In Another Life

 Last night at language exchange, we were answering some icebreaker questions (I love icebreakers). I ended up telling them a bit about life growing up in the US, and it struck me once again how it is such a completely different lifestyle. 

I told them about my dad building our house, doing most of the work himself. At a young age my siblings and I helped paint trim or collect fallen nails. I climbed across the slippery steel roof on our two-story house to hand tools to my dad who was working on the swamp cooler (in retrospect, was that a good idea???).

We dug stones out of the ground and hauled them back to our place to make a retaining wall in our yard (you are allowed to gather a certain amount of rocks from national land for personal use). When I wanted to make a garden, my dad took me to the local rodeo ground to pick up old manure which we carted back and tilled into our weak shale soil so the vegetables would have the nutrients they needed. It was a fairly successful garden, too, especially the carrots. We won’t talk about the lettuce that went to seed and blew all over the yard. We had tiny lettuce sprouts springing up everywhere. 

Riding home on the tram, memories of my former life flashed through my brain. Blizzards. Snow ice cream. Mountain hikes with our dogs. Raising pheasants. Driving on icy roads and skidding through stop signs. Swimming in Grape Creek. The occasional raft trip. Killing scorpions with a flip-flop. Learning to drive stick-shift in a dented white beater. Cutting up deer meat to stock our freezer. Picking blackberries and staining our hands red. Falling asleep in a field under a meteor shower. 

As I rode the tram, checked Discord, and ran my fingers through my humidity-frizzed hair, I realized I’m another person. I’ve slipped into this life which is completely different but also good.

Now I take ferries in between skyscrapers. I can switch from a tram to a bus to the MTR and then hop in a taxi. I can slip into a cha chaan teng, order milk tea in Cantonese, and not flinch when asked to share the table with strangers. There’s a festival every weekend, a concert, a gallery. Always a new bar to visit, a new restaurant to check out. Beaches. Hiking with monkeys and wild boar. Let’s not forget about the egg tarts. 

People often ask me which place I like better, the US or Hong Kong. My answer is always “both.” How can you even compare? The problem with living two lives is that while grateful for one, you always miss the other. And no one else really understands what you’ve left behind. 

The answer? Live in the moment and be grateful for the life in front of you. And when you have the chance, eat the egg tart.