my life have happened since then… Finding the person I will grow old with, the births of my beloved babies, Uma and Simon, experiencing the highest of highs in my professional life, my parents’ joy while riding the bullet train together in China, and sitting upright in fear as my child suffered pain unlike anything I’ve known… I have encountered these events as a totally recognizable me, with my memories scorchingly intact.