Thoughts by His Bedside

The rooster crows at dawn, except this rooster doesn’t crow. In fact, it’s not a rooster at all. But a box. It is just slightly larger than the hand of the Hmong man that listens to its muffled voices of a foreign language distorted, not only in his knowledge, but with static too. The red letters on this electric box reads 6:00.

His mind is awake but his eyes remain closed as he listens lying next to a woman. They lay in bed like they have for over fifty years. Every morning, roughly the same: both waiting for their bodies to catch up to the rise of the day. Her body wakes first. It always has. The night before, her long gray hair was released from the constraints of her elastic. She rolls out of bed and prepares for the new day by tying it back up. The knob, then the hinges, then the floors creak. Her footsteps travel across the special spot in the living room that goes “tha-thump!” — a signal to track where she has traveled. When she goes to the kitchen the pots and pans shifted and clanged just loud enough to know that in a few moments the first meal of the day would be ready. A preparation for the daily ritual.

It wasn’t always like this though. It was different, by distance. No. That’s not the right translation. It was different, by far.

In Laos, the rooster was a rooster and that rooster crowed. The rise of the day was the sun peeking over the horizon among thick jungle hills. Light has not yet broken through the cracks of their bamboo house but the sheen of blue and pink paint the sky and it was time. Her body woke next to the man she had laid with for fifteen years. Every day, roughly the same. She rolled out of bed, her feet kissing the dry clay floor. There are no thumps in this house, no door knobs or walls that creak and crackle. Only the rooster that crows and the perpetual howling winds pushing against a small bamboo house. The house was made with sticks but it did not fall with the wind. There was a thick wooden pillar that supported the house. In a way that pole reminded her of something familiar. Maybe strength. Maybe home.

Today, Grandma asked me to tell him to eat, so I did. Today, his body is weak. Today, eating is hard. Today, he lies in bed slightly defeated. She tends to him, carefully.

He fought a battle with his bones and flesh and his spirit longs for the return of physicality. His spirit though, is strong. I see it in his breath. Each inhale he takes to exchange words is another ripple of life he brings to the universe. He shares them with me. I place my hand on his shoulder.

Touch is a language he taught me when he picked me up in his arms and bounced me on his leg. He sang me — all of us — Hmong nursery rhymes and swung us back and forth.

He told me he might not have enough time. I refuted. I told him that before his surgery he was excited to eat bananas and apples with his grandkids. We have to eat them now that he’s back.

He taught us laughter too. I noticed that he can’t today.

We talked longer, he continued to give me words of wisdom. Grandma says he ate frog legs today. I asked if they taste like chicken and he told me how there were never enough frogs in Laos to eat. They would catch as many as they could and still, they craved them.

I love hearing about this past life: how he roamed the forests with patience and walked to his farmland each day, the kind of plants they farmed and the animals he looked after.

I hardly ask about the time in between. I have before. Grandma told me about how the earth burst into war, like compressed glass shattered into pieces and in the midst of it all, they packed only the essentials on their backs. I absorbed their stories like a sponge. They were not fairy tales forgotten in books, but the scriptures of their lives written in the wrinkles of their hands. His verses were written in the sharp sides of his knives. Have you ever seen sparks fly when knives are made? It looks warmer than fire, almost red. Auburn. When he sharpened the blade it screeched.

I see his mind travel there, when his body feels weak and solace is only found in the resonance of voices around a room. His eyes change.

My grandparents lived in a quaint four bedroom house in Fresno, California. The fundamental lessons they built in all their children remind me of the sturdy brick structures that folded around and into the house.

The first layer: give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove you wrong, they might prove you right. The second: do your absolute best, you are capable and more powerful than you know. The third: love lives in hard truths, we will give them to you. The fourth: you will always find home in us.

Grandma feeds him a grape and before he could chew and swallow she tries to feed him another one. She does this often and she laughs. She tends to rush him.

There is love in this room.

The kind of love that makes his body a little stronger, food a little sweeter, healing a little more hopeful. My Yawm Txiv is the cornerstone of resilience and life that resonates in our family.

Life becomes clear in moments like these. The ones that humble us to the core of our existence. The fleeting moments that feel everlasting.

“Maj mam os.”

Carefully, little by little, one step at a time, tomorrow comes, he heals, little by little, today.