This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,1

cheeks still full of food, he looks like a squirrel watching a tennis match.

“Xiao Jia” is all he says, his voice low and warning.

I back down and try a different tack. “But… what about the schools? They’re amazing. You know I’m already set up to take a college class in the fall. And the restaurant has a following now.” Not a big one, but there are definitely regulars. “What if Alan takes over my deliveries so I can work the counter more and we, like, start a Facebook account or something. For free advertising. Check-ins, you know. It’s a thing.”

“Why are you only thinking of this now?” Dad asks. “You have been working at restaurant for forever, and never do no thing.” The worry lines on his forehead have morphed from frustration into suspicion. It’s a subtle shift, but a familiar one.

I don’t say: “Because the place sucks the soul out of the living.”

Instead I say: “I didn’t realize how desperate things were. I thought we were doing okay.” Looking back, I can see the signs. When Mr. Chen went back to Kaohsiung to be with his family, we never replaced him. My mom worked double shifts instead, and my dad started to do his accounting and ordering at the restaurant so he could lend a hand when things got busy. Suddenly a lot of little things make sense: why my mom would scold me when I’d leave the light on after leaving a room, why Alan couldn’t go on his sixth-grade field trip to Great Adventure, why they canceled our Netflix subscription so I had to “borrow” Priya’s log-in information to feed my prestige TV and film addiction.

“Has this been going on for years?” I ask my dad, horrified.

His bowed head, and his silence, are my answer.

A few years ago, there was a 5.0 earthquake on the East Coast, with its epicenter in northeastern Pennsylvania. It was a pretty big deal and caused some minor property damage (coming from the West Coast, of course, Priya rolled her eyes and sent out a meme about lawn chairs being knocked over). I’ll never forget how my body felt in that brief moment of shift: paralyzed yet at the same time pushed by an outside force terrifyingly beyond my control.

I feel the same sensation right now. And I think: This is it. This is the “Nothing Is the Same Anymore” trope.

When I started hanging out with Priya and really started getting into film—not just watching movies, but analyzing them—it was kind of a buzzkill to realize that so many of the movies that gave me joy as a kid were actually pretty formulaic. Priya and I would have “Name That Trope” movie nights during freshman year (I usually won, because her parents majorly limited her screen time, whereas mine were so busy with the restaurant I could usually sneak in some TV with my amah). But as our game evolved from a joke into a way of seeing life, I realized that tropes are more than just clichés. They’re neither good nor bad. They simply are, like earlobes and Winnie-the-Pooh. They’re a reminder that all stories are cut from the same cloth, with patterns that are recognizable, even when they’re unique and surprising. Seeing these patterns helps us make sense of the world, helps give us a framework for navigating what might come next.

What comes next for me is the “Big First Choice” trope. Am I going to go gentle into that good night, or am I going to be dragged kicking and screaming from the life I’ve finally built for myself?

Come on, like you really had to ask.

I start off with appealing to my dad’s natural tightwad tendencies. “You can’t really want to move back to New York. Didn’t you mention last week that Second Uncle’s parking space costs more than our rent?” We left the city when I was pretty young, but I remember him constantly complaining about the traffic, the rude customers, and how Second Uncle lorded over him. “Where would we live? Alan and I are too old to sleep in the same bedroom anymore.”

“You think I haven’t think of this?” my dad grits out. “You think you so smart?”

“Aiya, Baba,” my mom murmurs, putting a hand on my dad’s arm before things escalate. “Ta xiang bangzhu ni.”

Dad’s nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath, and he rubs his hand over his eyes.

I regroup and try a different approach. “Baba. Mom’s right. I’m sorry I haven’t been