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My mother never saw the shores of China.
My father had, had in fact grown up very near those shores, and he spoke very little English.
My mother's mother was American, fascinated by Chinese language and history and culture, and she raised my mother in what
was surely not the "traditional" way, for my mother's mother loved and studied ancient cultures, and there was a time when
women were revered, goddess-like, over men, and this was the time my mother's mother studied and loved best.
My mother's father was fatherless, and so had no idea of the traditional way to raise a family, and he loved his wife.
My father's mother was Australian, a true mix of everything: Chinese, English, French, African and Italian. She also had
an ancient ancestor who was pure Australian aborigine.
My father's father had seen the shores of China, had lived in China for most of his upbringing. His father was strict, and
his mother silent, in the "traditional" Chinese way.
My father's father raised my father in this way, and my father ran away from home to Australia after a fight with his father.
My father's father told my father he never wanted to see him again. I was never told why.
My father was fifteen at the time.
I've never met my father's parents, and I do not believe my father has seen them since he was fifteen. I have heard these
stories about his family from my mother.
I met my mother's parents only a few times that I remember, and do not know how to contact them now.
My mother raised me in the way that her mother raised her before me. My father, when he was young, had wanted to spite his
father as much as possible, and so encouraged my mother.
When I was twelve, my mother took sick. A few months of sickness, and then she passed. My father was grief-stricken. He
didn't know how to handle my mother's death, and he began to act, I imagine, much more like his father.
I am free-spririted, and like to move and do things at my own pace, and suddenly, my father was demanding something of me
that I had never had before: strict, unyeilding obedience, schedules and curfews and most of all, silence. Silence is fine
when you welcome it, but I have never welcomed the kind of silence my father demanded, a silence that permeated my very existence,
a silence not only of my voice, but of my thoughts, my dreams, and ... my visions.
I have always seen things others have not. My mother told me it was a gift from the gods, and her mother, the few times I
met her, told me some of it was real, and some not, and that I would have to learn for myself how to tell the difference,
and how to see the real more and more often.
I ran away from home when I was thirteen. I have a brother, a few years older, but he and I never really got along. He stayed
with my father, and I think he was happier with my mother dead than alive, and I couldn't be around either of them any longer.
I lived on the streets for a few years.
Now, I am turning seventeen, and Australian law requires that I join the army. I know that this means strict schedules and
blind obedience, and it would be terribly easy to get a fake ID and run away again ... and in fact, I already have a fake
ID.
You see, only orphans, those without families, can go into space. So my new identity is that of a family-less street-rat,
an orphan in the streets of Sydney, and ...
Well, the real reason I'm not running away? You might have guessed it. I had a vision. I think it's truth. This is where
my destiny lies.
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