Petrichor

I am the firstborn child of immigrants. My parents didn’t understand a word of English, and immigrating from China and Malaysia and moving to an entirely different country was far beyond jarring. They lost most of their childhood to unpredictability and change when they were made to attend primarily English-speaking schools and work to help support their family. They had to adapt to understand a language wholly unlike their own, or never adapt at all. My father, stubborn as he was, refused to learn a language that felt so unnatural, so heavy, to him. My mother on the other hand, saw this as a new opportunity for her and her family, and witnessed the challenges of America firsthand as an Asian woman of color. Where she excelled in school in Malaysia, she struggled to get good grades and graduate college in America and ended up dropping out. She only started attending college again after having me, her little bundle of hope.

From the moment I was born, my mother wanted me to only learn English. How else would I be able to communicate in America? How else would I be able to make friends in America? My father wanted me to learn how to speak Cantonese, if only ever a little bit; his side of the family didn’t know how to speak English. It would be beyond unfair to deny me of the opportunity to speak their native language, and beyond cruel to separate me from the rest of my family. My mother countered; ‘How could a child live in America without knowing English?’

My parents saw in me opportunities they never had, and raised me with the hopes that I would thrive and succeed in America where they could not. Since I knew English, I was given the chance to do so much more than they could have ever done– except I could only do the things that they wanted me to do. I never had a choice in many things growing up– it was either do this or do none. Take ballet, play the violin, take swimming classes; all of these were extracurriculars I was required, not offered, to do. If I showed an interest in anything but, I had to be absolutely perfect at it. It had to be something worthwhile, something that could secure me a safe, stable future, something that would help me get a job to provide for my family. They had sacrificed so much to come to America for a better life, and they wanted their eldest daughter to be nothing less than perfect.

Alas, I had a somewhat controversial idea of what I wanted to be; myself.

Writing was the only activity I found myself truly enjoying, even when I was required to do so. My parents, placated by the fact that I was getting good grades in English and the hope that I might become an author in the future, allowed me to continue. I filled up composition notebook after composition notebook with story ideas I had, and made endless Google Documents to properly organize every little detail. Writing fantasy is just like breathing for me; it’s just second nature. I’ve written countless stories where the hero wins and the villain prevails, where the sun shines bright and darkness swallows the world whole. I loved indulging in a little world of my own making, shaping it to my interests that have changed over the years. But while writing may be second nature to me, failure and hesitation is still a detail that I must pay attention to. Not every draft will be the final version, and there are times when you simply cannot write as easily as you’ve always done.

Petrichor is the scent of the rain and earth, when humidity hangs thick in the air and a cool gust sweeps across the streets. It is the dampness that creeps through the cracks in your window, and the clouds that churn grey with the warning of a thunderstorm. It’s a feeling that sends tingles down my spine to this day, and it feels like familiarity, just like my childhood.

In a room with pastel pink walls, there is a desk cluttered with pencils and books. The misty gold hues from the setting sun meets the harsh, cold glare of my laptop screen. An incomplete document waits with bated breath as I type two words, falter, and immediately delete them. A crinkled sheet of paper sits ever patiently upon a teetering pile of books; one thousand and seven hundred words, minimum, it says. Full beginning, middle, end, set in a fictional world of my own making. I had absolutely no qualms with this. I knew with certainty what I wanted to write about. I knew with certainty how to write it.

But I had absolutely no idea how to start it.

I loved writing with every bit of my being– I wrote every single day, really –but I could not for the life of me piece this puzzle together. It frustrated me to no end, the blinking line on the document all but mocking me as I stare, blankly, hoping for some scrap of a thought for me to fit together. Despite only being thirteen, my bones creak and wobble with the strain of a decrepit old man as I get up from my chair to ask for guidance.

