The Fountain of Youth

Orion

 My fourteenth birthday went down as possibly the best one.

For about the first eight years of my life, birthdays were terrible. My mom always agreed to throw a party as long as she controlled every aspect of it. Actually, she would throw me one regardless of my opinion of it. Every year she would buy a cake and some treats and stuff, but she didn't let me invite any of my friends. Instead, she'd invite her friends and tell her friends to bring over their sons to play with me. The thing is, all my mom's friends had sons that were all two feet taller than me and at least three years older than me. On my eighth birthday, Timothy Chou punched me and gave me a bloody nose. Mom stopped inviting Timothy's mom to any events.

From then on, I only celebrated my birthday in a quiet occasion, usually by indulging myself a little more. I asked mom once or twice if I could go out and spend my birthday with my friends, but she said I wasn't old enough.

Finally, for my fourteenth birthday, by some kind of incredible stroke of generosity or luck or craziness, my mom said I could go watch a movie with my friends. I'd nearly jumped with joy. I notified my friends immediately and felt the need to be crazy prepared, although I didn't.

I got to watch a stupid movie that was unintentionally hilarious, but the best part was wasting a ton of money at the starcade. I'd loved the starcade ever since the first time I laid eyes on it. In my spare time, I run over to Morrowbrooke and spend whatever spare change I have on me just for a few minutes of games. Val calls it an addiction, and Marina calls it an expensive habit, but I truly love being at the starcade. It's more fun with my friends, who are some of the most competitive people in this universe. Marina and I raced a ton, and I pounded her every time, although I think she was just letting me win on purpose because it was my birthday. I won a little doll with blue hair at an arm grabber machine for Marina.

After my friends left, I ran out of money for the starcade and walked back home. Mom was sitting at a table, sorting paperwork, and my 奶奶 (my paternal grandmother) humming this Chinese song while writing with a calligraphy brush.

"采蘑菇的小姑娘，背着一个大竹筐," my grandmother mumbled the words and notes under her breath. I recognized the song; it was the "Mushroom Picking Girls" song that the kids' choir sang for their performance. Val made me go watch it because she was a teacher's assistant for that choir.

My grandmother looked up and noticed me standing in the kitchen. Her hearing was going and she was becoming less aware of her surroundings.

"哦，你回来啦!" My grandmother exclaimed. Oh, you're home! "快来，快来！我要送你你的生日礼物." Come here, come here! I want to give you your birthday gift!

I smiled complacently and obeyed. As she grew older, she had these weird cravings/demands that were pretty much harmless. We found the best way to deal with them was to satisfy the demands. I know she's going to develop dementia or Alzheimer's disease, because all my other grandparents died of it, and my mom said that my dad's family had a long history of Alzheimer's, and so does hers.

I'm going to hate watching my grandmother wither into a hollow husk of a person, with a broken mind and no recollection of who I am when I talk to her. So far, it's not so bad. She only forgets things that aren't essential to her identity, like appointments, street names, and what she ate for breakfast. My greatest fear is that one morning she won't remember my name or recognize my face.

That's why I've decided not to have kids. I don't want them to see me die in such an undignified way.

My grandmother smiled at me through her foggy glasses and showed me the calligraphy on her parchment. I stared at the vertical lines of text, but it's kind of hard to read her calligraphy. She wrote the old fashioned kind of Chinese, traditional Chinese, but her strokes were so blended together that it was kind of like cursive.