Lately, it seems like any little thing can take me back to that time in my life. Somewhere in this infinite span of eternity, I will remain always 17. Somewhere, my youthful wishes remain unhindered by the reality that had yet to break my stride.

Today, what brings me back are the birds that chirp outside my window. When I close my eyes, I'm almost certain that when they open again, I'll be lying on my back in my bedroom on Bellerose Avenue. The year will be 1964. 

~

School has just ended and the smell of mildew has been replaced by the fresh air that has just been released from its winter slumber. It's 10:30 A.M. on a Tuesday and the sunlight is spilling in through the blinds. My eyes squint to block out the rays but are unsuccessful so I grab the sunglasses from my bedside table. Behind tinted lenses, I like to imagine I'm Miles Davis so I drum my fingers to the beat. To my left sits the record player that I got for Christmas when I was 14. A pile of vinyls sit beneath it and today the needle plays a melody of Bob Dylan that fills my room with wistful longings in a language I can't understand.

The previous night, I graduated from high school. While the ceremony was tedious and slow-moving, a part of me secretly hoped that it would never end. Throughout its course, as I listened to all the names being called, I couldn't stop the melancholia from flooding into my veins. All these classmates that I'd grown up with were going to be gone from my life at the conclusion of the hour. All these faces that I'd seen everyday would be lost to the flow of time and shifted from my memory. Soon, perhaps even their names would become only vaguely recognizable.

I'd start university in the fall in a city far away from here. I'd leave behind everything that I had ever known for the sake of a new start and the chance to break free from the chains that hold me to this broken town I've called home for so many years now. All the friends I've made will slowly fade away, leaving behind the tides of our youth in the wake of our severances. This is it - the end of my adolescence and everything that I've ever known. This era of my life will be gone in a matter of months and there's not a thing I can do to slow of course of this progression into adulthood.

My childhood will become no more than a memory held forever behind the rose-colored glasses of the past.

My diploma is hanging on the refrigerator downstairs. When my name was called to receive it, I could see my mother sitting alone in the third row attempting to hold back her sobs. When our eyes met, I had intended to give her a smile, but could only manage a grimace. She understood all too well what the diploma truly meant. It was my one-way ticket away from her and the world she had worked so hard to create for me all these years. This work was now concluded but she was left feeling only devoid instead of prideful.

Before I'd gone to bed, she and I shared a bowl of ice-cream together in the kitchen sometime around midnight. When I was a child, we had done this whenever I couldn't fall asleep. Behind blurry eyes, she had hummed the lullaby that had always succeeded in whisking my consciousness away into the world of dreams.

Moon River, wider than a mile

I'm crossing you in style

Some day...

~

The birds have stopped chirping now. I've awoken from my daydream with that tune lingering between the remnants of my every thought. My mother was beautiful then and remained beautiful until the day she was given back to the earth. That must have been about 3 years ago now. It's amazing the way time moves along without you noticing it.

In death, she was finally reunited with the father I had never known. My vision of him comes from years of bedtime stories where my mother always depicted him as tall and handsome and brave.

Under the Japanese occupation of the 1940s, my father had been drafted into the Imperial Army. He and mother had been married the evening before he was shipped off to the deserts of Manchuria. That same night, I was conceived in the hopes that his family name could be carried on in the event of his almost certain death.

I am a child born of sorrow and longing and I have remained immersed in my roots for as long as I can remember.

My early years are plagued my memories of my mother waiting anxiously for the mail to arrive each afternoon. She would pace up and down the entryway to our home in the hopes that word from father had been delivered. He had promised to write to her once a day.

In the end, she had only received two letters: one announcing his arrival in Manchuria and one written the night before his first battle. It's clear that his death most likely came alongside his first taste of combat. According to mother, he was never made out to be a solider. He had dreamed of becoming a poet or a Professor of Literature and this showed through in the letters received. These letters also provide the only first hand communication I've ever held with the man from whom I was bred.

When my mother was buried, the letters went with her. I made sure of it.

For as long as I can remember, I've been having the same dream once every couple of years. In this dream, I find myself alone in the middle of a vast desert surrounded by nothingness. I can feel the sun beating down on my back and my skin blisters in the heat. I look before me and find my shadow. However, after taking a step, I find that it is not my shadow, but my grave.

Each time I have this dream, I awake in a cold sweat, my heart racing. I know each time that I shouldn't take the step, but I can never stop myself from doing so. Now, I realize what the dream symbolizes. It is the death of my father. He is buried in an unmarked grave beneath the dirt of a country far from his home and everything that he held dear to him. He died for the sake of power that he himself would never hold.

As a child I longed to travel to Manchuria to find the land that he is buried beneath. In my adolescent naivety, I truly believed that I would be able to judge the exact spot in which he took his final breath.

Now, in my old age, I have achieved the means of fulfilling my childhood fantasy, but am too old to do so. As I'm dying, I conti