Six Years: The Song of Past Lives

When D told me it was exactly six years since I arrived in the U.S., I sat with the news, unmoving. I don’t know how I expected to feel, and I am still unsure what I felt other than surprise. Surprise at how many years have flown by, and all that they have held. Surprised that I’m still here, after all of it. The first memory that came to me was the very first memory of my arrival—landing in LAX in my yellow blouse and way too-tight jeans. Taking in a deep breath. Thinking This is it, I am here. I am in America. I am on its soil. I can feel the Californian heat on my skin. I looked around and took in the view, lifted my head. A blue, blue sky. There I was: a twenty-three-year-old with two suitcases and a carry-on bag in a foreign land, far away from home. Scared to the bone.

I remember so much, although some details appear blurry now. A vignette of a moment takes shape: living in a house filled with dolls in Orange County. There were dolls everywhere. Blue-eyed dolls with brown curls arranged in a circle on a couch. Dolls on bookshelves and windowsills, dolls on the kitchen counter and on end tables. There was a dog there too, and it made me utterly miserable. I wish I could say that I have overcome my phobia of dogs, but it’s sadly only gotten worse after I ran into oncoming traffic with three dogs at my heels. Yikes. During my first weeks in America, I remember wanting to leave my room but feeling petrified of what was on the other side. I remember coming home late from class and peering through the white metal bars, making sure it was safe to walk into the house. The landlords were a sweet old couple. I can still see them gardening in front of the house, turning over the soil in their hands. The woman, whose face comes easily to mind but whose name eludes me, sat in their back shed often, cutting squares from the corner of fleece blankets and scissoring the hem in straight lines to create fringes on all sides. I cried the most in that house. I was lonely and afraid and hungry all the time. I was homesick, although I did not want to go back home. I missed my brothers. Missed living in a house without a dog. Missed living in a place where I did not have to learn the rules all over again. Did not have to keep looking over my shoulder. Nothing was familiar, nothing was easy about those days, but I knew I wanted to be here, knew that I wanted to make something of my life here, knew that I had to do whatever I could to survive here.

I thought memories of Chapman would come in waves, but I’ve been mistaken. I can barely place myself in certain places. I remember the Leatherby Libraries because I spent hours there, working in an archive sorting and filing handwritten letters written during the war. It was quiet, repetitive, and structured work, which I absolutely enjoyed. I remember getting a coupon for free lunch at the cafeteria, and I couldn’t believe just how much food was on display. That I could have anything I wanted. The moments of sitting in a classroom and being afraid to speak are carved in stone in my mind. I was just so scared. I was not used to any of it—having my opinion and the audacity to say it out loud. I marveled at my colleagues who did it so easily. I was afraid it would affect my participation grade. I was terrified at the thought of being called on to speak up in class, and for most of the class period, I wondered if the person next to me could see me shaking, could hear the pounding of my heart. I don’t think I wanted to fit in as much as I wanted to have the skills to function at what seemed to be a normal part of life. No matter what I did, I was and still am going to be different, but I suppose there were other things that set me apart in ways that made me feel inadequate and small, and it crushed me. I did not know then what I know now, and still find myself learning: a new environment is challenging not because there’s something inherently wrong with me but because it is new and it takes time to learn its ways, to grow familiar with it, to discover how you wish to show up in the space.

I realize now that those years were maddening and deeply disorienting, not only because I was in a new country but also because I wanted to be adjusted to its newness instantly. I did not want to wait. I did not want to trudge through months of asking and failing and learning and falling flat on my face and doing it all over again. I wanted to wake up one morning and be fluent in all things American. I was living in a new country, and yet, I was desperate to somehow lose sight of the newness and the difficulties that came with it. What I expected of myself, burdened myself with was a normalcy, a performative collectedness that would soon crumble to the ground. Friendships were a saving grace in that sense; they offered me a place to come home to, to take off the weight I put on myself, and to simply be. To ask questions without fear of judgement, to confess the heaviness in my chest that I had no name for, to be held. So many precious memories. Baking Trader Joe muffins. Endless chopping of veggies for Thanksgiving meals. Decorating a Christmas tree. Dancing in the Bausch household. Riding a bike to church on Walnut Avenue. Grandma Amy’s hugs. Ms. Sanchez’s stories and cooking. Glorious French toast. The most delightful meat loaf I’ve ever had. Breakfast omelets of my dreams. My first taste of coffee. Oh, my favorite Thai place at the Orange Circle! My first library card! Learning how to drive! My first protest in America. Screaming at the top of my lungs. Thumping my fist through the air. Furious and red and burning bright after seeing the video. After George Floyd. Heart in my throat. This country. This country of my childhood longings. This land of refuge baring its teeth.

When I think of Nebraska, I think of my tiny apartment on G Street. My small possessions of a bookshelf, a bed, a desk and chair in the corner. A poster of Toni Morrison pinned on my wall. I think of community. I think of dinner nights with friends, game nights with friends. Baking birthday cookies with Aslynn in December. Tucked away at The Mill, lost in conversations with friends. You attempt to look back at the past, and you find yourself in a coffee shop, sipping a chai latte, and the shape of stories and memories unfolds. All those spaces that have held our secrets, our laughter. A circle of conversations that we wished never had to come to an end. Hands holding hands in prayer. Hugs. So many hugs after every goodbye, despite knowing we would see each other again. I filled my belly too: fried rice and dumplings at Mr. Hui’s. My obsession with Wendy’s fries. Chipotle. The changing seasons. My first real fall. All those golden leaves carpeting the ground. My first snow was nothing short of magical. How much I walked. How much I loved walking on Lincoln streets. I remember that day, talking to D on the phone and needing to sit on the sidewalk. Cancer, he had said. Cancer. And the word was heavy, and the line was empty, and the world was a big, dark nothing. But I had to sit in it, nonetheless, cradling my body as cars whizzed past. A town of all my news, aches and joys, beginnings and ends.

I am almost brought to tears thinking about those early years. How far back they all appear now, so many moments already slipping my mind. A distant shadow. A faded image on a wall. When I look back on photographs from that time, it is my eyes I narrow down on. Sometimes, in them, I see my sorrow and uncertainties, how I felt lost most of the time. Sometimes I can’t tell because my memory fails me, but I know better than to trust the smile on my face. I also know enough to be able to say, despite it all, love abounded and even now, it grows. Six years seem unbelievable, but here we are. I know I have lived through all those years with as much fear as there was hope, as much loneliness as there was someone to hold, as much darkness as there was light.

A bright-eyed girl moving through a spinning world. I stretch my hand to touch everything close. I want to remember this. I want to write it all down. I want to carry it all: the places I’ve been to, the paths I’ve walked on, and all the people it’s led me to. To hold the mystery and beauty of living, to feel the song of past lives woven through time. To be awed by it all.

There is still newness all around me. Each story is new. Each poem. Every classroom I walk into. Long nights of grappling with the ending of a friendship. Coffee dates at the start of a new friendship. I feel the nerves, hear it pounding inside my body like a fist, and I take deep breaths, still my anxious self, and walk into it. This time, I have all the patience in the world for myself and for others, too. Learning and living as a slow dance. One step forward, two steps back, and on I go, moving my feet gently and bravely into the great unknown.