Chapter 1: Moving

In my very first memory, I found myself in an unfamiliar place. I was three years old. I was with my parents at their friend’s home and they were singing karaoke. I hid in a hallway as I watched them, holding onto the corner of a wall. I wanted to go home. At that moment, I could not remember where or what home was, but I knew I wanted to leave. My mom was singing and not looking at me and the sight of her behaving as if I wasn’t in the room scared me.

Isn’t it weird how random this first memory seems? It feels impossible that at that moment I didn’t remember anything else. And in hindsight it seems absurd that I suddenly gained awareness and a sense of self in the most random of places, seemingly without warning. Yet, what is a sense of self unless you are aware of other people? Maybe that’s why my earliest memories are of my parents socializing and making friends. They were of dim sum houses up and down Valley in Alhambra, of fortune cookies and raffles my parents attended with college alumni also looking to network in a foreign land.

The year was 1994, and I was three years old. We lived above an old movie theatre on the corner of Garfield and Valley, across the street from a dim sum restaurant on one side and the first location of The Hat on the other. The theatre downstairs often showed Chinese films and I would look at the posters as I walked by holding my mother’s hand. I remember feeling terrified seeing a poster of a World War II film. I don’t know if it was the bad print quality or if it actually showed the atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre, the faces seemed injured and deformed and even at that age I was deeply aware of the sense of dread and mortality. 

Above the movies, in our tiny apartment, I liked to spend my time watching the traffic below. One day that stuck out to me was a day that I witnessed a multiple vehicle collision on the street below. A car had crashed into the restaurant across the street, and somehow it looked like a cop car was also in the crash. The image shook me to my core, as I realized for the first time that catastrophes could happen randomly at any time — one moment you’re eating and the next, a car comes through the wall.

Perhaps that’s why I was a shy child, at times even afraid of my own shadow. I buried my face in my mother’s arms whenever we went out, simply wanting to hide myself away. That year my parents socialized often, wanting to know more people and feel less alone in this new city. Other than dim sum meals where they talked loudly as I sat in a high chair, I also saw other people’s homes. There were often Buddhists or Taoists and I remember my mother and I being invited to pray and burn incense. Someone would give us instructions to perform the ritual as we bowed together or turned and I wondered, who decided these traditions? How do they know what to do? It seemed as though everyone in the world had been given a script and I wondered where they got it from?

Other than Valley boulevard, I have only flashes of events and images of the time before my grandparents arrived. The apartment above the theatre must have been too small because we moved to somewhere on Fourth street soon after. 

I think this was the same year I had the high fever. I only learned in adulthood that my mom had been hustling, trying to make more money, and forgot about me being sick in the other room. The only actual memory I have was drinking bitter water at the hospital. I was laying in a bed in a place where people were coming and going in a hurry that I later learned was an emergency room. My mom was at my side and I woke up and told her I was so thirsty and she got me a glass of water, which tasted horribly bitter. I just remember the bitterness and a horrible ringing in my ears that never went away since. 

It must have been spring or summer that we lived at the apartment on fourth because I remember a pool, which I swam in, wearing a red floater/bathing suit combo as my grandmother watched. Hanging around often was an older black kid named Darren who was incredibly protective of me. Perhaps that’s why grandmother let me swim so often. I remember the water of the pool making little waves as our entire family ran out into the courtyard for safety during a big earthquake once. I later learned it was called the Northridge earthquake. 

We only lived in that apartment briefly before moving practically next door to another apartment complex on the same street. I still recall the excitement I felt as I watched my grandfather carry many of our things, walking across the yard. At that age, I thought moving was something people did often and every few years when they felt like it.