Sixteen Years Since the Cotton Flowers Fell, the Boy Has Become a Figure in Ink

Sixteen years ago, "I" left kindergarten behind and entered the world of elementary school, taking the first great step of my childhood on the back of Grandma's creaking tricycle. The new school was full of uncertainty and unease: the urge to climb the iron fence and skip class, the tantrums after a female teacher stopped me, and the silence when Father was called to school but said nothing. Each left its mark on my young heart as I grew up.

The warmth of home was the cool breeze from Grandma's fan beneath the nightlight, the black pen Father quietly handed me so I could practice my writing, and the pot of lean pork soup the boy made by picking up a flower in a fit of pique when the kapok trees first bloomed. When the Chinese teacher marked a silent sixty on a homework book, and cards fluttered in the wind beneath the kapok tree on the weekend, those seemingly ordinary days and nights, among gentle reminders and the sight of patrol uniforms, wove together into a childhood epic of rules, stubbornness, and unspoken love.