“I want to thank the Academy…”
They all share the Oscar with their families, with their colleagues, with the nameless downtrodden of the world. “This is for you.” The golden trophy will sit on their shelf at home, but somehow, in spirit, it belongs also to the ten or ten thousand others he named on that stage.
Other than my middle school math contest fluke and participating in piano recitals, I think its safe to say my trophy days are over. If I ever have such a platform, or an acknowledgements page in a book, you can look for yourself there. I have already imagined that I will put your name in bold script with a paraphrase of Newton’s quote.
“I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
In a world that loves the polished front and saving face, you protect my frailty. My friend’s father says, “If you’re dumb, you gotta be tough.” Unfortunately, I’m often the former, and not the latter, but you always have my back—scraped knees, splinters and broken hearts. You beat up my old dinosaur book when it started screeching in the dark. You brought me McDonalds after I braved the hospital shots. You held me when I cried in a hotel room because I thought my world was ending. You answered the phone when I killed the car battery at 10 PM. I’m working on being tough, but in the meantime at least I can say, “When I’m dumb, my Dad is tough.” Thank God.
In a world that hangs love on terms and conditions, you are steadfast. I have seen children who are a prize, measured by the sum of their awards, the rank of their schools, the letters that trail behind their names. But I am just your little girl, the daughter you said you wanted, in a culture that clamors for sons. I know the rest is nothing to you—some fun but dispensable bragging points at noisy Asian parties—because I don’t think any of your friends would do this: offer to let their kid drop a job and move home because their heart was hurting, in a completely non-medical-emergency way.
In a world of proper-looking photos, we are gangsters, pirates, and kangaroos. Venice canals, Roman architecture, and New Zealand beaches are neither sacred nor safe under the glare of our camera lens. There must be something deep about this—like how we laugh in the face of human constructs of significance. You have my humor (or I have yours), and its runs its thread through our picture albums, in the movie theaters, and at stiff boring parties. It flickers in the pirate pose, in the joke no one else finds funny, in the glimmer of mirth we share amid an oblivious crowd. Our laughter understands in a way words cannot capture.
You are in a story I wrote this year, and my professor cried. You are in the pictures I share, and my friends laugh. You are among the people I boast about, and boys say they want to be like you. (Because, I think, of your mastery of travel points and credit cards). It’d be nice to find one who really is.
Love is a debt I cannot pay, a gift I cannot touch. It is in the life you give me, the life you live alongside me. It is in the labor I do not see always see, it is in the words I cannot always find.
Mei you ni, mei you wo.
This is my Oscar speech, overtime and under-read, but its really only written for you, anyway. Cue the commercial break.
Pen and Fire 