Autumn Weather Report Brynn Nguyen
September 16 The white oak warns me that my hair is going to fly before the wind even hits me. It seems that the greenery is the preferred target of the wind, and then my notebook, and then me. My paper rustles in reaction to the sound of the green leaves whooshing around me before dropping down gently. A tree is made of many different branches, leaves, and twigs, but it moves as one being at the behest of the wind. And this tree isn’t alone. Accompanying it is an entire forest leaning to and fro. Their bending bark forms look like seaweed reaching from the bottom of the Minnesota lake my dad used to take us to when the weather was favorable. The weather those days was similar to that of today: warm with a blast of wind that would cause the surface to ripple so that I wouldn’t be able to see the fish underneath. If the trees are seaweed, and the wind is the current in the water, then what are we? Perhaps we’re the broken beer bottles that cut my brother’s feet, or the dropped sunglasses, phones, and fishing poles that are now submerged in the sand. Not born among these seaweed trees, but here because we dropped in and decided to stay, like how my father dropped his only two children and decided to stay in Vietnam. Just for two years. We’re here resting in
the damp grass, judging the weather and squishing the bugs that come near. Perhaps it’s ignorant of me to believe that the trees are warning me to watch out for the wind when they may, in fact, be pushing me to leave. Maybe I am not welcome. Maybe they yearn for me to go. Or maybe the trees aren’t seaweed. Maybe it’s simply a windy day. September 24 Speaking with my father on the phone, he commented on the blue sky above. “It looks like a beautiful day,” he said in a way that’s meant to make me feel good. He was right. It did appear to be a beautiful day, but what he could not observe was the cold bite in the air that was both crisp and painful. He could not observe the goosebumps on my skin as I hurried to my physical therapy appointment at the University hospital, passing students in winter coats. What my father could not observe was that those pretty, wisp-like clouds were maturing into an overcast that would rain a few hours later. An overcast similar to the sadness I feel when I think about how my father can’t even observe the young woman I am growing to be. I need to stay for another two years. I am no longer the ten-year-old I was when he found his new home. In her place, the spitting image 17
