Cold Enough for Snow

by Jessica Au

asked my mother what she believed about the soul and she thought for a moment. Then, looking not at me but at the hard, white light before us, she said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing, just series of sensations and desires, none of it lasting. When she was growing up, she said that she had never thought of herself in isolation, but rather as inextricably linked to others. Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner.

But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere. She spoke about other tenets, of goodness and giving, the accumulation of kindness like a trove of wealth. She was looking at me then, and I knew that she wanted me to be with her on this, to follow her, but to my shame I found that I could not and worse, that I could not even pretend. Instead I looked at my watch and said that visiting hours were almost over, and that we should probably go.

Back then, I took everything seriously. I studied hard because I genuinely believed it would serve a higher purpose, and I liked the idea of living according to a certain strictness or method. I wanted only to master one thing well in my life. I worked at the restaurant the same way.

I had the vague thought I had been taught somehow that the best thing was still to be desired, even if you did not desire, even if you did not much like the person who desired you. Where I had learned this, I did not yet know.

My lecturer had said to us once that parents were their children’s fate, not only in the way of the tragedies, but in many other smaller, no less powerful ways as well. I knew that if I had a daughter, she would live partly because of the way I had lived, and her memories would be

my memories, and she would have no choice in that matter. When we were younger, my mother had regularly read to us from a book of Japanese fables, having saved nothing from her own childhood.

After a while, I was no longer cold, but only very tired. I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them.

My mother looked at me and smiled, as if she was simply happy that we were in each other’s company, and to have no need for words. We had said, it seemed, so little of substance to each other these past weeks. The trip was nearly ending, and it had not done what I had wanted it to.