Chapter 9: Visions of Tomorrow

15.

My mom was exhausted from crying.

I hugged her and softly told her stories.

I told her about the surrender of the enemy, about the celebrations in Times Square at the end of the war.

I described the confetti floating down like snow, strangers hugging and dancing in the streets of Manhattan, that electric moment when the world seemed to breathe again. I told her about the heavy snow in the Midwest, about the smoke over the Mississippi.

And about moving out West, starting businesses.

Electric lights and telephones, televisions and computers.

Smartphones and tablets, towers so tall they disappeared into the clouds.

When I ran out of words, I grabbed some paper and started drawing for her.

I drew a big American flag.

I drew rockets flying into space, drew microchips that could store all the world’s books, drew trains running underground.

My mom sat at my side like a child learning to write, eagerly listening and watching me draw.

I gestured and explained, and she did her best to imagine.

To imagine all the things that were ordinary to me, but she’d never seen.

When she truly couldn’t picture it, she’d just smile and say, “Good, really good.”

There was too much emotion in her eyes.

I couldn’t fully understand it.

But I wanted to cry, I felt such regret.

Regret that I couldn’t really let her see the America that would come after.

If I could’ve handed her a tablet or let her feel the rush of the city at night, I would have. All I could do was hold her and promise her that, one day, her pain would not be forgotten.