If a picture is worth a thousand words this photo is worth a thousand posts. In May, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month, this picture is worth every Asian who has left a country to make a home somewhere else. And on Sunday, the UN International Day of Families, this photo is worth every child everywhere lucky enough to score a place on their grandmother’s lap.
If you look hard enough at this picture, you can feel the words. You can feel shoeless fatty’s privilege right there in the middle of the picture. Center stage, you can feel her wiggle her toes on her Baaba’s lap. And then. Look harder and you can feel that privilege go, lost to shoes and zori. You can feel the privilege ended, juggling between the two.
If you’re starting to feel the words, the heat of a blister at the back of your shoe or the pinch of your zori between your toes, it’s because it’s in the picture, too. If you feel the clench in your jaw from trying not to feel it, if you thought that no one cries for blisters, it’s because it’s been in all those pictures that are worth a thousand words.
If you’ve just kept on walking your whole life with blisters at the back of your feet, if your blisters turned to callouses, if you thought you’ve exhausted your thousand words, time now, maybe, to discard those pictures. At the end of this AAPI month and on Sunday International Day of Families, time now to find that picture that makes you wiggle your toes!
Happy AAPI and International Day of Families!
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