Library

That crack in the gold repair hides the lives of three generations of men in my family. Before my daughter's eighteenth birthday, she stepped on a stool to reach the old photo album on the top of the wardrobe and pulled down a dusty tin box. Lying in the box was a broken jade bracelet, with dark red lines seeping through the cracks. When my dad saw it, the wrench in his hand hit the ground with a clang. It was many years later that I understood-- Grandpa's shrapnel was entangled in the golden thread, and my father's unspoken apology, And the cry of a baby who never came to this world.