Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013 - (Page 44)

creative minds imagine Essay Contest Thank you to all who entered our fifth annual Creative Minds Essay Contest! Entries this year were remarkably diverse, coming from writers around the world ranging in age from 8 to 18. We are thrilled to announce the winners here. Our Creative Minds Fiction Contest is now open through March 15, 2013. Read submission guidelines and enter online at www.cty.jhu.edu/ imagine/guidelines/contest/creativeminds.html. First Place Mother, I Have a Confession to Make Dear Mother, Although we’ve grown closer these past few months, going on long walks together and developing a whole language in a glance, I haven’t been completely honest with you. And it’s not that I did anything bad; I just didn’t want you to worry. You see, I know you’ve been concerned; everyone’s been concerned. “How do you feel about moving to Shanghai? Do you like it here?” They mean well, of course, but that’s like asking students “Do you think cheating is morally wrong?” You just can’t give a wrong answer, even if it’s the truth, I can’t say I hate living in China with all my guts and some of my heart, because how would they react, the people who’ve lived here for years and call it home? But it’s okay: I can learn to get used to the constant wail of car horns, even at midnight; I can learn to tolerate the close proximity of just so many people, or at least, ignore it. I can learn to counter rudeness with rudeness, politeness with a genuine smile, to be ever vigilant for tricksters and con men, bargains and subway stops. I can learn to put the town I was just beginning to love—not simply like, but the intimate love that comes only when you learn the labyrinth of streets like the halls in your home—to the back of my mind. I can learn to forget those wide, cool halls filled with the incessant ticking of clocks that never ran in sync, a rhythm of life even through the empty darkness of 2 a.m. (yes, mother, I’ve been up that late). Is that why we only have one clock here, in our new home? There’s only a single tsking voice reminding us of the passage of time, not the multitude drumming the seconds into our subconscious, a waterfall of clicks sending the glacier of time lurching ever closer. Ever since Evan graduated and left, left the old house for college, you’ve bent all your effort on one thing: keeping this family together. Actually, you’ve done it for much longer; but with long, empty days and increasing years, it’s weighed on you, hasn’t it? Almost twenty by Yvonne Ye years of a driving need to provide the best for your children, but now that it’s running to an end, you’re floundering. Because in two and a half years, when I vanish like a wraith, it’ll all be gone, won’t it? A vacuum of twenty years, and you’ll be left wondering: where did all the time go? So, although I don’t think you realize it, you’re beginning to cling. And I don’t mean that in a maudlin, desperate, cliché-hang-off-someone’s-arm kind of way, I mean the gentle but insistent way cobwebs cling to a curtain, or a strand of hair to your sweater: you shake it and shake it but it won’t let go, not until you reach two fingers and carefully pull it off. You’re a clever, well-read woman. I’m not going to say that you’re clinging to the past. But no matter how hard you try to hold this family together, wait up on dinners or move across oceans, eventually, it will drift apart. I know why you have every weekend planned for another excursion into China’s cultural countryside, I can understand why you’ve filled in all my school breaks through next year, but mom, you have to stop trying to hold time like this. You’re taking it by the throat and wringing every last second you can out of it, but not all the minutes you’ve fought for will come out the way you want them to. That’s the unfortunate truth. I’m not writing this letter to tell you to let go; I’m not writing this letter to guilt you into letting me go on that school trip to Spain in May instead of Zhangjiajie with you and Dad. I’m writing this letter to tell you, in the gentlest way possible, that your efforts are superhuman, Herculean, motherly, but in the end, they’ll dissolve, like cobwebs in the sun. Everything disappears, says Emerson. The noble act is in us trying. No, I’m writing this letter in hopes that you might, some sorrowful day, read it, and not tell me what your eyes have seen, but take the first step away. We have grown close; and in all the bridges I have left after they burned in the friction of crossing the Pacific, yours has 44 imagine Jan/Feb 2013 http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/creativeminds.html http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/creativeminds.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
The Week I Turned Green
No Turning Back
Landsat: A Continuing Legacy of Earth Observation
Sensing Danger
The Black Gold Miners
Cleaner Water, Brought to You by Sunlight and Science
Journey to the Frozen Continent
CTY Paleobiology
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Innovation in the Real World
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013