RANDOM MEMORY #1

The majority of my childhood memories take place at dusk. I'm recalling one in particular. It was a warm evening in August. I was about seven. I was in my parent’s bedroom leaning casually against the long side of their bed, talking to its contents, my mother. She was dressed in pajamas. I asked her about the argument that had transpired between her and my father over dinner.*

She explained to me that he was going to a lantern lighting ceremony to remember the atomic bomb victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I remember imagining as she spoke, a beautiful ceremony hosted by a shoal of red paper lanterns. But I remember even more vividly my mother’s face, tight and unresolved. When I asked her why she didn’t want to go she told me very simply, “Because the Japanese army did terrible things to the Chinese people of Nanjing just a few years earlier. They tortured the innocent and buried them alive. It's up to you if you want to go with your father and brother. But I’m not going.”

* I distinctly remember several occasions as a child where adult conversation flew beyond the Doppler radar of my ken and translations were very necessary. “For transcriptions of today’s adult conversation, please see mother after dinner.”