When I was two, I fit perfectly in my mother’s lap. Her arms, it seemed, were built to cradle my sides like fortress walls, her hands crafted to fasten around my waist. On special days, her hands became instruments for teaching, looking glasses into the outside world. My mother would extend them out in front of me, a book nestled between the crooks of her fingers.
I remember how my mother would read the book to me: whispering its words in my ear, helping me flip its fragile pages. She was my translator, able to unravel new realms through her voice alone. The book, she said, was special: my grandfather made it. His watercolor paint strokes created masterpieces on each page, his handwriting like foreign text: polished yet unfamiliar.
When I was six, I found solace in my grandfather’s curled M’s and wobbly E’s. I valued his books like holy scripture, practicing their every syllable until the alphabet felt like home.
Ed-u-ca-tion, Pov-er-ty, Kind-ness.
Through every deconstructed word and strung together phrase, my grandfather’s books brought language to my lips.
That Christmas, when my brother was gifted his own handmade book, I pulled him into my arms. He didn’t fit like mom and I used to— his head got in the way. But I was his translator, whispering the words in his ear, helping him flip its fragile pages.
Ba-by Bro-ther, Fam-i-ly,
I-love-you.
My parents separated when I was fourteen. I still remember how their arguments ricocheted throughout the house, their words like stray bullets, with me caught in the crossfire. Even when all went quiet, the echoes of my parents’ heartache haunted the halls. I had long outgrown my grandfather’s books— he stopped gifting them to me every Christmas— yet I couldn’t help but read them whenever I heard gunfire.
The books were all I had. They were my best friend and my therapist: physical proof that someone still loved me, that life would carry on.
I could read in between the lines now: the books were no longer reading practice, but lessons. They offered glimpses into my family history, of the powerful women who sacrificed their callous hands at the sea to give me the life they could have only dreamed.
My Lola Rosalina, who knew war like I knew my alphabets, and taught me the power of education.
My Shosho Florence, who knew poverty like an unwelcome friend, and taught me the necessity of charity.
My mom, Lydia, who fashioned me from clay: the translator who once fed me perception.
Never forget the humbly bowed shoulders you so heedlessly stand on, my grandfather once told me.
In the wake of my parents’ divorce, my grandfather gifted me one last book. It had typed text and no watercolor paintings, a testament to his shaking hands. In it, he told me to take care of my family, to make them feel whole again:
Start with your mom. It’s not about you now. Try to imagine how she feels.
I hold her as she weeps.
What about your brother? He’s just internalizing all this. Will he talk to you?
I unlock his bedroom door.
After my father moved out, I reconstructed my definition of family from bullet casings and book pages. I learned to stop fearing beer bottles and quickly raised hands, and metamorphosed my mourning into love. I translated my mother’s weeping into wistful smiles, and my brother’s solitude into company. I laughed with them. I cried with them. I loved them.
By giving myself to my family, I brought love back into my home.
I am seventeen now, still a tireless translator. My mother laughs often and loves my warm embraces. My brother watches movies with me and tells me he loves me each morning. And we are happy, bound together by lessons learned from storybooks, more whole than ever.
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