That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
Amy TanThanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself.
I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.
Amy TanAnd then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.
Amy TanWhy do you think you are missing something you never had?
Amy TanI am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.
Amy TanTags: constellation heavens star
And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
Amy TanI think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.
Amy TanTags: inspirational
You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.
Amy TanAnd now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.
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