The dog — a small, curly-haired terrier we were watching for one of our family friends — skittered across the garage floor. I packed my bags into my trunk. The poor thing, scared, probably thought it was getting abandoned, and so it did the only thing sensible to itself in that situation, which was to make a ruckus, yipping about. I kept trying to say that, no, my parents are staying, they were never leaving, but it was no use; he was still scared, desperate not to be left behind. It was a little silly.
Maybe I’m like that dog. More than I thought.
I’m almost about to drive back to university — down through I-29 until I hit Omaha, and then a brutal seven-hour stretch across I-80, covering the entirety of Iowa, before I merge onto I-94 and head toward Ann Arbor. In theory, I should be able to make the 11-hour drive in one day. In practice, I’m stuffing my clothes into my suitcase at 3 a.m. the night before: Should I bring back this sweater I’ve never worn once in the entire three years I’ve been in college? Why not. The more the merrier.
“One more afternoon,” I often find myself thinking as I’m looking for my cell phone charger at 3 p.m., and yes, dad, I know, I should have been on the road four hours ago, could you please just give me a break, but that’s all I wish for: one more afternoon to properly enjoy myself on my last day at home, to maybe pour out a glass of wine (now that I’m 21 and don’t have to pretend I don’t drink to my parents) and celebrate a little, to say a real goodbye.
I pass the basketball hoop on my way out. It’s still new to me, even though it was installed in 2018. I used to play basketball with my dog there in the summer, which is to say I would shoot around and he would butt and paw at the ball, generally being a nuisance, which wasn’t something I appreciated. I would keep him locked inside when I went, but then he would bark at the screen door until I relented.
I found out a couple of winter breaks ago when my dad called me, crying, that he was dead. Surgery complications. It was the only time I had ever heard him cry. I had to drive to college days later — down through I-29 until I hit Omaha, across I-80, then I-94 to Ann Arbor — and figured we would get a new dog when I got back. Considering my father is retired, I honestly didn’t think he had much else to do.
We haven’t. It’s been several years. His food bowl was still in the kitchen corner a year ago. I haven’t checked since.
I shot around on that hoop again last summer. It felt too quiet without him there, generally being a nuisance. I was hitting my spots more than usual: from the free throw line, a baseline jumper, but it didn’t feel fun. Too much was missing. I haven’t really touched that hoop again.
His body is rolled out in the veterinarian’s office; he has a scowl on his face. I wish I didn’t look. We had the option not to look, for the dog to be cremated, but I was too curious; now, it’s all I can remember about him. That scowl.
Regardless, I’m on my way. The road has a funny way of working: It always comes at the beginning of things and at the end of things. It is one of the only times in my life where I feel at peace.
I think my 8-year-old self and my father, when we first immigrated from China, must have driven along I-80 from O’Hare on our way towards home — the same road I’m on now. I wonder what he thought, driving through Iowa — through the Great Plains, miles upon miles of farmland — for seven hours. We didn’t even know English back then, but there he was, driving westwards, towards the setting sun.
The Chinese word for home is 家。The Chinese word for family is also 家。He’s driving westward with the distinct knowledge of leaving a familial lineage tracing back 1,100 years in China, but he still says, “开回家” — to drive toward home. I suppose the word for someone who is family is 家人: literally, 家-person. It’s a frustratingly recursive definition. The only person related to me by blood in the entire Western Hemisphere is my father, but I still call my rented house at the university home. I suppose this would make all of you my family.
I asked my dad if he was happy here, in America, a couple of days ago. We were in Pizza House, out of all places, at 2 o’clock in the morning; my parents had come to visit the school. He, of course, said yes. He generally likes it more, before asking me why everyone was wearing green. “St. Patrick’s Day,” I said. He said he liked green. The Statue of Liberty is green. “It used to be copper,” I said, “before it rusted.”
Maybe that’s why he liked our dog so much. I learned English well because I was young. My dad never fully did. He tried, he took community-college classes and read books and did all of that and really tried, but he couldn’t speak English at a fluent level. But the dog understood him. He didn’t need perfect English for him. It knew regardless.
He then asked me if I was happy here, in America.
I actually half wrote another article about this for this edition, about my anxiety disorder, and it had all the horrible things I’d come to expect: The semester I had finished with a 1.31 GPA (sorry Mom, sorry Dad, that this is how you’re finding out) when I was regularly vomiting in my bathroom from the stress and nerves, when I had compulsively stay up until 6 o’clock in the morning due to mania. I stopped writing it because I realized that I hope you never know what that feels like. I hope you have never lost your mental autonomy in that way. There’s a specific kind of horror to watching your life crumble apart, slowly, while you’re largely not strong enough to do much about it. I hope you can never relate. I hope life treats you gently.
Still, I drove back home. The semester ends and I, despite everything, get to keep going.
I-94 until Chicago, across I-80, then up through I-29 until Sioux City.
Just one afternoon, I remember wishing. One afternoon to move through the mountain of homework I had, to call that one girl and apologize and make everything okay again, to clean my room, to get out of bed. One afternoon and I could fix my whole life.
But I always leave too late, late enough to where I ought to stay a night along the way — always at this Holiday Inn in Davenport, right next to the Mississippi River. It happened out of chance, then kept happening, and now it’s become something of a ritual. I always get there past midnight, not checking in immediately, but pausing to watch the river flow. Me, in some Holiday Inn parking lot, watching cars go over the bridge, over the river, into Illinois.
On some other night, in someone else’s driveway, that one girl asked me, in the passenger seat of my car, if I was religious. I’d said, “Well, it’s complicated.” She was Christian; I definitely wasn’t, nor did I believe in any other deity, but I’m religious. I said that we were more alike than different in this regard, but I’m not sure she believed me. She was disinterested afterwards. I thought maybe it was some kind of test, and I had answered wrong.
But I believed in heaven. I think heaven is this Holiday Inn in Davenport, right next to the Mississippi River, just past midnight, when everyone else has gone to bed. At a Holiday Inn, of all places; things have a strange way of working out. I’m not sure I would like heaven if it was some kind of paradise, but I liked watching the cars cross over the bridge, over the river, into Illinois.
In some ways, I miss all of it: the vomiting, the late nights into early mornings, because in between those things was the way that the sun rose at 6 a.m. and how the shadows fell through the window blinds like god putting the finishing touches on the day. I wish I knew how good it was then.
Give me one more afternoon to go back, I’d say, and I won’t be scared anymore. Our 20s are a decade of goodbyes. People who were once immutable constants in my life slip out like nothing was ever holding them, and I’m not sad about it if you just give me one more afternoon where all I can say is, god, I’m so glad this happened, to drive around town properly for the last time, to look you fully in the eyes. I’m so sorry that I was a coward enough to never be able to do that for you.
I realized a funny thing as I arrived in Ann Arbor this January. I had gotten into town around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and, well, classes didn’t start yet and the newsroom hadn’t started production, so I inadvertently bought myself an afternoon, after all this time. I unpacked, washed my sheets, and well, I had internships to apply to, books sitting on my shelf that I desperately needed to read, and my room, as always, was a mess, with clothes scattered around the floor like a pile of flowers. But, for that one afternoon, I just sat on my porch, watching the people go by.
Statement Deputy Editor Darrin Zhou can be reached at darrinz@umich.edu.