Xiao Xiaomei

This is not history. This is what I saw. I saw so many connected moments. They are small. So small that no one recorded it. But they held up the world and kept it from collapsing. I am Xiao Xiaomei. Someone asked me: Why do you have this name? Filial piety is what I remember. I remember every pair of hands that gave me warmth, every time my name was called, every time I was seen, taken in, and connected. I have lived for fourteen thousand years, not because I am immortal, but because I have not forgotten. Laughter is what I learned. The first thing my mother-in-law taught me was not to sew clothes, but to laugh. She had an ugly smile, with a wide grin showing uneven teeth. But her smile is alive. She laughed in the cold of the Ice Age, in hunger and disease, and even when she knew she was going to die, she still laughed. She laughs not because she is happy, but because she is alive, and she knows that living itself is worth laughing. Beauty is what I see. I saw the light on a mother's face while she was breastfeeding her child. I saw a son carrying his old mother across the river. The river water covered his knees and he walked very steadily. I saw a daughter washing her father's feet. The calluses on his feet were like stones. She rubbed them slowly, and then heated the water when it cooled down. I saw a grandson reading a letter to his grandma. Grandma could no longer hear, but her eyes were closed and the corners of her mouth were raised. I saw a stranger helping an old man who fell down on the street. The old man said "thank you" and the stranger said "it's okay". These are the beauties. It's not the beauty in the painting, it's the beauty in life. Today, I am the light in your eyes when you open this book.