The boy who lived

Early memories are buried in a Labyrinth, submerged by dozens of weary eyes.

I grew up in a Californian, suburban cul-de-sac. Streets were lined with dried-out palm trees. Uneventful weekends were reduced to sweat from playing outside. Afternoons were wasted reading comic books at the library and attending library-hosted music and art events, which is where we’d learn calligraphy or listen to a local musician cover the Beatles or learn classical chess. We’ve attended all the local magic and acrobatic shows. Some family evenings are hunched over at the local buffet, stuffing as much food as humanly possible. We’d race ribsticks and bicycles down the slow, insipid roads. An older student would always read more than me during the Fremont Main Library’s summer reading challenges. Our dog days were left undisturbed to watch the night sky with our parents laughing over something that happened a few days ago while my sister and I sat on the sun-warm top of the Toyota. Baba would always come out with a bag of sunflower seeds or peanuts.

Boredom was the precursor to excitement. My sister and I always found something to entertain ourselves. There was a bubble casing around our street and nothing beyond that mattered much to us.

One day, my sister had taught me the rules for tag. I had barely learnt how to walk. Obediently, I chased her. As she made a sharp turn, I ran right into the concrete wall behind. My parents took me to the hospital and I got stitches. That’s how I got my first scar on the bottom of my widow’s peak.

On Earth’s day before my fifth birthday, my family had made plans to see an Earth’s day event. We were having breakfast at our glass dinner table. We had the sweetly flavored congee my mom used to make. Baba always added a spicy LaoGanMa sauce despite Mama’s complaints. My dad and my sister were wolfing down their breakfast, while I was throwing a tantrum. I was furious for young reasons. I was furious but don’t remember why. I was furious that Mama didn’t notice. I grabbed a back of rocks my sister was collecting for her class and pounded them on the glass table which cracked the surface. Then, without receiving further attention from Mama, I threw my head on the table like a hammer in a fit of rage.

The entire table shattered into a million pieces. Glass shards were sticking out of my head. The skull was fractured.

I don’t remember what exactly happened from this moment on. Only that tears had blurred my vision to the point that I don’t have clear visual memories. I’m told you could see the inner flesh and the beating brain ooze. What I do remember is seeing my father cry for the first time. In that moment, I stopped crying in hopes that he’d stop crying.

I got stiches. Of course, everyone canceled their plans for the day. The doctors made it clear that I’d have a scar on my forehead for my entire life. Mama was devastated. She thought it’d affect me in my later years. For years she’d rub retinol capsules on my scar to reduce its transparency.

These scars are forever part of me.

Chasing Vincent

We moved to Sweden for reasons I can only describe as a “simple twist of fate.” We had watched a documentary about Scandinavia and my father happened to receive an offer to work there. That summer after my 2nd grade year, we had packed all our belongings in a few suitcases and migrated to the land of Vikings.

I had already bounced around a few schools before going to an international school where I was in a class of many ethnicities (Sweden took them as refuge). After school, I would go to the local ice-skating rink and “practice” air hockey for hours. Boredom is perhaps the precursor to passion. We went there so often that some hockey players recognized us playing hockey with broomsticks and mops. They gave us some old hockey sticks! From here on out sprung the early passion for sports. A year or so later, I would be able to meet Matts Sundin, a Swedish NFL hockey player. In the summers, we’d learn unicycling and football at sports camps. We’d also take the bus and metro to random cities until the sun starts to set. In the winter months, we’d sled down the local hill where all the local children gathered and occasional snowball fights occurred. Sometimes, we’d snowboard down the little hill in our backyard. For serious adventures, we’d take the bus to the closest ski resort where I got bashed for trying the jumps without a harness.

At Sweden, I built a homemade lab where I experiemented with basic circuits, toy remote control helicopters, 240V of electricity (didn’t know better), sundials, lasers, rocks, explosives, chemicals, and practical jokes. I also made several homemade bows and arrows and slingshots that I’d carry out to the local forest and try to hit birds - I never hit one. It was here where I’d learn to unicycle, ice-fish, and find myself lost in the world of my own mind. My father would teach us algebra, trigonometry and chinese chess. Almost every night after dinner, our family would stroll to the forest where the you can only hear your own breathe and the river of sounds from the forest. You’d always come back with hot rosy cheeks.

