The three of us had spent the day together—I don’t remember what we did earlier in the day other than go to the shoe outlet in Pasadena. After that, we were hungry, and it didn’t feel like we had done anything special enough to constitute your birthday celebration. “Let's go to Long Beach,” I suggested, so we piled back into the car and made our way there.
We were both older now, not your little girls anymore. The firm boundaries between parent and child were just beginning to melt. You weren’t yet completely used to your disapprovals not having an effect on us. We all lived in different worlds now. You, 7 hours away in Sacramento and my sister, an hour from my apartment in Los Angeles, more or less, depending on traffic. It was feeling easier to be with one another, no dirty dishes or laundry in the way, you not needing to break your back working from morning until night so we could survive. We were in spaces where we could breathe, after so many years of being cramped together in that shoe-box apartment.
We chatted in between mouthfuls of fried chicken doused in fish sauce and lime, sopping up tamarind sauce with spoonfuls of pineapple fried rice. When we walked out, the sun was beginning to set, and we headed down to the shore. We imagined ourselves in those big houses, sitting on the balcony in the mornings, walking down to the beach in the evenings. The sky was a faded blue like an old sheet, coming down into the ocean where the surface of the water reflected the same color, making it so the horizon line so thin you almost couldn’t see it. I almost couldn’t tell where the separation was between water and sky. Almost.
300 words
*did a one-block 10 minute revision with this one!
Thai Food in Long Beach, Your Birthday 2023
The three of us had spent the day together—I don’t remember what we did earlier in the day other than go to the shoe outlet in Pasadena. After that, we were hungry, and it didn’t feel like we had done anything special enough to constitute your birthday celebration. “Let's go to Long Beach,” I suggested, so we piled back into the car and made our way there.
We were both older now, not your little girls anymore. The firm boundaries between parent and child were just beginning to melt. You weren’t yet completely used to your disapprovals not having an effect on us. We all lived in different worlds now. You, 7 hours away in Sacramento and my sister, an hour from my apartment in Los Angeles, more or less, depending on traffic. It was feeling easier to be with one another, no dirty dishes or laundry in the way, you not needing to break your back working from morning until night so we could survive. We were in spaces where we could breathe, after so many years of being cramped together in that shoe-box apartment.
We chatted in between mouthfuls of fried chicken doused in fish sauce and lime, sopping up tamarind sauce with spoonfuls of pineapple fried rice. When we walked out, the sun was beginning to set, and we headed down to the shore. We imagined ourselves in those big houses, sitting on the balcony in the mornings, walking down to the beach in the evenings. The sky was a faded blue like an old sheet, coming down into the ocean where the surface of the water reflected the same color, making it so the horizon line so thin you almost couldn’t see it. I almost couldn’t tell where the separation was between water and sky. Almost.
300 words
*did a one-block 10 minute revision with this one!