Paper Cranes

The sun shines golden through the branches of the plumeria tree and spreads warm across my back like a comforting hand, rubbing up and down along my spine and between my shoulders. I sit facing the open field of grass, waiting. I have been waiting all day, standing and sitting and pacing in the same place for hours, but I am still alone. I look down at the grass where a pile of paper cranes lay folded in a heap of colors and wings, and I feel a burning in the back of my throat. Flashes of crinkled eyes, soft hands, and berry-tinted smiles overwhelm me. I no longer have any of that. All I have now are my paper cranes and my memories.

When I was younger, my grandmother would take me to the park down the block for picnics. There was never a scheduled day for them and never a reason, just a desire to be with each other under the open sky. She would pack a basket full of strawberries and string cheese and tea and origami paper, and we would walk hand-in-hand to lounge on the pokey grass under our favorite tree. It wasn’t our favorite because it was the best, not by a long shot. It was our favorite because it was ours. And like so many other things, she made it feel special to sit there, under that sparsely flowered tree, eating and making stories out of the clouds. We would pass hours sitting in the grass and feeling the setting sun on our skin and the cool breeze settle in our lungs. We never spoke much of the world that lay outside our time together, not because it wasn’t important, but because we could never remember it when we lay next to each other.

One day in particular stands at the forefront of my mind whenever I think back on our picnics now. I was 10-years-old, too young to understand the importance of the moment, but looking back, the memory shines golden with long stretching shadows behind it.

My grandmother was just finishing her story about a brave warrior girl riding a dragon into battle in the sky above us when something caught her eye. She had stopped speaking so abruptly I thought something was wrong, but when I looked over to her, her eyes were wide and bright. I turned my eyes to the sky again, but saw nothing other than the separating body of the warrior girl in the clouds and a bird flying towards us.

“Nainai,” I called out to her. “What is it? Why did you stop the story?”

“Ni kan,” my grandmother replied. “Look at the sky, xiao gui. Do you see?”

I looked up again only to see the bird landing several feet away from us. I was about to tell my grandmother I couldn’t find what she wanted me to see, but she sat up and turned to look at the bird. I followed her up and looked too.

A white crane. Standing in the grass, searching for bugs to eat. 

“The bird?” I asked. Is that what she wanted me to see?

“No, not a bird, xiao gui,” she said. “This is a crane.”

I nodded. “Yeah, like the ones we make with our origami paper sometimes.”

“Dui, exactly,” my grandmother said with approval. “These cranes… they are special. Do you know why?”

I sat there, my fingers picking at the grass and my eyes focused on the bird. “I don’t know,” I mumbled, not particularly in the mood for any kind of story that didn’t involve the clouds.

“In our culture, the crane is a symbol of longevity and immortality. That means living forever, never dying. Very powerful, huh?” She looked at me and I nodded dutifully. Satisfied, she turned her eyes to the sky. “Spirits would ride their wings up to the heavens, and when they flew back down they would offer guidance to young heroes.” Her smile turned wistful. “But most importantly, xiao gui, cranes have been saving our family for generations.”

I was intrigued, clouds forgotten I asked, “What do you mean?”

“The times when I felt most lost in this world, when I felt there was no hope left, I would look outside and find a white crane standing in the grass or amongst the trees,” she said in a soft voice. “They are a message from my ancestors. I believe my mother’s spirit guides me through them, and she comes to remind me that peace always comes after great hardship.”

My grandmother inhaled deeply and looked to me again.

“When I was a little girl, like you, my mother told stories of cranes leading her from danger. She once told me a beautiful white crane made her stray from her path on the way home. It led her into the cover of a forest just before a group of thieving men came up the other side of the hill. Had she stayed on her way, she would have been robbed, or worse.”

I sat in the grass, staring at my grandmother before shifting my gaze back to the crane. “What is the crane here for now, nainai?”

At that, my grandmother gave a soft sigh before placing a warm and gentle hand between my shoulders. “She is here to remind us that there will be peace after hardship.”

It wasn’t until seven months later that I would learn my grandmother had cancer, that she was dying. Just like the golden memory of our picnic, I couldn’t understand the moment I was living in. All I knew was what she had told me, that there would be peace after hardship, and I held onto that as tightly as I held onto her.

We continued our picnics, but in a different way. We could no longer lie in the grass at the park, but we still ate strawberries and drank tea. And I made her paper cranes. I made one for her every time I visited, and they seemed to work like magic. As soon as I would place the colorful bird down in front of her, she would smile and her breath would come just a little easier. But it wasn’t enough. The paper cranes couldn’t save her, couldn’t lead her away from this danger, or give her immortality. And as much I hoped and prayed for a flash of white feathers to appear before her and make it better, they never came. So all I had to give were my paper cranes that weren’t nearly enough. But they made her smile, so I never stopped making them.

In the end, I made her more paper cranes than I could count in the span of a year and a half. She never threw one of them away, not a single one. And at her funeral, I placed a single white crane at her headstone, so she could ride it up to heaven.

Now, months later, I am sitting in the place that I still call ours, and the clouds above me are shapeless and meaningless, like most things. The days have been bare and dark. There is no direction I can turn where I don’t feel a chilling breeze and an echoing emptiness. A heavy weight follows me everywhere, and I am lost. I have been lost since she left me, and no number of paper cranes could possibly reassure me that anything will be alright now. But paper cranes are all I have because she is gone. And there are no white-feathered saviors to free me from this feeling. So I get up, gather my things, and begin the trek back home where I’m sure my parents have not yet noticed my absence. 

As I wait on the sidewalk of a wide and busy street, I feel the warmth seep from my skin as the chill returns. My eyes feel heavy and my chest is tight, but the traffic lights have changed and they say I have to keep moving, so I step out onto the crosswalk in a steady shuffle. My head wants to hang low, but before I can droop further down into myself, something catches my eye. 

It’s her.

Across the street, on a freshly mowed lawn, stands my grandmother. Her feathers absorb the light from the setting sun and make her seem like a vision from another world, another time. I stop where I stand, in the middle of the crosswalk, and I stare. I can feel my heart beating and my breath coming in unsteady gasps. I stay frozen, unwilling to move because she’s here. My grandmother has finally come and I can feel a glimmer of something light inside of me.

Then I realize where I am, and I begin to move, but before I can take another step, my grandmother looks up from where she had been searching for grub and looks at me. I stop again. Not three seconds later, something fast and big rushes past me. I gasp as I feel the air of the speeding car blow my hair around my face.

I am shocked. I turn my head to see the car that surely would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped where I was already fading from view. Then I turn back to my grandmother who still stands there looking at me. And I laugh. I laugh because I haven’t in so long and I feel light and I know my grandmother has saved me. 

I run the rest of the way across the street, looking in every direction as I go. When my feet finally land on the sidewalk, I look to where my grandmother had been standing only to see her fly away, job done.

And I want to be sad again. I want to be upset that she had been gone for so long and left again too soon, but I find that I can’t. Not in this moment. Because I can finally appreciate my moments with her while I am in them. And I find that in this moment, there is peace.

The end.