By Victoria Chang
FROM: The Normal School

Dear Daughter,

Sometimes I wish I didn’t try and fix everything from your childhood. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t tried so hard to help you memorize your math facts when you weren’t ready. Sometimes I wonder how many mistakes I am making now that will become clearer only later.

When I was in high school in Michigan, all the Chinese parents would compare what colleges their children had gotten into. She’s going to Stanford, boasted my mother about my sister. How about this one, an unrelated auntie pointed to me. This one, my mother said, and shook her head.

In my dreams, I always made my mother proud.  When she died, all my dreams disappeared.  They flew away like forty-four birds into the sky.  When she died, I also felt a dark sheet lift up over my head.  When I looked up, the forty-four birds each had a section in their beaks that they carried away.

I have spent a lifetime believing that the only thing that mattered was being smart. I have spent your lifetime, just 12 years, finding an exit within this corridor.

Dad has incredible moments of lucidity, said my sister last week. He said your kids are very smart and I said, ‘yup, they are.’ The pride in my sister’s voice fluffed like a feather from a dead bird.

Yesterday, I heard a noise in the sky and saw birds fighting—two crows against one. And I wondered, does the smarter crow always win? Did you know that crows can count to three. Parrots can count up to six. Would a parrot win against a crow?

Did you know that Chinese fishermen allowed cormorants to eat every eighth fish the birds caught?  Once the cormorants caught seven, they ignored an order to dive and refused to move, as if they were waiting for their reward, the eighth fish. As if they were counting. Read Rest of Essay Here