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Kelsang: March 9, 1959

Nothing happened the day before my childhood ended. Everything seemed completely ordinary. We woke up to the early sunrise and marveled at the orange-streaked sky, veiled in a blanket of warm, pink clouds as we did our daily chores. Before breakfast, the whole city of Lhasa had awakened. Amma told me to feed the goats and milk them, too. By then it was time for my little brother, Lobsang, to head to school. So we sunk into our small ottomans and ate a hearty breakfast in haste, but delaying by talking to our heart's content. It was the same as every morning before had gone.

Lobsang walked to school, heading down the cobblestone path that led into downtown Lhasa, where the school was located. I never understood why Lobsang was able to go to school but not me. I asked Amma of this once and she just shrugged it off as though it didn't matter. But it did matter to me. I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand the meaning behind the swift curls and twists of our alphabet. I wanted to be able to record my life as I am doing presently. So, I gently repeated myself, a little louder this time. My query had hovered in the air for unbearable moments of silence until my mother inhaled it. As she let out a sigh, she replied, "We don't have enough money, Kelsang." She spoke tensely between her teeth. I knew better than to question her further. But still, it made little sense to me. After all, I was the oldest. Shouldn't I be just as eligible if not more eligible for an education?

While Lobsang sat around in a frolic all day, I was stuck in our small domicile, helping my mother with various odd jobs. The hill which our dwelling stood on top of was all I knew. It was my small world. It was a safe bubble. Some days, when Amma had left for the market, I would sketch. I knew it was the closest thing I could ever get writing, so I pursued it. I had been drawing pictures since I was three. As I matured from a seed to adolescence, I continued to sketch whenever I got the chance. Up until I was eleven years of age, I kept my drawings a secret from everyone, including my most trusted compadre: Amma. I would press an ink pen belonging to my brother upon a slip of fresh paper I tore gingerly from my brother's notebooks, cautious as to not reveal my secret with missing pages. That was how I drew. By the time I was caught, I had produced a plethora of aesthetic additions to my artistic portfolio. I kept each visual production stored away in a bag ensconced underneath my pillow. When I was eleven, however, my mother decided to upgrade our bedding. While I was doing my daily chores outside, my mother replaced our dilapidated mattresses with new, firmer ones. She had discovered my bag.

My mother abhorred the fact that I was drawing. She deemed it unsuitable for someone like me to be withdrawn from her family duties with hobbies such as sketching. How, she asked me, would drawing contribute to your husband's well-being? As I broke down into a fit of sobbing and begging for forgiveness, Amma tossed my beloved drawings, my years of hand work, into a small fire that was brewing for supper. The orange blazes danced a coryphée upon collision with the paper. Amma, seeing how much she'd hurt me, had covered her quivering lip as what were apparently tears slipped down her cheeks and ran away in shame. I managed to save one picture, despite leaving it scarred with soot-layered corners. Some may call it a miracle. But I call it what the drawing was actually depicting: a prayer flag billowing in the wind upon the Himalayan mountaintops. It became my symbol of hope.

After that day, Amma prohibited me from drawing and denied me access to any of Lobsang's school supplies. But every once in awhile, I was able to bribe Lobsang into giving me sheets of paper, one at a time. As for the writing utensil; well, I stole it. So on those sporadic occasions, I took the time my mother went to the market to carefully draw prayer flags of different designs in an array of locations. And for some reason, Amma never brought up the idea that I was drawing again.

But today was different. I didn't sketch as I usually did when my mother went to the marketplace. I gazed beyond the horizon, the purple mountaintops glistening in the afternoon sun. Earlier that day, I had been tidying up my mother's few belongings and found a grainy, black-and-white photograph of a young man atop the summit of a mountain, planting a flag into the icy sheet of earth. On the back of the photograph read a note: My unforgettable summit and partner, Tenzin Jangchup — 06.13.47. As soon as I recognized that Tenzin Jangchup was my father, I heard the faint tap of my mother's footsteps and stuffed the photo in my dress pocket and ran outside. And now, as I was staring at these mountains Tenzin had climbed, I wondered: what would my father have been like? Would he have been just like my mother; stubborn and traditional? Or would he have been laid-back and gentle? Secretly, I hoped for the latter. However, considering the few stories my mother told of my father, each ending with the sentence "Your father was a bad man" I found it hard to imagine him as a decent human being. But I saw the mountains staring at me in the distance, urging me to join them, and I realized I wanted more with my life. The hill I had stayed upon for as long as I can remember had, sure, protected me from the supposed dangers of the outside world, but it had also imprisoned me in a confined space when I longed to see the world. What if Tenzin Jangchup was a good man? Where was he now? Amma had always implied that he died when I was an infant, but I sensed that to be a lie. Then I snapped myself back into reason. If he wasn't dead, then where did he go?

I decided I had done enough thinking for the day and returned to preparing our supper, a chore which my mother had assigned to me before she went to the marketplace.

Sure enough, Amma returned with a wagon full of groceries and had picked up Lobsang along the way. Together, the three of us prepared our traditional Tibetan repast and ate it as any Tibetan would. Shab tra, rice, and tea. We chattered until our voices grew hoarse and then retreated to our beds for a full night of rest. Everything was normal. Or so it seemed.