Kaohsiung

The airport was so familiar, the smell of pollution and cigarette smoke that hit me the moment the automatic doors yawned open even more familiar, and the language--the beautiful, careless sounds of Taiwanese--most familiar of all, resurrecting the bittersweet half-faded memories of another life. I'd spent so many months here before, but now it was four years since I'd last seen this place, this city, since I'd last smelled the thick blend of industrial chemicals, moped coughs, run-down cars, thoughtless construction that formed invisible clouds for us to push through as we walk on sidewalks and across streets where the cars never stop for people, not even for children.

And that was just the city. When the car pulled in at last to my grandparents' building, all four floors of it, I could feel the little child who sits, always, in some forgotten chamber of the mind begin to cry, because I was not a child anymore as I stood staring at this building which I would never again skip into, never again play fishing in with stuffed animals, never again...

The next morning proved to be another test, feeling like a child again amidst giants.