Aditi Desai

When I think of my mother, I can picture her eyes smiling at our guests — from familiar relatives and friends to newly acquainted coworkers. Her eyes would be curved into bent crescents, creased at the edges like wrinkled grapes. Below her eyes, I see a quick dash of rose blush blended with brown concealer as if her face were a palette of diverse pigments. Just a few minutes ago, she was getting ready for the guests. I like watching her; I like seeing her paint on her freshly washed skin like an artist in-the-making, seeing the twinges of excitement for the night ahead spearheading her rapid movements.

I think about the mantra my mother preached to me, her only daughter: A good hostess will array wine like bowling pins, clear shelves of clutter, and braid lights across the staircase — do whatever it takes to make the house tidy. A good hostess will cook with an apron made of metal armor, ready to mold stif dough into delicacies. An excellent hostess will make herself presentable because she is the first one to unlock the door and greet guests.

Indians are notoriously known for “over preparing” most things — for flashy, five day weddings, feet-touching for blessings, soft bread piled into guests’ plates. We’re known for our hospitality. We’re known for shamelessly sending our guests home with bundles of leftover curry packaged in secure tupperware, for giving a hug rather than a handshake when sealing a business deal. For my family, hospitality is a way to help those who cannot be helped. My father used to ask me what I would do to help a king. Would I bring him a jeweled crown or elegant, aromatic meals? None of the above; the king already has all of that, I would respond. Exactly, my father continued, but you could invite him to your house as you would a guest, listen to him speak about his experiences, and make him feel comfortable. You can always give your presence and open ears to even the richest.

As firm believers in the “guests are God” dogma, my family makes no shortages in inviting guests to our home. Weekends are booked from morning till sundown with my brother and I put on tidying duty while my parents finish hovering over stovetops. Initially, I didn’t understand why my parents would race around the house hours prior to extended-family dinners just to rearrange couch pillows or spray vanilla-scented air freshener in the basement. The guests aren’t even going to see the basement, I would reason. However, over the years, I, like my parents, have memorized the precise geometry of dining room placemats and silverware. During family dinners, I’ve learned to take my seat at the table after everyone else has. My parents have trained me to lead small, polite conversations with guests, to smile at their jokes, and to pick up their dirtied napkins. I’ve learned to not question the imbalance of power between a houseguest and host, apologize if guests are unhappy, and meet their initial hesitation with a dutiful embrace. My people, my family, despite not working in the hospitality industry, are masters of service and caretaking.

When New Jersey enforced a mandated lockdown in early April, my family was not worried about not being able to host events or dinners. Although disappointed, they understood that health and safety rank above hospitality. Yet, although my parents were able to put my mother’s newly purchased dinner placemats into storage, they felt a much deeper remorse when shutting customers out of our family-owned wine shop. Since allowing customers to explore the shop and interact with employees is so central to their business, my family has found closing doors to be particularly painful.

How well do you know your customers? I’m sure they’re doing alright, I tried speaking to my father as he stared down at his curry one night during dinner. He paused, as if recalling a previous moment: I may not stand shoulder to shoulder with them — I’m across the counter whenever I see them, he chuckled. But, I know that Ms. Neiley picks up her order every night at 7 P.M; Joseph from the downtown train station always stops in to ask about sale items before lunch. I know that Christine from the hair salon complained about our slow delivery, so we tried to get her wine delivered quickly. I know that the boys soccer team comes to our shop first during their annual holiday fundraiser because they know we always offer candy. I was taken back by my father’s specific descriptions of distinct customers. I assumed his interactions to be momentary, fleeting glances, a quick exchange of dollar bills, followed by a brief, dim smile. Yet, his relationships with customers were like spontaneous friendships, crafted with care and concern. As a skilled host, he showed his customers the same warmth and companionship he did to friends and family.

Now, with lockdown rules slowly easing, my parents grin as they get back into the wine shop and watch customers approach, one by one, six feet apart, some wearing bandannas around the lower half of their faces and others voices muffled by surgical masks. Routine customers make their way towards the dimly lit wine shop and pick orders up from a table which leans against the doorway. They smile with their eyes, just as my mother does, as they wait in the short line.

