I bought a few stickers from Portland as souvenirs: “Keep Writing and Never Give Up,” and “Keep Working On Your Craft” (or some variation thereof). Tim and I flew in to take care of loose ends. The flight was mercifully short; though I am partial to long plane rides, I was eager to descend. I bagged the window seat, leaning in while the red round disc in the sky remained subsumed by a dense, milk-washed underlayer.
Our Tiny Home came equipped with its own Japanese garden. Already the side street neighborhoods were in perfect bloom, a surplus of magnolias and white azaleas resplendent and eye-catching. As we ate our Chinese, I watched the potted Japanese maple in the yard catch the light. My fortune cookie pulled a fast one, arriving blank when I cracked it open. Behind the diminutive tree, bamboo reeds swayed winsomely in their industrial planter, as though teasing me about the mystery.
As for the rental unit, it was bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, a trait characteristic of the Portland natives’ homes that we encountered this trip. I see this as a good sign for our new place. Furniture packed and ready to go, we drove the ten hours while dreaming of Costco hotdogs. The apartment was charmingly familiar, like the epigraph of a book I was fond of and had read long ago. I set up the kitchen in high spirits while Tim ran to the store. How close to the center of it all we are again. How much what I had let go of, after yearslong duration and distance, had found its way back to me.
Danielle Shi 