Killing Samuel and Moving On

Letter Three

Dear Blake,

You made me aware that just because we stopped being friends with people,
it didn't mean we stopped caring.
Or even stop keeping tabs
on them either.

I knew that Phoebe was dating you.
Oscar was dating the new girl
and Selene was sleeping around.
Bronte, sweet Bronte, wasn't with anyone. Only in marriage would she ever give it up.

I knew all these things
because other people had told me so.
During AP World History while we'd secretly gossip over
maps of Asia and Africa.
For every capital I memorized
there was a new rumor to pair with it.

But it was you who made me see
how much I was seeking their information out.
How often I was still checking in.
I'll admit, I was embarrassed
at being caught.
They do the same, you said.
We all do, with the people we no longer talk to.

She talks about you.
When you said that,
my heart nearly dropped.
She tells me stories of you two.
And you smiled your dimpled grin.
So carefree and happy between
the pages of chemistry.
How I wish your father could
see you like that. Just once.

I told you stories of Samuel and Bee
while we worked on
chemistry and literature.
Moved on to AP Calculus and note taking when the retellings shifted to eighth grade mistakes.
That's how we spent our days.
Some in the past and
some in the present.
Neither of us mentioned the future we weren't ready for.

After five months of friendship
we didn't need the excuse of tutoring to hang out. We simply did.

The day you let it slip
that Phoebe still asked about me,
was the day a little hope made its way into my heart.
A little hope that
something could restart.

We were much older than the
young kids we were at the start of high school. It was as if a lifetime had already passed.

I wasn't the same person from before
and from the few things you told me,
neither was she.

People could change.
I'd seen it before.

Like when my lao lao came
to visit us in America a week after the new year began.
It had taken her seventeen years,
but she had finally come to see me and my mom.
I had no quarrel with her.
After all, I was just happy to have a grandma again.

Lao Lao was so little and soft spoken.
Much unlike my
birth father's mother.
Who was loud and boisterous
and disappointed in her son for abandoning me.

There was one thing, though, that tied my two grandma's together.
They both looked at me with such warmth that only they could emulate.
Xiao Tang Yuan, she murmured as she touched my foreign features.
Round cheeks like the little dumpling she called me for.

I knew she wasn't pleased with the way I'd been brought into the world.
I'd heard how furious she was to find out mom ran off with the man that would become the only father I'd ever known.

But I could see all the traces of anger and dishonor melt from her eyes every time she took the sight of me in.

Maybe people were right.
Maybe grandkids did have a way
of bringing warring families together.

I knew then that if Lao Lao could change after 59 years of culture
and tradition trained her not to,
then Phoebe could too.

You and Lao Lao made me see
that people can always
change for the better.
And even if you don't get to see it,
it's still all worth it in the end.
Them bettering themselves will always be worth it in the end.

Thank you for that, Blake.
Thank you.

You were the one that gave me the courage to be myself so that it would all be worth it in the end.

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