On the shop’s glass window, my father hangs up a sign which reinforces social distancing and curb-side pick up regulations. He winces as he finishes taping the sign; the rules about maintaining physical distance are an inherent antithesis to the Indian ideal of hospitality, which encourages us to bring people closer and nearer to us. Distancing is a ritual we still aren’t comfortable with. My parents have traded natural, over-the-counter conversations with customers for momentary glances and weak hand waves. It is a bitter juxtaposition, yet one which reminds us of the community we have built through the wine shop and our hospitality mantra. Routine customers are loyal; they are undoubtedly present in the line outside the shop each day when they don’t have to be. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Christine waiting patiently as she tugs on her loose ponytail. Behind her, Ms. Neily is paging through a HomeGoods furniture manual with a ballpoint pen in hand. These customers choose to support my parents’ business and reciprocate their companionship, their hospitality, even in times like this.

 

 

Aditi Desai is a first-year student at Princeton University looking to study Neuroscience and Health Policy. She loves to read investigative journalism pieces which touch on the complexities of human health and mental wellbeing. Furthermore, she enjoys writing, running, hiking, and spending time outdoors!

I fell in love the first time at sixteen years old. I met him on the beach in Los Angeles while I was on a journalism field trip. It was my third year in America, and I still had not quite assimilated into California student life. At school, some girls laughed at me because of my Chinese accent and said things like, “You speak English? You understand what we say? Your English is so bad.” They didn’t want to pair up with me in group projects and told others not to choose me. They said during a practice presentation once, “You shouldn’t have come here for high school. It’s too hard for you. How are you going to do the presentation?!”

At lunch time, most kids avoided me. In freshman year, I spent a month having lunch near the restroom. I’d sit there in the hallway, eating my homemade dumplings, thinking about what I should do to change my accent. The Asian American girls would sometimes pass me and roll their eyes, judging my clothes: “Why does she wear hoodies in summer?” I’m sure they thought I couldn’t understand them. I stayed in the corner, looking at them with no facial expressions or words. They would laugh and leave. I took my backpack and tried to cover the hoodie I was wearing. But it just did not work.

Every time I saw cute couples hanging out together in the hallways, I felt jealous. They sat together every day under the freshmen tree, smiled at each other and hugged. When it was rainy, the boys pulled their coats over the girls. In the education system in China where I grew up, the only thing students could do is study. Girls and boys, especially girls, were expected to avoid relationships in high school and college, keep their noses in the mountains of books and test tubes, but quickly get married after they graduate. During this journalism trip, all the girls had boyfriends back home. Some boyfriends were athletes, others budding scientists, others on the robotics team. At night, the girls would go out to the hallways and Facetime them. And I was always the one staying in the hotel room alone, turning on the television to the international Chinese news.

Our journalism class was staying at the hotel near Santa Monica Beach, where the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel lit up the sky at night. One evening, at the golden hour of sunset, I sat out on the hotel chairs with my leopard print sunglasses watching the sun go down. That was when I saw the glow shining on his body. All I remember now was his face. He walked directly toward me and handed me a cup of pineapple juice. It was around six o’clock in the evening, when many people had started to go back to their hotels. He took off his sunglasses, and I realized who he was.

I knew him from childhood, and our families were long-time business partners. We went to middle school at the same time, but at different schools back in Beijing. I remembered his mushroom cut back then, but my own goal to get first place in academics at my school made me pay no attention to him. Studies were my life back then. I would stay up all night and not even eat for ten hours just to study. I often stayed in the classroom after the school closed with other classmates so we could finish studying before finals.

He looked at me and smiled. He had just gotten out of the water, and the sun reflected on his abs. As a young woman who had never been in love, I thought he looked like a movie star. “Hi, pretty girl” was the first sentence out of his mouth. I should have known then.

“Aren’t you Rusal?” I asked, ignoring his greeting. I could tell he was surprised that I didn’t respond with giggles. “I know who you are,” I told him.

“Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m the cutest boy around here.”

It was really weird, the words that came out of his mouth because I knew him when he was still in primary school, when he cried near the basketball court because the teachers took his ball. But he was cute, and my stomach was full of a sudden crush and some jealousy because I was the only single girl on the journalism team. So, I smiled at him and said his last name. “Rusal, right?”

“What are you doing here in Los Angeles?” he asked.

I told him I was at journalism camp, and asked what he was doing here. “I’m on school break. I live here in Beverly Hills now and go to Sierra Canyon High School.”

The next day, he picked me up at the hotel in his dad’s Lamborghini and took me to Disneyland. I wore green shorts, a black crop top, pearl earrings, and a shell necklace, which I broke and lost in the park. I should have realized that that was a sign. But in a place like Disneyland, all the air around me felt sweet and romantic. On Mickey’s Fun Wheel, he held my hand, and we looked through the wire grate windows out at the scenery. I never thought the manmade lake could be so pretty. It was gold, with blue, flowing and shining like glitter wallpaper. I looked at Rusal, and he looked at me, and suddenly, we kissed. I’d never kissed a boy before, but it felt safe that he was someone I knew from childhood, from my homeland where people ate moon cakes to celebrate, where they understood that the Money God controlled wealth, where they believed in good luck charms like the color red, and bad luck like the number four.

I felt the door in my heart that I’d locked had suddenly opened. The next evening, we sat on the beach together, the wind of the night blowing on my face, and he put his hands around my shoulder. We looked at the stars in the sky, bright and charming, like a Hollywood romance. He told me to close my eyes, and when I opened them, there was a ring on my finger. “What’s this? What’s this for?” I asked him.

“It’s my grandmother’s ring. Now, it’s yours.” He kept his charming smile on his face. I looked at the ring, made of gold. In the middle, there was a turquoise-colored jade. From the experience of living with my grandmother, who loved jade, I could tell it was expensive and meaningful. In my culture, jade means “Forever love.”

In between my journalism camp activities, we spent time together. Over the next few days, we swam in the pool, ate eggs benedict on the balcony, and watched Kung Fu Panda. We promised to love each other forever like the white cranes that mate for life. We promised we would never ever break up. We talked about marriage and future plans. We talked about China and the food we missed from home. If I hadn’t known him since I was five years old, I wouldn’t have believed what he said.

When my journalism trip ended, I flew back to my town in Northern California. On May 20th, Valentine’s Day in China, I posted his photos on my WeChat and Instagram, and I said, “I love you so, forever,” followed by a heart emoji. He responded, “You are my girl forever.”

At that time, I began to feel good about myself for the first time. I saw myself as successful in all I did: schoolwork, writing, music. With all the efforts I put into becoming skilled at my passions, I had begun to receive what I wanted—acceptance to a journalism summer program, first place in a music competition, the slow but certain publication of my stories in American literary journals. I was back to the girl who I was in China—the girl people believed in before I’d come to America. Now I was a successful young woman who had a boyfriend who loved me so much that he gave me his grandmother’s ring as a promise.

Three months after this relationship started, I received a photo on my phone. In the image, Rusal was in a hotel room hugging a young woman who had long blonde hair and Kardashian makeup. There was red lipstick on his neck. A friend of his had sent the photo to me as “a favor,” so I wouldn’t keep trusting Rusal. Apparently, Rusal had become a player of love.

For two months, I couldn’t get away from the image. It was my first relationship, and I experienced this terrible loss. I suffered different levels of sadness that involved the consumption of cheesecake, popcorn chicken, and cup noodles. All the shining points and achievements in my life felt suddenly wiped out. I started to question myself. Maybe I wasn’t good enough? Maybe I didn’t have the right body shape? Maybe my nails were the wrong color? It was foolish but it was also like a death, the first of many deaths that I was sure to experience in my whole life. They came to me all at once, and I was like the single flower in the grassland, suddenly wind blows, I was swinging but I still stood there and stayed strong.

