Probably at seventy-five, all I once knew as a child would be no more—changed, extinct. Or worse: those things could still be fairly the same, but I’d be changed or almost extinct from life. My eyes dim; the gleamy juice of youth drained dry.
So, I keep a journal—an entry of my youth: a list of what is now but may not be there when I grow old.
Beans cake doesn’t taste like cake and doesn’t have icing. Neither is it baked in an oven. Instead, it tastes like ground, boiled beans, spiced and fried. You may need to Google the difference between a moth and a butterfly. Both are beautiful and delicate—and dying out. Climate change is killing them and me. There are green peppers. Green peas. Crickets. Snails…
“Why are you writing these down?” K asked.
“To remember—to have a catalog, a literary museum of my childhood and youth. When things are still healthy and thriving. In the wake of climate change…”
Back in college, K and I would imagine life after college as a bride imagines her wedding night—and giggle.
“Perceive this.” I stretch a crushed plant to his nose.
“It chokes like sulfur dioxide,” he replied and pushed my hand away.
Ammonia has a pungent smell. Sulfur dioxide has a choking smell.
No need to write these down, I tell myself. Or maybe I do need to write them down; everything changes. Who knew that ice caps would be melting at this rate? Or that fireflies or monarch butterflies would be almost extinct. Yes, fireflies—those tiny, flying, twinkling, living stars.
My dad says he remembers when he was younger, during the 1970s. The butterflies were very much alive and prosperous, like the pockets of the capitalists killing the planet. The waterways were less polluted because there weren’t heavy industries to produce slurry, harmful waste. He says rice now doesn’t taste like how rice used to taste then—as if the soil is changing or dying. I scooped a little loamy soil and felt the grains: mildly soft and smelled like a burnt tree left to decay.
“Stop this,” K told me one day. “Get a girlfriend. It’s better than taking notes of everything you fear could change—or worse, go extinct.”
“I’m engaged to Valentina Shevchenko,” I replied, chuckling, “and to Katie Melua too.” Then we both laughed about it.
What is youth if not vain imaginations and wishes as big as the sky? UFC is one of my favorite sports. I enjoy watching Bullet Valentina fight. Her fierceness and agility depict the valor of youth. One time you are knocking things down—muscles taut, spirit filled with fire—and then it’s over.
How do you taste the past again? The prowess and valor of your youth? How you fought many wars and survived all. You bore your country’s flag high like the sun. The taste of fresh tomatoes and apples before chemicals and old age destroyed your senses.
If the garden is overgrown, I would weed it with a hoe. Then work the ground until it becomes soft. Mother would sprinkle vegetable seeds, then tomatoes, then peppers. Mother’s garden, like Eden, has birthed different kinds of fruits and vegetables depending on the season and weather. The hoe sometimes gives me blisters—but what’s pleasure without a little pain here and there, like pimples on smooth skin?
I want to keep a record—a record of everything I’ve felt, seen, and experienced. Like that day I got chased by a giant dog that looked like a hired killer. And I leaped over a six-foot-high fence to save my life. My dear young life. Or the first time I tried riding a bicycle and almost broke my testicles—the mysterious house of my unborn kids.
Mother taught me and my siblings the art of saving money. My father taught me how to change a damaged tire. My older sister taught me how to make dolls from old fabrics. I want to embroider all these into some enchanted letters that I can read half a century from now—and feel young again.
I want a book that will hold my innocence in a bowl and never spill it—like how this life did years ago, unapologetically. I want a portal I can walk through to a place where people aren’t permitted to visit twice: youth. I want my parents’ laughter crackling through my ears half a century from now—as fresh and alive.
When it started to rain suddenly on one beautiful day, the blue sky receded to gray, and the gutters overflowed.
“I thought it was going to be a beautiful and colorful day,” K said, slipping under a blanket.
I know he wants to hold that moment—the blue sky, the mild temperature, the birds—like a rainbow-colored scarf, and tie it around his wrist. And live forever with something that isn’t meant to last forever.
Like our youth, it’s slipping away from our skin like a snail, leaving faint lines in its wake, which will transmogrify into a wrinkle sooner than later.
I’m making lists of my favorite and least favorite things, emotions, and experiences. Things I failed at. Things that made me cry like a baby at twenty-six. Things that made me leap high to the moon for joy. There was a time I thought I would die but didn’t. The isolation. The self-discovery. The time my color finally mattered—and the whole world held a protest in solidarity.
Some moments are golden and worth the pauses: your first date, the evening he proposed, the day you became a mother. The fire in your eyes as she took her first steps and said “dada.” You were twenty-five and full of dreams.
One day you will want them back: the smooth skin. The strong bone. The agility. The butterfly. The fireflies.
Time! Yes, the unredeemable time.
