Next Stop: China

I thought my travel journals would end in Lyon. And for a while, they did—because after I left, my travels picked up pace. I got so busy, there was no time to write. But I’ve come to see that the rest of the trip wasn’t an epilogue. It was a new story. One that’s still unfolding, even now.

Let me go back to March.

After Lyon, I went to Paris, then back to China. To save money, I booked a 30-hour trip with a 7-hour layover in Xiamen, a southern coastal city. The air in Xiamen was heavy and wet, like it was dripping. I found a flat sofa in a free lounge and tried to nap under fluorescent lights. Eyes closed, breathing the humid, unbreathable air, I felt a strange mix of excitement and unease.

Home had become an unfamiliar concept—ever since I moved into my tiny studio in Boston in 2016, and with all the moves that followed, some with people, some without.

By the time I boarded my connecting flight to Qingdao, the city that raised me, I felt a little lighter. Around me, I heard the familiar, musical Qingdao accent in funny-sounding conversations. I saw the honest, simple-minded smiles I grew up with. I was surrounded by my people.

When I landed, my parents and grandpa were waiting right outside baggage claim, along with all the other families, friends, business travelers—each waiting for someone they’d missed deeply, or someone they needed to see.

As always, they spotted me immediately. My mom always says she can recognize my walk just by looking at people’s feet as they approach the arrivals exit.

But this time, when I ran up to them, something was different. My mom’s face was wet with tears. She couldn’t muster even the tiniest smile. My dad and grandpa came over too, but grandpa… looked heavy. Sunken.

“She was waiting for you,” my mom said to me.
“In her last few days. She really wanted to pick you up, too.”

I can’t remember the last time I saw my mom cry. Actually—I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry in public. And this was the first time she came to pick me up from the airport without a single trace of a smile.

I didn’t have the courage to look at my grandpa.

My dad, like always, tried to lift the mood. He started chatting about the weather, the parking, my flight. But every step we took toward the car felt impossibly heavy. I don’t remember the drive to my grandpa’s house, but I remember walking through the door.

Everyone was there. My aunts and uncles, my cousins—just like every time I came home.
And just like always, there was a delicious dinner waiting on the table.

But something had changed in every molecule of that house.

She wasn’t there.
She didn’t come out of the bedroom to give me her famously long hug.
She didn’t cup my face with her rough, loving hands.
She didn’t greet me with her usual tears of joy in her voice.

She wasn’t there.

I’m heartbroken. I lost one of the two women who loved me more than anything in this world. One of the four people who would give everything they had to me, without hesitation, without condition.

But what aches even more is this:
My mom lost her mom.
My mama doesn’t have a mama anymore.