I am twelve years old.
It is sometime in 1999 and my sister and I are in a hotel room in Melbourne city, somewhere south of the Yarra. Outside our windows, the city of Melbourne spreads out in a grey, moody sprawl. Our parents are in the living room of the hotel suite, making dinner reservations. We are visiting my sister in her first year at college.
I am twelve years old. On the hotel TV, Dawson’s Creek is playing and my sister is trying to explain to me the premises of the show. It seems very complicated. My pre-teen brain doesn’t get it, but I do grasp the song, this song.
Kiss me, beneath the milky twilight.
It will be years before I kiss someone. Years before I become this person I am now.
I am twelve years old and its chilly in this city that I love, this city that I have already determined I will live in someday. The air is filled with possibility and the hotel is owned by my father’s friend, an idea that takes my breath away. Hitherto it had not occurred to me that people could own hotels. Hotels were monuments of majesty that smelled like fresh running water and white sheets. At night we walk across the bridge and I am impressed by how grown up my sister looks in her trenchcoat. Back at home I am horribly lonely, unaware that I am surrounded by the people who will become my best friends.
Here in this city I dimly grasp that the future awaits me. The future is exciting and so very far away. I can’t wait for it to arrive.
My mother comes in and hands us a bowl of strawberries and chestnuts and I am filled with that holiday feeling, that feeling like everything is so special and out of the ordinary and I am so happy. It is one moment of crystallized happiness, my sister, the big white bed, Dawson’s Creek, the song, the strawberries and chestnuts and the city.
Oh, the city.
And suddenly I am on the Beijing subway, shutting my eyes tight against the tears.
