Is it right to still ask more of you?
Although the memories are foggy, the feelings remain vivid. Surrounded by muted snow and reverent silence of the Japanese alps, I found myself cashless, desperate for more time, and no longer able to make my last leg home from the foreign land that you called home.
I must not have been able to hide the anguish on my pale face. In the remote snow village of Myoko, we both knew that I was out of options. What you might not have noticed was the quiet storm within me as I felt the future slipping out of my hands once again. I remember feeling the gut dropping fear and adrenaline tingle through my small bones, silently cursing myself for being so careless, yet again. An early 20-something-year-old, perhaps wise in spirit but clueless in pragmatic.
Much like the time that continued to pass, the powdery snow continued to fall. A part of me, at that moment, wished to be back in the safety and simplicity of the mountains, just in the peripheries of my eyesight. Curious onlookers, Japanese locals, stole furtive glances at us, a confused traveller and a kind stranger, as you tapped on train ticket machine buttons.
Your voice was quiet and gentle, counterbalanced by your gestures, which were deliberate and sincere. Paying for my literal train ticket home. Lifting my oversized snowboard bags on board. Obnoxious markers of a travelling snow bum, here to borrow powder off your mountains.
As the outside scenery whirred past at 300 kilometres, my mind slowed down into a twilight sleep. When I woke, neatly placed colourfully wrapped food parcels sat on the tray in front of me, gazing up at my weary face. Without hesitation, I knew you had yet again delivered in genuine care. I wondered, how did you know that was all my heart truly needed after enduring its own winter season? Did you know that your random acts of kindness would touch the tender wounds of my heart and remain in my memories for decades forward?
Even as it came time to part ways, your sincerity was relentless. You folded my hand and returned it towards my heart when I offered to re-pay you for your generosity.
I can’t remember what you wore, or the creases on your face. I can’t remember your name, or where you were going that day. I do remember the compassion in your dark eyes and the untold stories in your soft-spoken voice. I remember that you were, like me, a second generation alien in a foreign land, but one that you called home. Taiwan was your mother’s home. I remember your quietude, an equanimity that I seldom come by even to this day. An unwavering sense of self-assurance in your integrities and values. I know it’s unfair to ask more of you, but there’s still so much I yearn to know. How many years of life had you seen by that day? Would you teach me your ways of care if you could? Was there something about me that inspired your warmth? Did your Mother, perhaps like my father, also miss her home country, her soul food, her childhood places?
While I have come to accept that these are answers I will never be able know, I will always remember the way it feels to be touched by the kindness of strangers.
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