I knew no electric lightings
The first eight years of my life
Growing up with my grandparents in their one-room village house
Nestled in China’s pine forest mountains, too insignificant to be on Google map.
After dark, Grandmother brought over our carved wooden kerosene lamp
To the center of our brick and mud family bed covered in thorny bamboo skin mat.
Sitting around the tiny flickering pea-sized flame, we slurped our millet soup dinner,
Our shadows dancing on the bare sod walls.
The dancing shadows spooked me
But holding the warm bowl full of hot millet soup comforted my soul
It filled my longing stomach with the enticing hot soup
For starvation was pain.
I wrote my homework on my knees by the comforting kerosene lamp.
Looking up, I gazed at the tiny flickering yellow flame
Admiring the brave little light broke the pitch-black darkness.
It brightened my spirit.
At age eight, darkness started living in my heart when I was taken to the big city
Despite seeing and living with the very first electric light.
A 15-Watt naked bulb hanging from the ceiling
Inside my parents’ two bare-walled apartment in the blue-collar dirt yard.
On October 1, the birthday of China’s Communist government,
I saw my very first magic electric lightings:
A single long string of bulbs in bright red, yellow, blue and green
Hanging above the iron gate of Heavy Machinery factory where my mother worked.
Coming of age, I escaped the darkness and entered the wonderland
Of America, where bright Christmas lights shine.
My heart singing in joy, my mind in awe
Thanking God for my new home country, beautiful America.
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