By: My Ho ’21, staff writer

For me, the endless urge to write is found in isolation and the endless inspiration is my home. Being away from certain people and places brings out the most genuine feelings of love.

Feelings are unbelievably easy to retrieve: a message from  parents informing their trips back to our hometown, the  drizzling rain, the humidity amid the freezing winter month, the rainbow bed sheets and the living room’s burnt caramel wooden floor are the pictures my mother sent me. These insignificant remarks turn out to be the most staple catalyst to trigger the journey down memory lane;  and the most poignant yet wonderful thing about recollection is that  the details of faces,  timeline and venues  appear all so blurry but yet so vivid with colorful patches of feelings.

I still can feel the rain splashing and the hoarse winds jabbing my face as memories take me back to the wanderings with my brother on his old rusty blue scooter. I can hear the people  breathing, eating, talking and laughing as I walk alone under the golden lamp posts in the veil of fog. I can smell the aroma of fresh air after the intermittent rain as I watch the sunrise at 5 a.m. Everything remains  so much alive, and yet, so much different.

The same rain falls  here. The same humid and spontaneous rain  but it’s not the same dull gray sky. The people look different, sound different and definitely feel different. It’s like staring out of a window into a  view of the city skyline, with hundreds of years of history and civilization. But it’s not my history,  and the people living besides it, I know nothing of.

As Christmas and New Year are quickly approaching, we all reminisce in the past and the memories filled with unconditional love. And to me, home is the only place that can grant us those invaluable treasures.

So I plan to spend this Christmas with those I love the most. What about you?