You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.

Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei