On Thriving
A Picture Letter for J
My dearest, when I first saw you on the ultrasound, you were a little minnow. Even though I couldn’t feel you move, your heart pulsed black and white like a beacon.
Tiny and helpless, you needed me.
It was then that I knew that I loved you.
When you were born, you had so much hair, wild and tangled as seaweed. You were so light in my arms, a little bubble, a swirl of water. I knew I would do anything to protect you.
As you took your first steps, I promised that my love would follow you wherever you went. Part of my love was the stories I told you: the hero with a crystal sword who fought his way through a dark forest to defeat monsters.
I hoped to strengthen you with this truth—that light will overpower darkness.
In my childhood, I heard many stories. The ones I loved best came from your Ojiisan’s little story book, Once Upon a Time in Japan. These stories were filled with unlikely heroes: Momotaro, the Peach Boy, and Issunboshi, the One-Inch Samurai.
I loved these stories because they told me that even though I was small, I could be brave.
When I was your age, I moved to Worthington, Ohio with your Ojiisan and Obaasan. I was one of the few Asian children in my third-grade class.
Before that time, I didn’t think I was any different than my other classmates until the teachers and children began to ask questions. I learned a lesson that was different than the one in Ojiisan’s book. My classmates and teachers taught me that being Chinese and Japanese was a problem.
I changed so that teachers would help me and children would be my friends. I stopped correcting people when they said my name incorrectly. I asked Obaasan to pack sandwiches instead of her delicious homemade fried rice.
After a while, I started to wish that I looked like my classmates. I wished that I was white.
That’s when I began to disappear.
But, in my mind, I began creating a new world. In the stories and poems I wrote, I faced monstrous creatures and traveled to fantastic places. My words were alive, pulsing with a golden light.
That’s how I survived childhood.
That’s what helps me thrive now.
Sometimes, the stories we need are not myths or ones that our mothers tell us. They are ones that we see in nature. They are a way of understanding ourselves in the bigger world. They help us not disappear.
Once, in the 1970s, Asian carp were brought to America.
For a while, the public was happy with the carp. The fish stayed where they were. They quietly did their job by cleaning algae from polluted ponds and lagoons. But rains flooded these bodies of water and the carp traveled into the Mississippi River.
Because the carp were so strong and good eaters, they began to multiply quickly. They began to
outnumber the fish that people liked to eat. People began to dislike the carp, especially the silver ones. When boats passed through schools of silver carp, the fish would jump in the air, sometimes hitting people.
People became angry.
The government declared war on the carp. It organized competitions and celebrations where people tried to kill as many carp as they could.
But the carp still thrived, spreading across American waters.
Some people think that Asian Americans are a threat, that we are spreading too quickly.
They think that America doesn’t have room for everyone.
In the 1970’s, your Ojiisan traveled from Wakayama, Japan to Michigan. He was studying at a Ph.D program. Once, the teacher stood in front of the class and pointed at Ojiisan and called him a monkey.
No one tried to help Ojiisan. The professor was trying to make Ojiisan feel small. He might have felt angry that Ojiisan was in his classroom.
But Ojiisan wasn’t going to leave. He was going to stay. Instead of disappearing, Ojiisan and Obaasan had four children.
Their four children had eight children. They made their own homes in Columbus, Ohio. They became engineers, artists, and writers. Their children learned how to swim and make art. You discovered your love of Legos, drawing, and animation.
Despite being unwanted, Ojiisan and Obaasan have made a big, beautiful family in America, their America.
The world can be a difficult and scary place. Sometimes I’m afraid for you. Each year, you grow taller and stronger, more visible to people that might want to hurt you.
I still see the baby that I held in my arms, the one that I promised to protect. But now I must teach you to thrive.
This is why I’m telling you this story:
Once, there was a great carp who lived in the Yellow River. The carp longed to explore the world beyond the confines of the River, but a gigantic waterfall blocked his path. Gathering his strength, the carp plunged into the surging water. Thrashing his great tail, he leapt upwards, but the current pummeled him over and over.
Though bloodied and exhausted, the carp fought upwards again and again.
For months, the carp battled the waterfall. Finally, with one mighty lunge, he reached the summit, passing through the top of the mountain.
In this moment, the sun ignited the carp’s tail, transforming him into a golden dragon.
This Chinese legend tells us to be courageous, to endure and thrive. But, J, what should you do when thriving seems like it’s impossible?
I remember the first time when you thought you didn’t belong. You were in first grade, and we were in the middle of a global pandemic.
We were driving home from school.
During that time, people hated all Asians who they blamed for the sickness.
They pushed your uncle into traffic. They beat our elders up in public.
In many of the attacks, no one came to help us.
J, I look back at my answer and I want to change it.
I’m sorry that I tried to erase where you came from and to erase Ojiisan and Obaasan’s suffering.
Perhaps, I thought it would be easier for you to take.
Perhaps, I wanted the conversation to be easier for me.
It’s been over fifty years since the Asian carp escaped into the Mississippi River.
People have tried poisoning the carp, suffocating them, electrocuting them, blasting them out of the water with dynamite. People have caught them and ground them into dog food.
Yet, the carp keep thriving.
All around Ohio, the state we live in, are the trails of the Americans who nurtured the land before white people came. Native people fought to protect themselves from the settlers that murdered and stole.
The settlers began to spread across America. They renamed the Native trails and destroyed them to build their own roads and highways. They tore down forests and poisoned rivers. They drained wetlands to build their homes and cities.
The question is: Who is invasive?
The question is: Who’s story is true?
My son, there is a special ginkgo tree in China’s Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple that is over 1,400 years old. Every fall, its leaves turn golden-yellow and spread like a beautiful carpet over the temple’s courtyard.
This is my prayer for you: that you will flourish, spreading like the carp, like the ginkgo. You do not have to have children. There are other ways of thriving. Through your creativity, you can build a new world.
Close your eyes and see leaves traveling far, far away, turning the whole world golden.
About the Author
Sayuri Ayers is a poet and nonfiction writer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes into intersectionality of motherhood, myth, and science. Her work can be found on The Poetry Foundation website and in TriQuarterly, SWWIM Every Day, CALYX, and Parentheses Journal. Sayuri is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She has been supported by Kundiman, PEN America, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The Ohio Arts Council, and The Greater Columbus Arts Council. Sayuri received her MFA in creative writing from Randolph College as a Blackburn Fellow.
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