Flotation devices

The storm was so bad the plane couldn't land. It tried to - for more than an hour it tried to, while passengers whimpered, gasped, prayed, heaved into their air sickness bags. I was sitting next to a small boy. He looked over at me and put his hand in mine. It felt fragile and cold, like a bird. I noticed my skin, dry and taught over my knuckles.

Everyone tells me I look exactly like my father, but my hands are my mother's hands. Hers are bigger, stronger, but I can see how mine were made using hers as a model. I see her in other places too - in my back and shoulders. I know I'm the spitting image of my father, but I'm my mother's daughter too.

My parents love me. Today, years later, while I pick fruit at the supermarket or slide something into the oven or straighten out my desk at the office I am often struck by this knowledge that comes out of nowhere and envelops me completely.

The very first time I tasted coffee was at my grandfather's house. We went to visit him and the next day I got up very early and he was already up. He was standing alone in the kitchen. He pulled out a chair so I could sit down and set a big mug in front of me. He poured boiling, frothy milk into it, from a battered metal pot. He added one large spoonful of sugar. Then, a touch of coffee, the black liquid barely coloring the white. I still drink it the same way.

There was a boy I liked in school, right at the time when girls liked boys and boys thought girls were gross. He had black hair and green eyes and wore heavy metal t-shirts. In the search for something to talk to him about I introduced myself to what is now referred to as classic rock. My preference for rock outlived my interest in the boy.

When I lived in Beijing I had a dear friend who was a DJ. He used to play whatever song my friend Mimi and I wanted, and we stayed out as late as my father would let me (which was never very late) dancing with abandon in a nearly empty disco in China in 1988.

Right away I loved going to work. The structure of it, its demands on one's character. I love getting up in the morning and walking outside in my pajamas to get the newspaper, the smell of the clean ocean air. I love glancing over the business section over my breakfast of toast and blueberries. I love showering and getting dressed and showing up and getting paid for something I love doing, which mostly involves expressing my opinion. I look at my paycheck and think, "Ha! What a deal".

To my complete surprise, I’m really good at this thing called marriage. I often get asked if I thought my husband was handsome the first time I saw him. What I thought, with a giddy, somewhat sick feeling, was "I love him". I loved him fiercely straight away and I still do, for the same reasons and different reasons, reasons I couldn't have predicted in that meeting room in Austin, Texas. I was 28 years old.

On the plane, with the pilot trying to land in the middle of that storm, I looked down at the San Francisco Bay and worried that the water would be really cold. I wondered if I'd manage to get out of my seat belt. If the cushion could really be used as a flotation device. It's funny how it's always the little things that matter the most.