My parents had gotten my sister, father, and me used bicycles. We rode to a nearby town Vista. Once, we rode back home through a 10 mile forest in literal darkness. We didn’t have a flashlight or mobile phones. You only have the light of the moon to vaguely shine through the trees to make out the edges of the trail. A false move would send you tumbling down the rocky hill-side slopes.

For 4th grade, I moved to a new local elementary school called Runan. It was closer within the city of Sollentuna. I took on the well-worn role of a new student again. I remember my friends Elias and Vladimir well. Like always, I hid away from attention, only surrounding myself with few but trusted friends. This was the early start of an unsettling feeling. I wasn’t truly Swedish. I didn’t completely understand their customs or language. There was the beginnings of a lingering feeling that I wasn’t one of them.

The play area at this school was built on a small sloped forest, only to be fenced off by roads. We’d play zombies vs. humans with the entire class since there were so many places to hide. Basically, there are a few zombies and the rest are humans. If the zombie tags you, you become a zombie. If by the end of the recess, everyone becomes a zombie, the zombie team wins. Otherwise, the humans win. It was exhilarating to run through the icy cold forest with the adrenaline of animal being hunted down. One time, I fell down onto a rock and hurt my knee pretty bad. I still have that scar on my left knee today. Those young memories lives in that scar.

On my very first day at this school, a guy named Vincent was picking on these girls at the edge of the muddy forest. Immediately, I knew he was an archetypal bully (but really he was just teasing girls like all boys do). With a desire to impress these girls, the strange hero in me started to chase him. He started to run. Pretty soon we were cat-and-mouse running over the sloppy hillside. We ran in circles while a group of classmates cheered me on. Ultimately, he slid down a muddy slope and got all his clothes covered in mud. After his public embarassment, all the classmates congratulated me. A few of the girls he was picking on even complemented me. In a hilariously embarassing way, I had defeated a school bully.

Blackout

My father grew up in the rural farmlands of the Anhui province in China. There was a hot gusty sense of unburdened freedom when we visited our Nai Nai. The unrestrained skies competing with the fenceless rice fields. There’s always that smell of hot dirt roads, sweat stained shirts, and cheap popscicles from the local city. No electrical lights to bother us with unwelcomed news or unfamiliar faces to frighten us.

We visted our Nai Nai on our trip back from Sweden. I was about 10 or so–as clueless as children come. My sister and I would play with the chicken, chase the wandering ducks out of the yard, watch our Nai Nai prepare a live chicken for dinner, throw dinner scraps under the table for the dog to eat, and fetch water from the well. There’s a comforting calm knowing that Mama, Baba, Nai Nai, and Ye Ye is all just a call away, even as you sit hidden away in the tall ricefields.

One day, Baba wanted to take the cargo tricycle out into the village. It was a three-wheeled bike with one pedeler and a trunk in the back for me, my sister, and my mother. It all seemed like a great idea at the time.

Of course, the bike was not designed for three human passengers. Baba struggled to pedal on the uneven dirt road. I saw his back sweat even to make even 20 feet. We asked if he needed help, but through his clenthed-mouthed ego, he said he was fine and that they’d make it to the village. Then Nai Nai called out to us, yelling something none of us could quite make out. We all turned back to make out her fuzzy message.

At that moment, everything turned black. Did I become blind? Strangely, I didn’t panic. Some warm blanket of thick liquid wrapped around me, but my vision had disappeared and the world turned dead quiet. Anaphylactic shock. It took some time before I could hear my mom yell, “Get up! get up!”

I obeyed without question and stoodup, wiping a layer of black slime off my eye lids. As my vision slowly focused, I realized that the entire tricycle had fallen into a sewer ditch. Back in those areas, animal and human feces were tossed into ditches for runoff to take away. Our entire family were completely covered in black goop.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Nai Nai and our uncles had rushed over screaming. “Are you okay?” They pulled us out of the ditch one by one. Soon, all the locals, including distant relatives, came out to see the commotion. (Or to see the fools who fell into the sewer ditch)

One of our distant uncles invited us to shower off in his home. As we walked to his house, his wife shooed us away! (Ha! What comedic timing!) Instead, we bathed off the goop in the local pond where all the catfish lived. Mama rubbed the corners of our ears and the hard to reach spots.

On our way home to Nai Nai’s house, we were scolded relentlessly. You really couldn’t invent an experience like that.