Homecoming 

Towards the end of his life and since the beginning of mine, my grandpa had two living friends. The first was named Gold, and the second was by association, Gold’s wife, Plum. When Uncle Gold and Auntie Plum married, they had their reception on six fishing boats parked next to each other, tied by rope, floating by a village on an outlying island off the coast of Hong Kong. This place is called Cheung Chau, Long Island. 

If they were anything like my own blood, and if he’s anything like you, on their wedding day he’s drunk and loud; she’s pretty and quiet. Guests ate all the shrimp that they wanted. This here, is happiness: green glass of Heineken, and the sound of midnight water meeting drunk mens’ laughter. 

This, you recall, as one of the happier days of your life. The year that a virus rampages across Hong Kong, Gold dies shortly after getting vaccinated — leaving behind Plum, and if I remember correctly, some number of sons. Yes, you are recalling this wedding day, one night after dinner, months after his passing, as the dishes are cleared off the table leaving behind just the fishbones that didn’t make it back onto plates. 

Behind that toothy grin, you think back to this day when you hopped from boat to boat without so much as a hint of a hobble, when your cheeks were missing the spots that I would later count with my little finger, fascinated — Yakult in hand, and the taste of the ripped foil cap in my mouth. Gold is dead. You’re reminiscing out loud and silently grieving. But also, you’re contemplating: your survival; the validity of your own superstition; deciding in what feels like a newly wrinkled body, held up by newly tired knees — whether you believe the shot that didn’t save your last living best friend, is going to save you. 

There’s a stranger, a regular at the teahouse, that knows the way back to Cheung Chau some fifty years later. At the tip of Kowloon Peninsula there’s a cape that sounds like Tsim Sha Tsui but really means Sharp Sand Mouth, and at Pier 5 there is a ferry that comes every forty-five minutes. It’s starting to storm now. I can smell it coming, just as the boat is arriving. 

Forehead to glass. You gave me the window seat, because you’ve already seen the water, you’ve already seen Cheng Chau in all its glory before. It’s raining like it hasn’t in decades, the ocean is swelling like there’s a god out there raging in protest of your homecoming. This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? Old men don’t turn young again. All I remember is the grey skies, and falling asleep on your bony shoulder. I awaken to the feeling of the boat docking and somehow it’s sunny again, as if the storm never happened.

Right by the dock, a man is selling butterfly bracelets with metal wings suspended on braided rope. It’s the familiar sound of my grandpa’s coin pouch, shaking out change like all the times he paid for cherries: sometimes red, sometimes golden, always sweet. He’s a man of factory work, of fixing buses, except for the blip in Jiufen when he asked me to pick out a bracelet for my grandmother, and then the other time many years ago when he came home with a pearl ring, and that’s the nicest thing he’s ever done for her. Here’s a door that’s painted pink, here’s a path rounding by the water. Here’s the side of mountain, with the climb to top that you’ll never make again. But you did once, and maybe so did I, now that I am hearing you speak of it. 

This I recall as one of the happier days of my life. On this day and this island, we’ll share in my youth and your old age. I give you some years of mine, which I may pay for later. When your hands are crossed behind your back in the way they always are, and you’re hobbling with an extra livelihood, I am content to be more tired than usual, legs dragging in the heat. 

(New York City: April 30, 2025)