and Words
Moo-soo-too-younger-hey-hey
Moo-sala-kooloo-hoh
Moo-soo-too-younger-hey-hey
Moo-sala-kooloo-hoh
They say it’s gonna rain
Blue sky is gonna break
Can you tell why me why
Do good things always have to end?
It seems like yesterday
But it only just begun
Laughing in the sun
I’d hoped you’d be my life long friend
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
As I turned ten, I moved from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale and subsequently spent much of my time expunging the Chinese and Spanish culture from my mind. No, I’m exaggerating. I spent no energy intentionally forgetting my culture but certainly did little to retain it. By the mid 1980’s, I graduated high school. I made a few great friends with whom I still keep in touch, but truthfully, I fumbled my way through it. There were no other Cantonese students in my high school, and very few that spoke Spanish. By the end, I functioned mostly as a native, though average, English speaker with aptitude for mathematics and computers. I proceeded to study engineering at the University of Miami.
Those months between high school and college were transformational. For years I took for granted the significance of congregating with people like me. I sleepwalked through high school, establishing friendships, but not quite finding my people. In some surreal way, I felt very alone, fully believing there was no one else like me. Then abruptly, in one night at one party, it all magically appeared. I found people who looked like me and lived the same experiences. During that summer, I finally found kinship with other Chinese-Americans. It felt just short of having a fairy godmother.
That’s how it all started. During the subsequent years, we continued to meet every couple of weeks or so. On weekend nights, we flocked to parties where we danced to exhaustion. Alternatively, we congregated in the lone movie theater that showed Chinese movies two nights a week at midnight. On occasion, we would go clubbing when they’d allow us in who were not yet old enough to drink. At first, I didn’t understand what compelled me, but one day I understood. It was not about the party or the movie; we found each other. We were collectively hanging on to those moments.
Meanwhile, having moved to Miami for school, the pervasiveness of the language also engulfed me. Some claimed that Miami was, at the time, 51% Cuban. Though now it felt differently. It was a calling from my distant childhood. What might’ve felt familiar or even foreign, suddenly became native and natural. While most spoke English on campus, once you stepped off campus, Spanish was everywhere. When a stranger bumps into you at the mall, they may apologize in Spanish. Though this time, I belonged. I no longer abstained or tolerated that Spanish culture, I started to embrace it.
Inexplicably, I navigated this delicate balance between these cultures for a handful of years. I solved engineering problems on weekdays, and on weekends, I waited on tables and danced. My dual life resembled Bruce Wayne’s. Among those friends were three sisters, who also spoke Spanish. Naturally, one of them caught my attention more than others, and we danced both literally and figuratively for years. Reflecting back on it, it was through them that I found my way back to that part of my culture, indeed part of myself. I rediscovered Spanish music from my youth in a new light and established new favorites. In school, I spoke in Cantonese to Malaysian friends and in Spanish to friends from Mexico, Columbia, Puerto Rico, and even Cuba.
Upon starting work as an engineer, it all evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. There’s an expression that we use now, “being your most authentic self.” My life is now I full of people who love me for who I am; there’s no doubt in my mind. I have a much better sense of who I am and where my moral compass points than I did many years before. This love and closeness have been a long process of committing to each other and growing closer together. It’s a willful, purposeful empathy. In every sense of the word, I am indeed my most authentic self.
However, we are each a collection of many unique and nuanced memories. While there may be many who will empathize, there are very few who genuinely understand. For years, with each dance or movie, I may have simply been chasing those moments, not fully understanding how fragile it all was. I don’t think any of us really knew just how much we all meant to each other. Those moments with ‘my people’ may have been a simple snapshot in time, but ones that I will always treasure.
This website is a celebration of those memories; I aspire to look upon them with a humble joy and not regret.
It was a few weeks ago, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday I got a text from a friend; she was among our gaggle with whom I spent so many nights dancing away. The message arrived mid-morning, as I conversed with teammates during a meeting. I glanced at my phone during a lull in the meeting.
At first, my eyes scanned over the words ‘aneurysm’ and ‘died’, but then I read it more carefully. Our friend, one of those three sisters, passed away a month ago.
Loss will be different each time. In that initial moment, I remember emptiness. My mind was filled with images and songs, ones to which we danced so many years before. Along with them, moments of smiles and laughter as we all collectively fumbled through our youth. These moments felt as if they were evaporating in my mind as the dreadful news sunk in. My only rationalization is that the world should be collectively emptier and sadder upon her death.
As I’ve been reminiscing our shared moments on those dance floors, the words from this song describe that sentiment. It remains among my favorites; those words express the melancholy that still lingers. “They say it’s gonna rain, blue sky is gonna break.”
I miss you… Thank you for helping me find myself so many years before. I can’t adequately express how much it all meant.