dream notebook

outside our window in london are these big green leaves in the 5am soft morning blue light. when i see them i am, for a moment, five years old in hefei.

i am sitting at the window nook next to my ye ye and nai nai’s bed, boxed in its big rectangular mosquito net. i am drawing into my dream notebook, the one with brown sandy pages with a box for a sketch at the top and a few lines for words at the bottom. i pencil in a dream entry from last night.

i do not know where my grandparents are, perhaps my ye ye has just woken up and is sitting by his bed looking at me, or perhaps he is not in the room at all. why am i in his room?

but i know i must be up early because outside the window is painted by the soft blue morning light, with all those green leaves fluttering in the wind.

hefei comes with only one other memory, that time when my brother and i stole an extra green tongue ice cream (绿舌头, lǜ shé tou) when my ye ye was napping. but now is not the time for that. suddenly i am hot and sticky and feel the blessed relief of my dad’s air-conditioned car when he picks my brother and me up from his work, i feel it wash over me and i like it very much, i want to stay here in his car away from the sticky melty summer china air with the mosquitoes that give me hard lumps up my calves.

today we go and eat dim sum, and i don’t know if it’s morning anymore or what we eat or where my dad and brother are in this dreamlike memory but i know it’s time to eat dim sum and i also know this is where the experience ends, so i am twenty-one in the london bathroom by the window and i’m sure not even a single second has passed, but in that suspended singular moment my five-year-old self has made eye contact with me, pulling me into the air-conditioned relief of the car, putting his finger up to his lips, whispering: shhh it’s time to eat dim sum are you excited?

but it passes and i wash my hands and it’s too late to tell him i’d like nothing more than that.