My memories of my father are divided into parts and shares. Alive, and then dead. Healthy, and then helpless. And further back in time, the first and most division: Present and then absent; loving, and then indifferent (漠不关心的).

He used to be a good writer and loving father. When I was a 16-year-old girl, he was fired from his company, a public, gossip-based dismissal that he would spend decades refusing responsibility for. This was the first crack that divided my relationship with him into poles of before and after. To escape his shame, he pushed away those who reminded him of it, first divorcing my mother, then alienating (疏远) my sister and I.

As an adult, my relationship with my father was one of low expectations and high boundaries. He spent most of his time travelling. But when he died of heart failure in August, I was knocked off balance by the weight of the blow. I thought, after years of setting up delicate fences around our relationship, that I had already begun letting go. His death delivered a realization: despite years of analyzing his complicated love for me, there were pieces of my father I never understood—until I found my father’s notebooks in his cupboard.

In the notebooks, he often collected documentation: train tickets from Rome or a photograph of San Francisco’s Prescott Hotel. But what he was also doing was offering fatherly guidance, the kind I could only receive after he died. His life, in which what he had was never quite enough, was eventually exposed. In his final decade, he realized he had built a castle for himself upon sand and regret. Now in his entries, I hear his voice. “Debaleh,” I hear him say, using his pet name for me, “learn from my mistakes.”

I read these pages among my dad’s clothes, and wept. I hadn’t known that my father, too, lived with that familiar ache for new horizons in his heart, the one that can only be comforted by traveling.

My cousin is nine years old, a little bit fat and doesn't do really well at school. As the youngest in the household, she is heavily teased, and thus has developed some resistance and distrust towards adults, who usually don't put high hopes in her.

Yesterday we went to an art exhibition together. There were paintings from kids with disabilities. My little girl has keen eyes, for the paintings she liked most were also the best of the show. She also voluntarily helped to arrange the chairs and table for a sharing session, painted by herself alongside new friends while I attended the sharing, and cheerfully helped me to get my bag from another room, something that doesn't happen often at home as she's usually glued to her iPad.

We went to buy books together. I bought a book written by a mom telling about her journey with her autistic(自闭症的) son. On the bus back home, I briefly introduced the book to my cousin, and to my surprise she was truly interested. She kept asking me to tell more stories about this friend in the book who struggles with small things in life. This is the first time I've seen her so interested in a topic. Usually when she talks to me, she describes events at school and at home without a clear focus. I'm very touched that the life of an unknown stranger has found its way into this little girl's heart.

I'm very thankful for the power of books, for the beauty that my cousin showed to me, and for the time we had together. I pray that I can keep seeing clearly the wonderful things in her, so that whenever the not-so-kind world puts her down, I can remind her how truly wonderful she has always been.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave(咆哮) at close of day

Rage(怒斥), rage against the dying of the light

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail(虚弱的) deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors(流星) and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.