Nearly home.
When, true to the habits of half a century, she bent down by the
brook where she had washed her clothes as a young girl and discovered,
much to her surprise, that she could not scoop up even
half a drop of its refreshing clarity or see the slightest sign or
shadow of her reflection in the mirror-like surface of the water,
only then did she recall that her son and daughter-in-law had followed
the fashion of going to Church, and thus no one had
chanted a sutra or Taoist prayer to ease her soul into the afterlife,
or even bothered to honor her with a spirit tablet in the family
shrine.
As a peach petal floats by the tooth of the crescent moon, grandma
almost bursts into tears. She has all but forgotten how she
has just walked upon the waves of couch grass and walked upon the waves of rush flowers and walked upon the waves of the
Formosa Strait and walked upon the waves of Dongting Lake
and so is nearly home.
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