I remember: I like to walk through wet fields alone, or to stop at the eastern most tip of the rice-patties to watch the hunched hats thrash at the 2-inch plants, or to await my mother's arrival from the nearby village to purchase soybeans for tonight's supper, and I like to be with people who smile without teeth, and sing without knowing the words; and I know that tonight, the moment my eyes grow tired and I am unable to see past my hand, my mother will retreat to her room and sing a song that she has never sung to me, a song about the Year of the Boar, 1971, the year she had a daughter and not a son, an unwelcomed omen. I remember I liked to hear my mother sing.