by Michael Lydon
How does writing work? Why is it that if we arrange the graphic symbols we...
In a great personal essay, everyday experiences transform into something luminous. These three essays explore family traditions, cultural identity, and fleeting moments of insight with clarity and heart. And they demonstrate how personal storytelling can shed light not only on the self, but on the world around us.
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A Taken Seat at an Empty Table
Amalia Costa (UK)
My job is trifle.
My job is potatoes.
My job is drinks.
My job is table.
Plate, knife, fork, spoon, glass, napkin, cracker.
Repeat sixteen times.
They file in at about eleven, all beaming and flushed from the London chill, milling in through the door and planting kisses on cheeks and presents in arms, while Mum whisks about the kitchen. She darts her head into the living room from time to time with a "dinner will be ready in ten minutes" expression on her face.
My brother, my sister, and I circle the dining room, kitchen, and living room in an elegantly frantic waltz; three rooms, three siblings. Three minutes per room seems to be the perfect average before we switch duties. We're a good team. We hardly see each other.
Directing people to the table is a task that requires a tactful yet dynamic hand; Bappou Tony and Bappou Costa have both, by this point, sunk into their respective favourite spots on our sofa, and the slightest suggestion of moving elicits uproars from both of them, laden with Cypriot expletives, that warn us that they're not to be trifled with. They're harmless, really. Old bones, old ways, Yiayia Anna winks conspiratorially at us ladies as they eventually grumble their way to the table.
I soon realise my mistake. So does everyone else, but no one says anything. England has smoothed our edges, clipped our tongues. We act just like the Englishmen do with their families now. Like we're strangers.
The space looms, a fray in the rope of cramped relatives braided haphazardly around the table. From time to time I glimpse an aunt or uncle, trapped between neighbouring elbows, gaze wistfully at the empty chair, then lower their eyes as if in shame. It's my fault. I always set for sixteen.
Mum's smile is a corkscrew. It twinges in my chest. I fix my eyes ahead on the million streaks of feathery sleet that marble the glass pane of the back door. Boxed in and blurry is the world now, framed by a string of cheap Christmas lights and wilting red tinsel Blu-tacked to the door in the shape of a heart. The murmur of small talk commences.
We act like we're pleasantly thrust together by circumstance instead of a family bound by flesh and blood and grief and love. Polite, superficial questions are passed around the table along with the parsnips.
Before long, a lull arises.
Mum's eyes begin to strain at the corners. Dad pops into the kitchen to connect his music to the Bluetooth speaker "for a bit of background," he says. We let out a collective sound of vague assent. I catch my reflection in the doorframe. I still have my smile on, one that all of us borrow from Mum when she requires a deputy. Warm, accommodating. A hostess smile. Now it sits clumsily on my lips, so I dab it off with a napkin and rearrange my face.
"Last Christmas" bleeds into the room from the kitchen, tinny and distant. Suddenly, Bappou Tony strikes up an inflammatory discussion about Brexit with Bappou Costa at the other end of the table, and we're helpless to stop it. Ever the diplomat, my father's father waits patiently for his bethero's passionate monologue to end so that he can inform him that they are, in fact, both on the same side. Bappou Tony sits quietly for a minute, then tosses his hands in the air dismissively and barks for more potatoes.
My brother and sister both catch my eye. He's much worse than last year, our faces write to each other while we eat. What did we expect?
A consummate diva, my mother's father, always looking for an excuse to play his trusty harmonica, or to sing Cypriot folk songs in his booming voice. A flighty temper he has too, so we didn't notice his mood swings until he began forgetting our names. A complete contrast to my Yiayia Rita, grounded and constant as only a sole sister to five brothers could have been. As only a wife to my grandfather could have been. Was.
She is sitting in the empty chair, opposite her daughter whose smile is a corkscrew. Which twinges in my chest.
I never thought they looked alike. They do now.
My aunt Maria timidly shifts halfway onto the chair to better hear my uncle Odysseus. She shuffles from side to side and side to side and side to side. I feel like screaming to her, "Just sit on the chair for goodness sake." She concedes defeat after a while and slides back onto her original seat. She turns to my sister cheerfully and strikes up a separate conversation. Anna's much closer in proximity to her, thank the Lord.
I chastise myself for my silent tantrum. What would Yiayia say?
She would have made Charlotta, a traditional trifle from our ancestral village, from candied orange peel. It's impossible to make it well. I cringe at the thought of how my paltry effort will be received.
