At dawn, my grandfather’s eyes are enveloped in silver mist. Burning atmospheres as he looks around his backyard of small effigies. Around us: dented tins, scarred lacquer, gouged wax faces on chairs. He has too much love for what others leave behind.

I don’t see him often. He’s gotten worse. Recently, he’s haunted by the afterimage of scarcity from island youth. Everything relinquished to become American. Now, the aftermath. On a walk through San Diego, he crumpled a straw wrapper and held it behind his back. When he thought nobody was watching, he released it; a speck of white escaping brown.

I propose a game of questions. Never one to turn down fun, he extends his peninsula smile and folds his hands, covered in pili nut patinas of self-repair. I ask if he knows my name. His eyes widen, crow’s feet crest.

*

My grandfather can’t drive. His church is around the corner. The echo of colonization. He doesn’t try to convert me, but pauses for me to say grace, like I’d never ask you to believe, but wouldn’t it be easier if you did?

He asks me to drive him to a priest-friend. He lowers himself into the back seat as if he’s holding a pot of boiling water. I drive slowly and carefully. Once in a while, stray facts bubble to the surface: Tito worked on the plantation—over there. No, not in the fields—the manager. I swear.

We pull on the church doors—bolted shut. My grandfather cracks up, his infectious Scooby-Doo giggles filling the empty lot. I laugh so hard I cry. A wind chime waking another wind chime.* On the trip back he forgets what we are laughing about, but we refuse to stop. 

*

In fourth grade math, I struggled with infinite remainders. That summer, my grandfather and I built lego racecars. I pushed them while he counted time, as if to say grandson, we have so little. Some shadows only know how to become smaller and smaller. Some are unshakeable. Sometimes, a difference. God knows they never taught us what to do with that.

*

Sometimes, small memories return. When I was a child, I played while he untangled the leaves of a loquat tree. I tripped, scraping my hands. He walked to me with his hands behind his back. He got on his knees. I watched, wordless as he pushed his breath into a flowerbud. It bloomed.

* borrowed from Vi Khi Nao’s My Ardent Love for the Pencil