But a few months later, I found myself on the award stage again, this time for playing zither. One young woman came up to me afterwards and said, “You played with such a true heart and real feelings.”

I realized then that I hadn’t lost anything. Nothing but some self-confidence, trust, and pride. Sure, my young heart had been broken, but I was still myself, and I had gained a story

 

 

As a freshman at University of Iowa majoring in creative writing and musical theater, Yuwei is a creative writer, musical theater actress, journalist, page editor, and professional Chinese Zither player. She is actively involved in school and enjoys joining the community. Yuwei is a professional Chinese Zither player, a 21-string traditional Chinese Instrument for almost 2000 years old, which she has done since the age of four and already passed Level 10 at 11 years old. She enjoys doing competitions and won first place in the National Chinese Zither Competition from 2009 to 2016. She also writes her own zither pieces included: Summer; That year, that river; Childhood; Homeland grassland, Homeland river, etc. As a member of the High School Music Collaborative and the leader of PLAY Chinese Ensemble, Yuwei enjoys using music to share the joy and happiness with other people in the community. Yuwei is a creative writer, even though English is her second language and she just came to America 3 years ago, she has already won the Scholastic Writing Contest, Bay Area Book Festival Writing Competition, and the Tri-Valley High School Writing Competition as the only double winner. She got the scholarship to study Creative Writing in CSSSA in the summer of 2019. She is also the page editor of Amador Valley Journalism class. She always tries her best to make the school and the Pleasanton Unified School District better as a leader in LINK, an active member in Pleasanton SIAC and a student representative in LCAC and DCLC. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, reading books and cycling.

If you’re one of the legions of high school students who have read Robert Frost’s classic poem, “The Road Not Taken,” you probably view it simply as a philosophical poem about making difficult decisions. Think again.

Many people are oblivious to the fascinating history behind this famous piece, involving the tale of two best friends that ultimately ends in one friend indirectly killing the other through this poem. Not quite what you were expecting, huh?

Here’s the poem for a quick refresher:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

 I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Without any further research and on the initial reading, this poem doesn’t seem particularly sophisticated. Put simply, it’s about the poet’s choice to take the less-worn road over a well-worn one, on a trip that he’s taking. If a little bit of a metaphorical magic is mixed in, it then becomes about the choice the poet has made to make a unique decision, over a choice that the majority of people would have made, in an important moment on his journey of life.

However, a little research reveals that Frost dedicated this poem to Edward Thomas, who happened to be his best friend and to have also been a poet and an Englishman. The story behind that friendship sheds an entirely new light on this poem.

Hold on, I hear you questioning, wasn’t Frost an American poet? So how did he have an English bloke as his best friend? Well, Frost began his journey as a poet while he was living in England, and returned to America shortly after the first World War.

Like any other best friends in the roaring 20’s, Frost and Thomas took frequent nature walks, where they would admire the beautiful English landscape and try to identify interesting birds and other fauna and flora. During these walks, the friends would choose a path at random to venture down, and being the person that he was, Thomas would be constantly regretful of the paths that they missed out on and often blamed himself for not finding any particularly interesting birds (this strange obsession will be explained later). As Frost once said, Thomas was “a person, who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other.”

On one particular walk, the pair were impeded by an aggressive gamekeeper wielding a shotgun. Frost, in true American fashion, bunched up his fists like a professional boxer and was fully prepared to start brawling with whacks and thwacks in a gun fight but ceased when he noticed Thomas hurrying away before the situation could escalate.

Afterwards, with Frost in the lead, the two friends marched to the gamekeeper’s house. Frost banged on the door, verbally assaulting the gamekeeper upon the door’s opening. The gamekeeper was probably mauled by Frost’s powerfully poetic voice, which prompted him to hide behind his shotgun again, but was too scared to point it at the fearsome Frost, so he directed it towards Thomas. Like any other sensible human being, Thomas engaged in a tactical retreat, but Frost firmly stood his ground yet again, like the Statue of Liberty standing against the dark depths of oppression.

