Almost everyone I meet calls me by my English name. The rest addresses me by a name known by less than a handful of people, a name from my motherland, the name of a poplar.
Mom tells me stories of her childhood in Northern China where the trees were ubiquitous. She described them as being composed of stability and stoutness. A light silvery white is painted over its trunk, as it shoots into the heavens with a skyscraper’s undeviating mentality. Sturdy branches jut from the sides indiscriminately, appendages of an almost eerie quality. Dangling at the ends are small rounded leaves, green on one side but an almost-metallic white on the other. As breezes go by and they dance in the sunlight, the scintillating effect is near surreal, hundreds of miniscule mirrors turning rays of sun into a light show. When the clock of seasons strikes spring, flurries of seedpods float off the tree, each with a parachute of white fibers, like the down of a goose. When the humid summers arrive, pedestrians strive to reach breaks of heat under the massive dark shadows the tree casts onto the sidewalk.
My surname is nothing like my first though. It’s just a name. It has no meaning. How could there be significance when they're millions of other people that carry the title? But at least the name given by my mom has blessed me with an identity.
(more freshman year writing..)
A soft wind danced through the evergreen thickets of pine trees as clouds slowly converged together. The faint chirping of birds intermittently crescendo and fade away as the occasional car rumbles through the small suburban side street. The sky ultimately becomes overcast with ominous grey clouds as the pitter-patter of rain begins to increase—just another average Seattle day.
In the small suburb lay rows of modest homes in dull colors, no larger than two stories tall and four windows wide. In one off-white house, no better or worse than the others, resided the Fishers. The interior of their home is no more special than the exterior. Austere white walls, sparsely decorated with the occasional framed photo, surround small living spaces, with not much more than basic wooden antique furniture and piles of old bank transcripts. The smell of mothballs permeates the dusty air as one makes way through the musty, confined halls.
The couple living there was of relatively old age, not too old to lose self-reliance, but just a bit too old to relive their youthful energy. Sarah Fisher, of petite stature with dreary green eyes and long curly brunette hair, follows her daily schedule of waking up, feeding her cats, and walking in circles around her neighborhood with her mug of earl grey—which she rarely cares about, even if it goes cold. Her husband, Michael Fisher, who resembles the average post-middle aged man, with a scruffy graying beard and a thin layer of silver-black hair on his head, also lives his life by a monotonous routine. After a brief breakfast, he drives to work in an outdated BMW. After a day in his cubicle, he drives home, sits down at the rough, worn out oak dining table with his wife. They do not talk much as the aromas of a simple meatloaf fill the room. Only two chairs surround their table, since company never arrives.
The Fisher’s live a plain, apathetic life. They do not seem to mind, however, although they may not be aware of their indifference in their pedestrian daily routines. In the modest off-white house, lining a dark asphalt two-lane road under cumulonimbus skies, lived the Fishers. They lived a simple, linear life—but they were content.
Mom told me she chose this apartment because of the sunlight. “The apartment faces south, so light will always come in at the right times,” she would always say. And she's right, when I would turn the corner out of the hallway around noon, light pours through the patio French doors, engulfing the living room. I don’t blame her for wanting all these rays—anybody rebuilding a shredded life wouldn’t mind it.
But before anybody ever steps foot in this dwelling of light, they see a salmon colored building, standing as stout as a redwood on the decline of a steep hill. Smells of grease from the fast food joint and sounds of power tools at the repair shop at the foot of the hill creep their way up over the roar of the rush hour traffic, creating hectic Friday afternoons. But this isn’t an urban wasteland. This is home.
A brief walk through the lobby and a short elevator ride up, and I would step into the dimly lit hallway of the first floor, with small light fixtures every door down and shadows surreptitiously creeping along its walls. A left turn at the dead end in the back of the ominous hallway comes with the sight of an austere white door, energized with a small hanging Chinese ornament of several modest gold trimmed, bright red firecrackers.
A few strides through the doors, and with it, the still silence of a simple home, broken occasionally by the splashes of a fish tank and spikes of noise from the busy street outside. Passing by the open kitchen, aromas of delectable food greet me as I make my way to the spacious living room. Here, I recall moments of pain and sorrow, moments that try deterring me from an idea of a home. But in the end, those trifles never win out. A slow descent into the couch, and I allow myself to enjoy the sun.
(from a year ago. weird to look back on how I wrote, how I looked at things.)
