Stars and Scars

Today I was a small child. My mother taught me to weave and fed me small candies as I watched. I sat in the sunshine playing Uno with my sisters and the youngest obviously cheated. She bent the rules and her cards and the mat we sat on as she wriggled and squirmed in delight.

We played football in the mud and got ourselves filthy before each of us was sent off to bathe. We clambered out of the shower and immediately started to play again, before our Mother called us back into the house to eat. We sat with legs sprawled slurping up noodles and each of us splattered our shirts with yellow sauce. I ate with my fingers and licked each one happily to savor every moment of flavor. Then we ran back down the steep driveway to find Da Phoam and To Phay to play. We gathered in a garden and pretended to be animals of every type. First, we were elephants with bellowing trunks, then monkeys scampering up all of the trees. Then we were chickens and dogs and lions and frogs and many other animals I didn't know the name of but still pretended to be, running around the dirt and clambering on all fours.

Then we played a little duck-duck-goose and hand-clapping games as a grandmother silently looked on. She sat with her loom, weaving a bright blue shirt and her husband made fun of my skirt as it kept falling while chasing the other children around. We tired of our frolicking and came back to my house, where the older children were playing Uno once more. Each of the toddlers sat in the lap of an elder and we played until the sun finally set.

Then I say on a blanket in my Uncle's company, watching the moon rise and the birth of the stars. I asked, in wide eyed wonder, the names of the constellations in Karen and he brought out his grandfather to teach us. We sat drinking tea and stargazing for what seemed but a minute but soon I was being told it was time for bed.

So we climbed back up the driveway and I changed into pajamas before saying goodnight to my family and lying down in bed.

I hope tomorrow morning that I don't wake up as a 20 year old again. I like being this small very much.