Summer is officially over and the days are already getting cold here.

Just two weeks ago, I clearly remember sitting in the driveway, feeling the breeze flowing over my skin strangely and perfectly.  Watching Amy and the kids biking around the cul-de-sac isle like a carousel.  My son, with his slightly oversized helmet and bicycle, zig-zagging across the lawns with  determination and grace.

I wondered about the green trees and the baby blue skies.  Specifically about our species’ enjoyment of such colors in nature.   Told myself that I don’t like it because it is pretty, but rather it is pretty because this is what we land animals have adapted to liking.  Or something.

I finished reading my book (Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse) about the hyperbolic aftermath of the end of the world, and the strip club economy that would revive it.  The recurring themes that I like most about post-apocalyptia are how the broken gets used anew and the nostalgic rediscoveries.  Naked dancing girls aren’t bad either.  In print too, oddly enough.

For the past month, I’ve been rearranging one of the basement rooms into a study of sorts.  Lining the walls (more like one wall) with books I want to read and books I’ve read.  Putting keepsakes in semi-indestructible plastic containers from Target.  Old floppy disc games and role-playing rulebooks, faded painted figurines and newsprinty comic books (“Now only 35 cents!”), K-pop CDs and Corean DVDs.  Things I may never use  again, but can’t quite let go of either.  Just in case one of my mental batteries needs a jump start from the past.

While reorganizing my bomb shelter of the soul, I found little treasures like personal cards, writings, and letters, some from my brother two decades ago, a couple from patients (Silvia a.k.a. Terminal Girl, and her mom, another from a Chinese patient), but mostly from many of you years ago.  I never reciprocated a single card (sorry!!), but I did keep them all.  Now preserved in coffin-shaped bins.

“What’s this?” Sun Su asked picking out a box with an intriguing maze design.

“Oh wow.  This is my electronic Dungeons & Dragons game.  You had to map this invisible maze to find the treasure while avoiding the dragon,” my excitement reversed polarity as I replaced the rusty 9-volt battery.  “The battery compartment is fried, it doesn’t work anymore.”

Sun Su used the wall pieces to form numbers and letters instead.

“Why is this here?” my little girl asked of the large table in the middle of the room.

“This used to be our old dining table.  I dusted it off and now we can play games on it, or draw, or study, or –”

“Or  pray to God,” she said while readjusting the witch hat that she was inexplicably wearing.  (It didn’t come from my room.)

“… Sure, that too.  Or we can just read in peace down here,” I finished.

“What’s peace?”

“Peace is … when everything is calm, and quiet … and just right.”

“Hmm,” she just smiled and rested her head.

Also, Happy Chuseok (Corean Thanksgiving)!