My dear James, my dear Xiaoyang. It is Labor Day weekend again.

Labor Day weekend, we had always been busy on the way home, from Tokyo, from Milan, from Seattle, from Paris……….Our biggest worry used to be that you and your sister would need to adjust quickly from jet lag back for school, oftentimes starting right next morning. And this Labor Day weekend, I am here alone writing to you, my dear baby.

I am so sorry I haven’t written to you for two weeks. I thought I would do all I can to live your life, again and again. Day by day, frame by frame. So I can hear in my head your unique tone of “Baba” again, and again. Sister always calls me “dad”. But you preferred to call me “Baba” most of the time. The evening of July 9, 2020, I was asking you guys to tell me what you wanted for grocery shopping the next day. And you said, “Baba, can we get the peanut butter jelly packs? We haven’t gotten those for a while.” I didn’t buy them. I didn’t want you to eat the unhealthy snacks at midnights. What a fucking idiot I always am. James, I finally brought them to you, one year too late. And I ate them for breakfast. And I ate them at night.

A year ago, Mom told me she couldn’t look at her father’s pictures for two years after he passed away. Love hurts, my dear baby. I knew it is on me to record your beautiful life before it all fades into the distant stars. But when the tens of thousands of pictures we have for the days and weeks before all those Labor Days were coming, I was smashed into pieces. I lost all my courage to even look at them. I am sorry, James. I still can’t. Love hurts, Xiaoyang.

In those days, I know we have a lot of pictures in the country where the coronavirus originates. I know we have a lot of pictures in the country where the culture of afterlife anime is so sickening that you only watched them for less than two months, after school was closed because of the coronavirus. I know we have a lot of pictures in the fairyland of Swiss Alps. The four of us strolled in the little village of Gstaad, amidst the endless greenery, dotted by a few colorful houses here and there, snow peaks in the distance, gentle sun rays washing over us, morning breeze tickling us. It was a fairy. It was a place we said we would be going back. My James, my Xiaoyang, have you?

I know we have a lot of pictures in the California state park for the giant sequoia trees in the very north of the state, where we had to get up early to secure one of the 50 daily visitor passes. Where the living giants reaching for the sky, their audacity and tenacity making everything else in the world seem so tiny. The quiet in the big park of giant trees in the big mountains was unreal. We saw nobody else but a single mom, and her two little boys, one in a carrier, on a backpacking trip. It was also where I, the fucking idiot, started saying to you and your sister when I asked you to take a family picture, “Let’s take a picture together. This is the last time we are here together.” I would later explain that it’s mom and I that won’t be coming back, but you two might.

I know we have a lot of pictures in Ketchikan, Alaska, where we were just steps away from numerous salmon swimming and hopping upstream, their skins already turning grey and silver. And then we heard the story of salmon from the park ranger in the glacier park in Juneau, Alaska. Salmons hatch from eggs at the bottom of the glacier, in freshwater, high in the mountain, and then swim downstream into the ocean while they grow up. Through their short few years of life, they may swim to Hawaii or even Japan. But when the time comes, they would always swim back to the freshwater, and then upstream, back to their birthplace, to spawn and die. Their skin color turns from black to lighter and then brighter, until bright pink and orange right before their life ends. We all loved the story, don’t we, James? And in Skagway, the tour guide took us deep into the mountains of Canada. At one point, she pointed to way up there, close to the top of the mountain, with clouds floating nearby. She said, “Over there, just under the giant rock, there are a couple mountain goats climbing.” We saw them, with the help of her big binocular. I said to you, my Xiaoyang, “Goat. It’s you.” 

Oh James, my dear James. How I wish I am not such a coward to even be afraid of looking at all those pictures.

I miss you Xiaoyang. I love you baby.