It is summer again.  My report card shows that I am First of the Class.  Titi glances at it and says nothing.   No one cares about that except my sister.

Titi lets me go to Hong Kong for a week to spend my birthday with her.

To mark my achievement at school, my sister takes me to a store where there is a glass case with rows of gleaming fountain pens.  I choose a “Parker 51” in silver.  She has my name engraved on it in gold letters.  Maybe you will write a book someday, she says.

My sister is sentimental about birthdays as was our mother.   I do not expect a party.  She surprises me with a small party, mostly with her friends.

She is in a different place now.  She moved to Kowloon to be among our father’s relatives.   Like our mother, she has built an extensive network of connections and knows the where and how of so many things that I can only be amazed.

Someone says that our father and Linda are back in their old neighborhood.  He stays in his narrow world.  I have not heard from him, and I do not go there.   It is as though the time I spent with him happened by accident in another world.

Design with Pressed Flowers by Pat Jorge Kim