After this harrowing experience for Thomas, he was deeply ashamed of having acted like a coward. On top of all this, the incident took place while World War I was being fought, and all of Thomas’ friends had gone to war. Additionally, at the time, Britain was advocating for “pal battalions,” which meant that the people who you grew up with, laughed with, played football with, gone fishing with, and shot guns with, would be guaranteed to be grouped together, and to fight and die together in the front lines. Thus, Thomas must have felt rather excluded and even more of a coward.

However, Thomas was an anti-nationalist. Although he often discussed politics with Frost on their leisurely nature walks, he was disinterested in the politics that started World War I and he despised the propaganda and blatant racism that were denouncing Germans at the time in Britain. He was more interested in enjoying the beautiful English countryside and the birds who called it home. In fact, he was even quoted as saying that his “real countrymen were not Englishmen, but the birds!”

Thomas proudly took a stronger stance against racism, violence and bigotry than before and, continuing the war analogy, he dug deep trenches and stationed plenty of machine guns in his fight against racism – similar to the trenches and machine guns that Thomas faced on the front lines. Wait … what was Thomas doing on the front lines?

Turns out Thomas had chosen “The Road Not Taken.” Even though he was an anti-nationalist and had two children, Thomas decided that the politics behind the start of the war did not matter as he had a burning desire to protect the beautiful artwork of nature against the foreign German invaders.

Before Frost sent him this poem, Thomas had initially planned to depart with Frost to New Hampshire in America to escape the war and begin a new life farming, writing and reading poetry with his bestie. It’s hard to imagine a more idealistic and pure life than being able to hang out with your best friend for the rest of your life and doing what you both love together, whilst surveying the beautiful rural landscapes.

Although to be honest, while things may have been different back then, going to live with your best friend seems a bit far-fetched. I’d understand the occasional couch surf, but actually moving in with your bestie shows just how close Frost and Thomas were. In fact, later in life, Frost reportedly said of all the people he had met, the only person whom he could truly call a friend was Edward Thomas. Therefore, Thomas’s decision to abandon all this after Frost sent him this poem undoubtedly demonstrates the power four five-line stanzas can have on an individual.

In fact, it was this poem that pushed Thomas off the edge to finally make a choice. After a full year of indecision, Thomas had to juggle the two ideas of whether he should emigrate to America with Frost or fight for his beautiful landscapes against the dreadful invaders.

Usually, when faced with a tough set of options, we will brood over it for perhaps a few minutes, maybe even a few hours, at most a day or a week. Sitting on the fence must have been uncomfortable at first, but excruciating after a full year for Thomas.

Frost, superhero-of-sorts, courageously swooped down and saved him by plucking him off the fence and setting him gently on one side, with his trusty side-kick “The Road Not Taken.” However, in reality, Frost had set his best friend on a metaphorical bear trap, which would cost Thomas’ life almost immediately, by a stray concussive blast wave from a shell, shortly after he was deployed in France.

There could have been no conceivable way for Frost to have foreseen such an event, and I’d imagine he was filled to the brim with regret for quite some time, always questioning himself about what if Thomas hadn’t taken “The Road Not Taken.”

Now, after all that, I bet your perspective of this poem that you thought you knew so well has radically changed.

 

 

David Lu is a student currently in his twelfth year at Pinehurst School from the North Shore in Auckland, New Zealand. He is currently taking computer science, literature, maths, physics and chemistry. Although his favourite subject is computer science, he thoroughly enjoys history. His favourite author and book series is Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

It wasn’t until I was nine years old that my dad finally let go of the handlebars. One second, his fingers were clasped so tight around mine they were turning white, and then the next they were gone––and I thought, then, that this was flight, all fast and light and airy: A feeling that wound up in your chest like thread, and slowly unraveled the farther out you got. The faster. The older.

I had checked behind me then, grinned at the man a couple yards down the pavement; “Look, Dad! I’m moving all on my own! Look, Dad! Do you see me? Do you see?” Turning back and checking, I was looking at him with my eyes open wide, feeling the wind bite into my scalp, my weak little wings outstretched. He gave me two thumbs up, nodded back to the road. I turned, still smiling, and ran right into the car parked up ahead, my hands held out to block the fall.