Dinner is soon over. We carry armfuls of plates to the kitchen, piling them in the sink. The others file back to the living room. Greasy, bloated remains are scraped into the food bin while I hoist the enormous glass bowl delicately from the fridge with my forearms.
"Thank you ayabi mou," Mum says, wiping her hands on a towel.
"No worries."
She is silent. She turns to me and smiles our shared hostess smile. The one that doesn't reach the eyes.
"It'll get easier," I offer, feeling stupid. The trifle feels heavier by the minute.
The smile is gone. She looks so much younger. She looks so much older too.
She looks like my Yiayia. "Call everyone in for dessert before it curdles, ayabi mou," she says gently.
My job is trifle. My job is trivial.
I put on my smile.
The Supper Club (excerpted)
Nausicaa Chu (US)
Flames
The man with the flamethrower is in the house.
To be more specific, he is in the backyard shooting a three foot pillar of blue flame in the relative direction of our undergrowth.
Is this unexpected? Yes. If anyone had shown up on my doorstep at 8:00 at night with a weed flamethrower and a tank of petrel, it would be hard not to be surprised.
Is this unwanted? Not particularly.
Is this an anomaly? No. Certainly not for the man who brought it, or the man cackling next to him as fire and smoke fill the air.
Who in the world are these people? The man with the flamethrower in question is Uncle Jim, ironically the only burn surgeon in the state of Alabama, and the cackling guy beside him is my dad, a colorectal surgeon.
The flamethrower is carefully put away beside the Big Green Egg, a grill that looks like its name, and the gaucho grill, a moving metal slab attached to a rotisserie stick above a coal-filled grate.
Sparks
The invitations are sent out via text. Six o’clock, our house.
It’s six thirty. I balance cans of sparkling water in my arms and dump them on the counter, set out knives and chopsticks and spoons, adjust bowls of fruit in the middle of the table.
Nobody’s here yet, but that’s normal. “Whenever we say six, everyone knows we mean six thirty,” my mom explained to me one time. “You’re supposed to be late to parties.”
The Yings are the first to arrive. Their two kids run upstairs to play minecraft on the Nintendo with my brother, while Auntie Quyen runs upstairs to help my mom around the kitchen, and Uncle Yedah goes around to the backyard where dad is grilling. Warm smoke and the smell of steak fills the house.
Auntie Quyen and Uncle Yedah, and all the other people at the dinner, are not actually my aunt and uncle, but it’s customary in Asian culture to address close family friends as such.
The Hwangs come in next. They live right up the street, and our dogs, Teto and Ranger, get along well. The dogs run to the backyard to romp and play, and try and fail to get a bite of meat. Auntie In-suk brings Korean vegetables and noodles, and Uncle Jim joins the men in the backyard.
The Wangs come too. Auntie Janet helps Mom prepare vegetables while Uncle Tom asks, “chess?” and I pull out the board and smush the flabby defense he calls the Sicilian. It really isn’t anything of the sort.
Uncle George comes in and heads to the garage with my dad to pick out wine to go with dinner.
I carry trays of smoking meat and grilled vegetables inside, pausing as I hear the rush of the flamethrower shooting fire at the rotisserie duck in my dad’s ever-going quest to achieve crispy duck skin. My dad carries the duck inside, darkened to a charred bronze, and everyone sits or stands around the counter and talks and eats.
The conversation flows easily, as it always does. There is a script to it, a rhythm, a comforting familiarity.
Usually part of the dialogue covers how this conglomeration of Asian people came together in the first place.
“When did we start having dinners like this? Because we came down, and then–” Uncle Yedah begins.
“Yeah, I mean, the Supper Club didn’t really start happening until the Yings came down to Birmingham, and then the Hwangs. Before that, the only Asian people at the hospital were Ben [another one of my dad’s colleagues] and the Wangs,” my dad says.
“It was the pandemic that did it,” my mom says, “All the restaurants were closed, there was nothing else to do.”
“But seriously, I think the food we cook here is the best Asian food in Birmingham. It’s better than all the restaurants in the area,” Uncle Jim says.
Auntie In-suk laughs. “We should start our own restaurant.”
“One day, when we’re all retired maybe,” my mom agrees.
There is a thoughtful pause, and people get more food.
“We probably had to get together eventually. We’re, like, the only Asians in Alabama. There wouldn’t be anyone to celebrate Chinese New Years with otherwise,” my mom jokes.
Uncle George sits quietly and sips his wine, sometimes inserting a witty remark into the conversation. But I think that perhaps he brought the Supper Club most together, more even than the Pandemic.
