Sunlit Dimples: A Mother's Journey of Light and Love
Bath, an ancient city founded in 43 AD, home to Britain's only Roman baths, and a place where Jane Austen lived for a long time.
©Jade Kayo Miki
I remember my mother telling me a story: when she was in the hospital giving birth to me, the baby cried so loudly, like a born commander-in-chief. The doctor came to my grandmother excitedly and said, "She's got those two!" My grandmother was so proud that she said to her friends and relatives, "has a son!" Little did she know that the doctor was talking about two dimples.
I lived with these two dimples on my face throughout my childhood. During Spring Festivals, adults enjoyed teasing children, and my smile became a source of entertainment for them. They would playfully pinch my cheeks, a gesture I didn't particularly enjoy.
At that time, I didn't think I was different from others. My mother knew that my child was a smiley, affectionate child with bruises, so she just assumed that she was being bullied, never realizing that my eyesight had dropped to 0.01. On the day of the checkup, the doctor was impatient with the large number of patients and said, "Your child is almost totally blind." Seeing that I was beside her, my mother suppressed her panic and quickly replied, "This is normal. People grow taller, and so does their eyesight."
For the next 10 years or so, my mom believed she was writing science fiction. She created numerous peculiar stories about how the white film on human eyeballs would progressively enhance their vision as they read more books. Midway through the narrative, she delved into martial arts, suggesting that clear vision comes at a cost. She proposed that in the future, when confronted with justice, one may not see it clearly but must feign ignorance.
With almost no eyesight, I cannot fully comprehend the sacrifices a woman makes when she devotes the most precious years of her life to caring for her nearly blind daughter. I have heard stories of aging ten years in a single night, and I have been told that if I cannot see, she cannot rest her eyes.
If there were a divine perspective in this universe, you would have witnessed my mother's transformation from a ballet dancer to a cab driver, shaving her head, gaining 20 kilograms, all to safeguard herself and her children by assuming the roles of both a mother and a father.
In order to prevent both the mother and daughter from being consumed by fear, and to shield her heart from being chiseled by sorrow, she transformed herself into the light of day. This is how "One Thousand and One Nights" came to be, how I came to believe the story, and how the warmth, kindness, and light of the day reflected on my foggy retina, leaving behind a sense of hope.
At that time, I didn't know that I would have a chance to see beauty in the future, to see the blue sky and white clouds of summer. I remembered being taken to a place by my mother, who simply said, "It's a beautiful day today. felt the warmth as light as a feather, smelled the fragrance from the sun on my clothes, and learned from then on that the name of a good thing was called the sun.