That was the first time I saw pain: It was in the raw skin on my knees and hands, in the stars that swam into my eyes, in the throb of my shoulder where my body had met gravel. And my father was right behind me, holding out a hand and getting me to my feet. Be careful, he told me. Keep your head up or you’ll fall back. Stay in your momentum.

And so a sore ten-year-old me climbed back onto that bike, with her shoulder bruised up and her knees skinned raw, the girl who wiped away a tear on the back of her hand and pumped her legs harder against the wind. A little of the flight had gone out of me, my hesitant wings drawn back. But there was my dad right behind me––farther out this time, still in sight.

I pedaled down the street, an eleven-year-old and her brand-new bike, and I rounded a corner and suddenly he was gone; stuck somewhere down in the middle of the road, trying to keep up with me. But he was getting old now, older than he was just a minute ago, and I could tell by the gray in his hair that he wasn’t going to catch up any time soon. So I turned my head, and I kept on pedaling. Everything counted on it. Stay in your momentum.

I was getting too far and going too fast. That worried me a little, because at twelve I used to worry a lot, that maybe my wheels would freeze up, or I’d hit a branch in the road; I’d already fallen once today, and once was plenty enough for me. But I kept on pedaling anyway––what else was there for a girl on a bike to do? ––and pretty soon, the house was gone too, and somewhere a couple miles away Dad was heading back inside now, leaving my training wheels out for the garbage truck. Training wheels that had been screwed so tight to my bike before, it had seemed almost impossible my dad could undo them. But he worked magic with a screwdriver, my dad.

I decided then that I wanted to go to Rome, on my beat-up bike and everything. I loved the coast and I loved stories, stories my father sang to me about gods and soldiers and Renaissance, stories he kept bottled up inside himself, stories he swore he never had time to write, and––wait. Where had he gone again? Hadn’t he just been right there? I shrugged off the uncertainty because I was thirteen, after all, and I was big enough to go on my own. You could see it in my voice, in my walk, in the newfound angles of my face: Maturity, fast-approaching.

Fourteen, and I had forgotten how my street looked. Fourteen, and my earbud wires got tangled up in the spokes of one wheel, but I got up after the fall, because the whole world was in reach. It blew out one tire, scraped up my knees, flecked a little blood into my teeth. None of it mattered as much as the coast. Not a single second. Fifteen, and the hum of another biker’s wheels sounded behind me on the pavement. I held my earbuds in my hands and looked at him, and suddenly I was sixteen and I was in love, and I was certain that the world had it out for me, clutching my earbuds and clutching onto the back of his shirt as he sped away. Nothing personal, he told me as I wept. We’re just on two different routes, you and me. You’ve got your eyes on Rome and I’ve got my hands in my pockets. Seventeen and I was mending from heartbreak, but the ocean was something that could be crossed in seconds. It didn’t even matter anymore, now that I was eighteen and my bike had gotten so bruised up it couldn’t stand itself upright on its two aired-out wheels, and so I kicked it aside and shrunk into the gulf, and there it was waiting for me: Rome, in my sights. A little piece of the world, a little piece of Renaissance, in my hands. Someday, I would find my way back, I knew it––but it would not be on the beat-up bike I had once ridden, seven years ago, with my father clutching the handlebars. I realized, then, wading through the cypress trees, that I had left everything behind me some couple continents away.

And now I stood, five-foot-six at eighty-one, on the coast of it all. I touched the dead space between waves, saw my own face reflected back at me, and thought: Sometimes I wish that I had fallen down more often, if only to make the trip just a little bit longer.

 

Karma’s literary journey began in the second grade with a twenty-page My Little Pony fanfiction. Throughout the years, her passion for ponies has declined considerably, but her love and exploration of writing has never ceased. She’s now a high school freshman in Cleveland, Ohio, and has been penning short stories, poems, and novellas for nearly seven years––though this will be her first publication. When she isn’t writing, she loves to cook, listen to music, and discuss Victorian literature.