Traffic in Taipei, Taiwan. Sharp, fast, and cutting, just like the language that cascaded from my mother’s younger cousins’ lips. Both were women in their late fifties, although, judging by the buoyancy of their motions and appearances, I’d have placed them at least a decade younger. Quick to speak, slow to age.
Juxtapositions, in fact, pervaded the scene. Like modern pagodas, symmetrical buildings lined the wide roads, casting a defiant tidiness amidst the metropolitan congestion. Colorful bike lanes, pedestrian pathways, and traffic markings, courteously pasted on the smooth streets themselves, offset the storefront windows and LED screens that brazenly flashed, endlessly. A subtle, atmospheric orderliness dimmed the urban chaos. Old Backstreet Boys hits drifted from my cousin’s car speakers.
The sun would set in a few short hours. Tucked behind the vehicle’s protective windows, time seemed not to make a difference. Red light. Stop. To our left, elderly Taiwanese practiced t’ai chi in one of the city’s abundant public parks. To our right, a coffin shop, its heavy wooden caskets poised with lids wide open, as if mocking the aging men and women across the street. A muffled, disgusted noise escaped from the seat next to me. “Ergh.” My mother had seen it, too.
We had just met her birth family. I watched her cringe. Continue reading “A Blood Matter”
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