Family Connection in a Teapot (The New York Times)
My Tibetan family has a long history with tea. With many of us still largely sheltering in place because of the Covid-19 epidemic, now is an ideal moment to connect over a cup…
Tibetan Death Horoscopes, Mothers and Daughters, and Legacy-Breaking (Catapult)
Standing next to my mother, I watched the flames leap up around the coffin and thought about my grandmother’s body inside, the death horoscope next to it. Had my grandmother been fated to have an unresolved relationship with my mother because of her troubles with her stepmother? Was I doomed to follow the same pattern with my daughter and carry on a struggle that had endured over three generations?
Travelers (Tricycle, Gulf Coast)
She stands and listens to the rain, her mind traveling back to the funeral high up in the Himalayas. Again she’s sitting in the altar room listening to the lamas chanting from The Tibetan Book of the Dead guide her grandmother through the journey between death and rebirth…
What My Tibetan Grandmother Taught Me About Lasting Love (Catapult)
My grandmother planned never to marry. I first heard this in my twenties, when I stayed with her in Darjeeling after graduating from college. I wondered if, like me, she didn’t trust marriage. Having seen my parents and most of my friends’ parents divorce, I’d made a pact with myself: I would never marry; I’d live alone with a dog by the sea and write…
The Open World (Shenandoah)
The long summer twilight filters through the leaves of the birch trees in the front yard, throws lacy patterns on the yellow walls of the bedroom. In a jar next to my bed, the fireflies my brother and I caught earlier in the evening crawl up and down the glass, their light gradually fading. The dormer window, an eye onto the open world, frames swallows winging past. Through the wall, I hear my mother crying, my father’s low tones…