the multicultural issue || of comets, of dream catchers, of shape-shifting shadows
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
Of Comets, of Dream Catchers, of Shape-Shifting ShadowsAuthor(s): Virgil SuárezSource: The North American Review, Vol. 286, No. 6, The Multicultural Issue (Nov. - Dec.,2001), p. 9Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25126659 .
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NAR
VIRGIL SU?REZ
Of Comets, Of Dream Catchers, Of Shape-Shifting Shadows
Las cometas y el destino, my father called a certain bright
light in the Havana night sky, when I was a child and he
carried me home from a neighbor's house where I had fallen
asleep watching television, or listening to the Sherlock Holmes
radio hour, or when he took me downtown to visit the Chinese stores with their porcelain, lacquer-colored Buddhas, their big
round bellies, their silk-stitched clothes, pearls, onyx-eyed
tigers and leopards, a tank of golden veil-tailed goldfish, my father's liking of their kites, which hung from rafters,
"Cometas," "Generales," &nd "Emperadores," as they called
these kites everyone knew the Chinese crafted from bamboo, rainbow-colored onion-skin paper and strings, cut-out designs
of dragons, birds, lions?my mother said my father was a kid at thirty-three?he loved all these things, their shine, glitter,
the way that, if you turned just right, those sitting statuettes
caught the light, a glinting that followed you as you walked down
the street. While he walked with me in his arms, my father
pointed to the night sky, the shiny stars, called them names
I could never remember. Once, he brought home a kite with a skein of waxed string, and we went to the street to fly
it. I watched my father run down the street as the wind
caught the paper and set the kite flying. It flew straight up,
lifting with it its long tri-colored string-paper tails. It soared.
And as I ran after my father, he laughed, let go more string.
Soon the kite was so high it no longer looked so big, so pretty, and my father let me hold it steady. I could feel its power
tugging at my hands, fingers, the way something you love pulls so.
November-December 2001 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 9
This content downloaded from 62.122.77.52 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 03:45:21 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions