I couldn’t accurately describe the layout of the trailer our family moved into when we arrived in the United States. Or even the view outside the apartment where I lived alone for the first time. But if I close my eyes, I can summon the terrifying rapids of the Verghese River. water contract. snow covered forest cursed landdimpled by the footsteps of a talking faun. Perfect, green gable house Prince Edward Island has the scent of apples in the fall and tiger lilies in the spring. The wilderness of 19th century EnglandThen the desolate ghost of Cathy Earnshaw sweeps over them like a merciless wind.
Have you been to those places? Where does your dreaming head go?
***
I think I was eight or nine years old when I first realized that I could travel this way. Now that my daughter is this age, that’s on my mind. I think now is the time to read books with your body. This shocking passage takes our breath away. A beauty that will take your breath away. Laughter suddenly becomes convulsive. The book starts to feel real.
I was reading on a swing bench in my grandparents’ grassy garden, where ancient tortoises roamed and pigeons squawked in their iron cages. My grandfather knelt in the dirt and urged me to collect the seeds from the cherry tree, which takes years to bear fruit. Square glasses slipped down his nose. A pink scar ran down his arm. In my head I thought he was tall and had a long shadow, but in reality he was barely over 5 feet 3 inches.
“Where are you going today?” he would ask me. A rugged and tired turtle plows through the weeds. Although the sun was always harsh in Florida, he and I could remain in the garden for hours, basking in the peace of communion that demanded nothing of the other.
treasure islandI think. or wayside school. little house on the prairie.
My grandfather had never read any of my books and didn’t read much English, but he was there with me. And he took me too, not to a fictional place but to a place in my memory that felt perhaps as far away as Narnia.
He told me about the fishing village where he grew up as an orphan and later a child soldier. There, palms were stretched out for young climbers, and basas were turned into silver rods, flopping on the shore. He described the floating village of Can Tho. There, painted boats tilted toward each other like a thousand bright leaves. He said he would show me the world someday.
In later years I visited many of the places he detailed. I was actually with him on tour in Vietnam. We drove through the alleys of Ho Chi Minh City, looking for the unknown Phu Tiu stall he wanted to visit. We remained seated as we rode the precarious cable car over the lush mountains of Darak. In my childhood home, he showed me his first garden. I used to love sitting there on his shoulders like a little tyrant and looking out over the land as if it had always been ours. Now, viewed from afar, that journey is a strange journey sculpted from the actual sites I encountered and the memories of my grandfather, who was never mine but felt just as mine. It is tinged with myth.
***
Without him, I would not have become a writer. An avid garage sale shopper, he would wake up early on Saturdays and roam the neighborhood looking for deals. He would sometimes bring home a box of books that I wanted, or he would put his rickety old word processor in front of me. It was his way of telling me to write my own story. Every time I clicked the key, I found myself transported to a realm that only I could reach. I jumped into the distance, knowing that he was waiting for me one room over.
My grandfather has now gone to a place where I can’t find him. When I imagine him, he’s always in the garden. He stopped and turned around. He beckons me. There’s still a lot to seeThat’s what he seems to say. But then the image shudders and disappears, and I can’t follow it in the end. What remains is aspiration. Shocking, sublime, and somehow life-giving.
I wrote this during the pandemic, isolated from the people and places I hold dear. romance novel About all the cities I traveled to with my grandfather and the ones I hoped to experience with my own children one day.
when writing my bookI wanted nothing more than to return to that time and place with my grandfather and create my own landmarks in the atlas of my imagination. There you will be guaranteed lush scenery, long days full of adventure, and eternal happiness. The best places (real or imagined) can contain not only the stories we love most, but also all the stories we long for.
Tao Tai is an Ohio writer and editor whose new romance novel is Adam and Evie Matchmaking Tourwhich was just released in September of this year. For Cup of Jo, she writes about motherhood, absentee fathers, physical affection, and a year of selfies. Mr. Tao, winner of the 2024 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, also wrote this novel. banyan moon (June 2023). you can follow her Instagram or subscribe to her NewsletterIf you don’t mind.
PS The life motto Joanna learned at her grandmother’s funeral and the dark and funny books we loved.
(Photo credit: Pansfun Images/Stocksy)
