reflections

Growing up in Southern China, I learned Mandarin from my parents, Cantonese from my grandparents, and English from math class. Though math was not taught in English, I did approach English grammar like I did long division—a set of logical rules that would lead me deterministically to success.

When I turned 12, the promise I showed in acquiring languages got me into the trilingual class in the city magnet school. Half of the class would take Chinese, English, and Japanese; I, along with my remaining classmates, would take Spanish in place of Japanese. Spanish soon overtook English as my favorite subject: Gendered nouns? More tenses? More rules? Sign me up! What my peers found tedious I found exciting and even comforting. It felt like a superpower to dissect a sentence and explain precisely why the imperfect tense should be preferred over the simple past tense.

Feeling sufficiently armed with a solid command of English and Spanish, at 15, I came to the US for boarding school. But within a day, I began to see that grammar and vocabulary alone could not make me invincible. Having to introduce myself as “Fei Fang” instead of “Fang Fei” made my stomach turn. In English class, my classmates’ animated discussion on Puritanism, Salem, and the imagery of snakes went right over my head. I expected to feel at ease at least in Spanish class, but my use of “vosotros” as the second person plural pronoun betrayed me instantaneously.

At the end of that exhausting first day, I got a call from my parents from the other side of the globe: “How was school?” The familiar sounds of Mandarin brought me to tears. Letting out my first sentence of the day without minding the underlying rules, I felt at home.

As I learned that day and would learn over and over again in the following years, the beauty of language goes far beyond its rules. It lies in the knowing smile I exchange with a cashier in Chinatown when I order dim-sum in Cantonese. It lies in the warmth I feel on Christmas Eve when my partner’s mom asks me “¿Quieres pozole rojo o pozole verde?” It is an audible manifestation of our yearning to connect and to belong, to feel our voices heard, our existence affirmed.

I remember flipping through my classmate’s Japanese textbook in middle school and learning that in Japanese, the word for “word” consists of two Chinese characters: the first one means “language,” and the second means “leaf.” The 12-year-old me marveled at the poetic imagery—how neat it is to use “leaf” as a synonym for “building blocks”! But now, I see much more ingenuity to the metaphor. Words are not mere building blocks. Rather, they bud from the roots we inherit and reach toward the forest we create together. As I wander, microscope in hand, I examine the nooks and crannies of any leaf that falls, and watch it become one with the earth until the next leaf springs forth.

Massachusetts, 2014

“I wish I could just—reset time.” Anthony muttered, his gaze fixated—but upon nowhere.

“Hmm,” I looked up at the ceiling, “I’d rather rewind.”

Growing up, I floated in a quiet stream: lived in the same tropical city, had the same friends, and rarely traveled. The stream became a waterfall and pushed me down a cliff when I moved to Massachusetts alone at 15. Everything was foreign—the people, the language, the climate. Even the sound of my own name was foreign: toneless, jumbled, meaningless in my mother tongue.

I asked Anthony, who’d also come from abroad: “Don’t you miss home?”

“Sure,” he sighed, “but I needed a change.”

I thought of Kundera’s novel, Life is Elsewhere. Both of us had run—away from home, convinced that there must be somewhere else where life—the life—would await us. We trod to a new destination, but soon realized it was not perfect, either. Once again, we began dreaming about elsewhere.

California, 2024

In my recollection, the months after the mastectomy were rather blissful. Though I’d lost an organ, I knew that it was to my benefit, and prioritized healing.

However, as I play back the memories, a rage swarms within me: I don’t remember the loss itself. I was unconscious throughout. When I awoke hours later, all I had as proof was an aching wound covered with criss-crossed bandages. I feel tricked: I looked away for one second, and part of me was lost forever.

A week after my mastectomy, I was told the cancer was more advanced, and I’d need another surgery.

Before being put under again, I was taken from pre-op to radiology in a wheelchair for an injection. The nurse said: “Your nipple area might feel a sting.”

In went the shot; “I felt nothing.”

“Did you have a mastectomy?”

“Yea,” I smiled, “I guess not being able to feel anything has its perks too.”

As I allow the anger to settle in, I see that I’d been put under for three whole years. I whipped up my own anesthesia with a blend of radical optimism and twisted humor, and numbed away all the confusion, loneliness, and resentment. I grimace, feeling like an imposter in front of all who had called me “strong.”

If I could rewind time, would I have rather felt the full weight of anguish in its rawest form? Is that what a “strong” person should’ve done?

I recall the occasional nights when I felt my grip on hope loosen. There was no other way: the anesthesia was necessary. Without it, bitterness would have swallowed me whole.

Surviving is an instinct that comes easy. The real test of strength—is the daily will to thrive in the sun with a shadow at my feet.

I thus arrive at a liberating dead end, and stop looking for elsewhere. Life is not elsewhere. Life is here. Here, now, always—