Finding Momentum

I’m sit­ting at Cof­fee Soci­ety here back home,  jour­nal­ing and feel­ing gen­er­ally over­whelmed by God’s good­ness. I’m not sure when I felt it, but it might have been yesterday’s slow, ram­bling run through the foothills from pre-dawn dusk to mid­morn­ing cool, or expe­ri­enc­ing the long-anticipated togeth­er­ness of a Thanks­giv­ing meal. Or maybe it was just […]

I’m not afraid of dying. I’m sur­prised by the thought flit­ting across my mind as my plane takes off. Were we to plunge into the Cal­i­for­nia coast as the scene used to play out in my imag­i­na­tion, I’d be ready for that. I had a backwards-sort of feel­ing tonight as I entered the air­port, breez­ing through […]

I feel like sea­sons are chang­ing, not just in the air but through my life. I’m out­doors more often, laugh­ing more, more okay with things being stuck, or in-between, or just not formed yet. The plan­tar fasci­itis is still there, and not being able to run has been frus­trat­ing to say the least, but I’ve […]

He looks into me with soft eyes, and sings in Man­darin: “Look into His face / and your wor­ries will dis­ap­pear with the light of the sun”. He’s not bad for his age. Appar­ently he sings in the elderly folks’ choir at his church. “He’s the only one who can sing!” laughs my dad. We’re sit­ting in […]

My grand­fa­ther (ah gong, or 外公, but we call him gong gong), dri­ven by winds of Com­mu­nist change, arrived in Tai­wan in the 1940s. He was a Fuzhou busi­ness­man, 26 at the time. He was a busi­ness­man, rel­a­tively wealthy and edu­cated, and fled from the incom­ing Com­mu­nists. He met my grand­mother (ah ma, or 外媽 […]

I’ve been run­ning for the past week or so, despite my grandma’s protests (“you’ll catch a cold”). It used to be eas­ier with the jet lag, when I’d get up at 5am and stare at the wall and catch myself won­der­ing where exactly I was. It’s been gen­er­ally driz­zly here for the past week or so, […]

Annie asked me this morn­ing in the LAX ter­mi­nal if I was look­ing for­ward to doing any­thing once we arrived in Taipei. I froze because I really hadn’t thought about it. The only thing I had thought about was what it would be like to see yie yie (my grandpa on my dad’s side), now […]

4 cities, 2 con­ti­nents, we made it hap­pen for like 30 seconds:

I’m here in San Diego with my Mom and sis­ters, just hang­ing out. I know I lose man-points for say­ing this, but I’ve really missed them. Remem­ber fly­ing kites in the back­yard? Isn’t Dad such a char­ac­ter? Remem­ber that cherry tree in the back­yard? And the swing we put on it? We miss your cooking […]