Christmas Beyond the Steel Platform
Thechosenonemico (Philippines)
The Sky Garden of the city mall was a lavish expanse of flashing green, yellow, and red— a beautiful painting of colors under Quezon City’s night sky. The evening was breathing alive with the sound of people— families seated on clay tables enjoying the cold and the brightness of December, couples walking hand-in-hand into stores and restaurants, adults plowing through the mall’s December sales and promos, and individuals just enjoying their same old world temporarily revamped by the dawning of Christmas.
Three Badjao kids, who all could not have been older than 8, were running around the labyrinth of adorned Palm trees and bushes a few feet from where I was seated. The Christmas lights dangling on wooden shades and lamp posts cast Christmas colors on their dirt-smeared faces as they enthusiastically played tag. Their eyes reflected the bright glint of the Sky Garden. Their tattered dirt-brown shirts were a stark contrast in the vividly colorful garden.
“Taya!” The largest kid cracked into a huge smile as he reached his hand to pat the butt of the smaller Badjao boy, taunting him with a broken laugh. The smaller boy then went to chase the only Badjao girl into the rows of Santan bushes, trying his hardest to maintain his balance at the same time.
While the two smaller Badjao kids were at it, the largest kid walked to a clay bench nearby where he recollected a pile of twenty or so Ang Paos (Chinese red envelopes), and two rusting tin cans. By the time the other two returned laughing and catching for breath, the older one was already on his way to the steel platform at the entrance of the Sky Garden, emptying the contents of the Ang Paos into one of the tin cans as he walked. My eyes followed their trail until the last Badjao kid disappeared into the darkness beyond the steel platform.
It was already half past seven. A few more minutes of stalling was the last thing I needed on a Friday night when more people than usual are going to flood the bus stations. It was 18 days before Christmas, after all, and most students and workers here in the city would come home to the Provinces for the Christmas break. I lifted two of my handbags containing a week’s worth of used clothes with one hand, and a paper bag of half-eaten cheese burger and lime juice on the other, and went towards the steel platform.
The steel platform was connected to a large footbridge that branched to different commercial establishments, crisscrossing 20 feet above the huge sea of vehicles along the North EDSA road. With the railings already wrapped in white Christmas lights and tiny tin foil lanterns, you can easily see exactly where the Christmas wonderland stopped, marking a demarcation line from a separate, entirely different world— one which appeared to have a different Christmas.
The footbridge was cloaked in a muggy darkness. If it wasn’t for the few hand-held lamps, it would’ve been nearly impossible to walk through what appeared like a jungle of beggars, makeshift-stalls, and vendors.
Where there were bursting lights and colors on the other side of the steel platform, there was barely any light here in the footbridge. Plastic snowmen, trees, elves, and lanterns were nowhere to be found; carts, stalls, products, and plastic trash were the only decorations. Jose Mari Chan's Christmas music was replaced by the buzzing vendor chants, street children noises, and beggar pleas.
I saw the three Badjao kids darting towards the area where the footbridge branched out to three other walkways. They joined a group of other Badjaos who were huddled in a circle. As I approached the crossroad, the faint light from a huge billboard just less than two meters away showed what appeared like a beggar banquet— six large Spanish bread, four pieces of Saba banana, and three Balut eggs laid on a folded Manila paper. Just beside the Manila paper was a huge tin can where all the Badjao kids' collected coins and paper bills for the day were stacked.
Before I could turn to the left walkway leading to the bus stop, a thin hand stretched out to me. It was a Badjao woman. In her stretched-out right hand was a worn-out Ang pao. In her left was a baby.
“Merry Christmas.” Her broken accent matched the frailty in her voice. Her eyes bore an innocence that was very telling of her age. She couldn’t have been older than me.
I've been here many times before, and it's always been the same marginalized individuals stretching the same frail hands with the same recycled Ang Paos. Nothing much has really changed; the dawning of Christmas never really had an effect on the footbridge.
I took the Ang pao, slipped in the 50 pesos change that I had in my pocket, and turned on my heel to continue my walk just in time before the guilt and powerlessness burdening my chest to swallow me whole.
As I neared the end of the footbridge, I can't help but look back at the steel platform. The Sky Garden, along with the whole city mall in all its hugeness, is a piercing shimmer of affluence in the midst of the mute shades of city dust and smoke and poverty. In my weekly journey along this footbridge for the past three months since I started my first semester in college, I have clearly seen how Christmas amplified the dichotomy between two worlds that existed on either side of that steel platform—one with nights that have become more brighter and livelier, and another with nights that have only gotten darker and colder.