My slippers thud quietly against the floorboards as I make my way over to the room next to mine, my crinkled up paper in tow. I can hear the keyboard click-clack away, the door wide open as light floods into the dark living room. On the bookcases are the achievements of my younger brothers, their smiling faces in photo frames, and their trophies and medals coated in dust. My mother has her back towards me, typing away at her own Chromebook. Her desk, pristine and neatly organized, is a stark contrast to mine, but our beds are the exact same; messy, haphazardly folded, and cluttered. The several bins that have been pulled out from under the bed are labeled with the grades of each class she teaches, and it’s evident by the stacks of assignments on her bed that she’s in the middle of a grading session.

I watch for a moment, and only for a moment, as my mother skims over a paper and types something down at her laptop. The desk lamp is the only source of light in the room, but the wrinkles on her face are ever as prominent. She had only became a teacher a year or two ago, but raising three children for thirteen years– not to mention graduating by the skin of her teeth –had taken a toll on her. Tentatively, I tap a knuckle at the door, bracing myself for impact. Clack.

“I’m busy,” she simply says, without looking up. “The door was closed.”

“It wasn’t,” I simply say, and the keyboard goes silent.

I hesitate for the tenth of a second. “What do you do if you don’t know what to write?”

My mother sighs out something in Cantonese, quick and snappy and fast, and I don’t catch it fast enough. I was never really good at Cantonese. I manage to say at least half a word before I falter, puzzled by what she was asking me. Why-something-egg? That wasn’t right.

The swivel chair creaks as she turns to frown at me, the crinkles of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. “Why did you choose this class if you knew it was going to be so hard for you?” she repeats with a hint of irritation. She sets her thick reading glasses atop her head as her eyes scrutinize me, standing at the doorway and disturbing her work. “Don’t you like writing? Why are you complaining about it now? Isn’t it supposed to be easy for you?”

In this household, there is no room for mistakes. It’s something I’ve lived by, but never understood. The unsaid question lingers beneath her words. If I had been able to understand her Cantonese, she most certainly would have asked me it; ‘Aren’t you supposed to know how to do this?’ I leap to defend myself, poorly, like a clumsy doe on it’s first legs.

“I like writing a lot, but sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard to put stuff together. And- and I didn’t choose this class, you wanted me to take the test for it.”

“Aiya,” she sighs, putting her glasses back on again. “Don’t argue.”

“But–”

“You’re not even good at writing,” my mother states with a tone of finality, and it stings, badly. I was good at writing. I got good grades in my creative writing classes. I want to protest, but I remain silent, gnawing on my cheek. “You’re supposed to be good at it if you passed that test. If you have questions about it, then you’re not good at it. Okay?”

Her logic is flawed. I want to say, ‘that’s dumb’, but ‘dumb’ isn’t a word that I’m allowed to say.

“I don’t know why you’d do something you’re not good at,” comes and goes her voice, and the door quietly goes click behind me.

Petrichor is the smell of rain, when the house is quiet and the kids are asleep. It’s the return to the bedroom and the thump of slippers against the floorboards. It’s the creak of a swivel chair, and the click of a keyboard as the screen flares to life again.

I don’t know how long I sit at my desk for, but it’s long enough for the words on the page to start blurring. I click through Google Documents and dig through the boxes underneath my bed to find the stories I’ve written– old, amateurish, imperfect –and I grimace at them and the grammar mistakes and the everything mistakes. They’re not good, not by a long shot. But they’re not awful, either. They could have been better, but to me in those moments, they were the best things I had ever written. To me, those were stories that I loved to write and struggled at for days because I didn’t know how to say something in the right way. They represented the effort I’ve put in day in and day out, and they’re bad, ugly, and foolish.

‘How unfair,’ I think, ‘that a language I’ve always been made to learn was making me feel proud for the imperfect.’

Click-clack goes the keys of my Chromebook, as I begin to write.

I start writing and writing, and sometimes it is meaningful, and other times it’s just nonsense words, but I write as if it’s a talent I’ve honed for years, and not just second nature. I write as if I’ve put effort and energy into this craft that I’ve used to escape for years, and I breathe life into the hero, the warrior, the villain and the world. I type and delete chunks of paragraphs throughout the night, turning back to my old documents and papers for assistance. I fill in holes and smooth down the lumps of my work, and petrichor fills my lungs.

