Rooms for Tourists

I hear my mom calling out my name from the kitchen. 

“Coming!” 

Slowly moving out of bed, where I have been lying and dreaming for hours, I carefully take off my earphones and put them next to my bedside lamp in dimmed light. I look out the window next to me with only blank spaces in my head, waiting for all of my senses to adjust to this real world again — the fine sounds of tablewares clashing, sports TV shows screaming, and also the loud and clear 60s jazz music from another window across the street wafts to my ear. 

Holding on to the handrail, I slide to the kitchen, where I see that my mom is cooking us dinner in a new apron, while my dad is standing still next to her with a tomato in his left hand, staring at the TV screen that’s on the other side of the room. I chuckle to myself and walk toward them. 

Like always, my mom refuses my help, but I know she wants me to be there. So I lean against the wall and do nothing just like yesterday and the day before, watching her busily stewing some chicken and mushrooms. Peaceful, as if I am a part of a dream, the jazz music in the  background seems to echo through the house with no signs of stopping. 

When everything’s finally prepared, I see my dad turn off the television, along with the commentator’s sincere devotion, while I help my mom to set the table. As we settle down to dinner, we start to talk about which places we could go for the meteor shower tonight. My mom says we should go to the desert yet my dad votes for the cliff. Through mom’s tone of speaking, I can tell that she really wants to lie down on the softest sand on earth, so I betray my dad, who most likely has already guessed my side before I even speak.

He raises an eyebrow and starts to ask me about my health, my boyfriend, and my new apartment next to school. I answer his questions unhurriedly and patiently because I know he might not be able to catch every word. When I reach out for a fried dumpling, I can feel dad is watching me while resting his face in his hands, smiling, which makes me embarrassed every time he does this. Given this situation, mom is pretty straightforward to dad by rolling her eyes at him. “This is how I show my love to my daughter. I love to see her eat.” I remember this is how dad once explained this, but not this time, probably because he knows that we are already aware of the reason. 

A vacation in my family’s summer house is my best favorite time of the year. Spending time doing nothing while knowing there’s always someone to sit with, I feel so young and energetic. After cleaning up dishes, usually, we would go out and take a walk around the lake, which is located at the border of the desert. I enjoy watching those birds caressing their feather while floating on the water surface beneath the moonlight, which seems so dreamlike. 

Tonight, we have another plan. Lying down on the myriad of sand grains, I am surrounded by happiness. I don’t know for how long we have waited for the stars to fall, but by the time the meteor shower comes, it immediately becomes the only thing that I can see. Silence, and for a moment the only sound in the darkness is my parents’ breathing. The stars don’t stop; time stands still — feeling the warmth of my mom’s right palm and my dad’s left arm, I get lost in the night sky, wide-eyed gaze.

“Did you have a good time?”, asked the nurse, who is the only one I have seen for months, operating the equipment next to my hospital bed. I squint and smile at her, feeling that it is even too laborious for me to this now, 

“It was so real.”