Eyes
On Christmas I was standing in my grandparents’ shower — the one I’m too tall for. Thinking, as the high-pressure water carved a path down my back, about a photograph I hadn’t seen in at least 15 years. Nonetheless, just as I felt the stinging water etch itself into my flesh, there is a permanent etching of that photo in my memory. The photo is of me and my great-grandfather on our shared birthday party in June of 2000. In front of me was a birthday cake with a solitary candle in the shape of a 1 and in front of my great-grandfather 2 9-shaped candles softly illuminated the face of a man who would be dead within a year. I went to visit the spot in Vancouver where he was born on the Thursday before Battle of BC 5. The “red shack” is now an empty lot next to a derelict looking Taoist temple. Right across the street is the park where he played baseball for the (relatively) famous Asahi Japanese-Canadian baseball team over 100 years ago. It’s hard to understand what 100 years means ...
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