Petrichor is the smell of rain that creeps in through the cracks in your window, when it is warm, when it is good. It’s the feeling of the smooth keycaps under your fingers, and the tap-tap-tapping of raindrops against the metal awning. It’s when the night shifts into hazy morning blues, and the morning peeks through your blinds to say hello. It’s fiddling with the printer until it turns on and prints out the document wrong three times, and the air that fills your lungs as you race to the school bus with a fourteen-sheet story in your hands.

I wasn’t good at a lot of things then, and I’m still not good at them now. Ever since I was a child, it was drilled into my head that I had to be good at every little thing I did, and if I wasn’t, then it was all a waste of time and effort. I’m getting better at speaking Cantonese now, but strangers are constantly confused by my phrasing. They furrow their brows and ask, with urgency, ‘Do you know where the N train is?’, and I have to haphazardly remember my directions. ‘jó,’ I manage out, and me pointing seems to help them more than me saying it.

I find it ironic that the skill I’ve been using to escape my realities my entire life had been restraining me for a better part of that life. I lived by the notion that I had to be perfect, and I lived in constant fear of failure. If I failed, how could I ever show my work to my family? If I got anything less than a 90, I would be scolded and scorned. If I got anything less than a 2nd place medal, I would be ignored for days on end. The hope for familial affection drove me into a frenzy trying to excel the first time, every time, and I wore myself down to the bone with exhaustion studying for exams. The language that I learned my entire life kept me isolated from my family who are more than supportive and helpful. And the rules I learned from my parents kept me quiet and obedient; ‘your first mistake should be your last’.

I look at my classmates who I am so often compared to to this day, and see them with their immigrant parents, their perfect grades, the expectations that weigh heavy on their shoulders, and I can’t help but feel that we’re all too similar. Between us, we share the unspoken goal; get the highest grades in every class, participate in all the extracurriculars, be smart and good and obedient and quiet for your parents. I look at my friends after the graduation ceremony, and when I see them get scolded by their parents in the back of the auditorium for not getting an award– ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ –it feels ever familiar and my chest aches.

I wonder how much individuality is stripped away when you move to America. How much of yourself do you have to change to ensure your family lives happily and content? I feel as if when my parents moved to America, separately, as children, every chance at living a happier childhood was stripped away and replaced with having to learn a new language that feels so heavy on their tongue. My mother loved to play sports with the neighborhood kids in Malaysia. My father loved to sneak out and listen to the Cantonese singers in the streets. Everything that they did as children they could no longer do in a foreign, different world. How much of yourself do you have to neglect and ignore in order to survive in America? In a country so diverse, it’s heartbreaking to see those who had to conform and those who just couldn’t. The most successful ones in America are those who know it’s ‘native language’, the language of English which is far from it. How much pressure do you have to put on a child’s shoulders to ensure that they’ll live a wonderful life in America? I wonder how many children will have to bear this burden now, learn a language unlike their own, and become a person unlike themself, but for all the sacrifices their parents gave before them.

In some selfish sense, I felt robbed of my childhood. I was forced to be this picturesque child for so many years of my life and I could never tell my elders how much I loved them before it was far too late, and the only memories I had of them were their funeral photos– they would just cock their heads to the side and laugh, lightly, without understanding, and they would pat my head and ruffle my hair with affection. I’ve lost so many years and possible memories to this barrier that’s defined me the moment my parents had me. This language that has been predetermined for me to learn has let me do things that I love deeply. I share jokes with my friends, tell them how much I care, and I write my silly little stories. ‘It’s okay to be bad at things,’ I tell myself now. ‘I don’t want to be perfect anymore. I want to write and make mistakes and struggle and be bad at things.’

I’ve never learned how to tell my family, ‘I love you’, in Cantonese, and maybe I never will. It’s not very common in a lot of Asian immigrant families. As a kid, I hoped it was.

Perhaps I’ll keep writing, and imagine an imperfect little world where it is.

Original Written: 7 Sept. 2023