Behind the scene (To Be Continued)

I lived with Daze’s family for three months—first in the summer of 2023, and then again in early spring 2024. From the beginning, they treated me not as a guest, but as someone who belonged. There was no formal moment of arrival, just a quiet shift: I was folded into their daily life, into meals, into routines, into silence.

Even after I returned to New York for school, they kept reaching out, short messages asking how my days were, whether I was eating well, and whether it was cold. These small gestures carried a kind of care that made the distance feel less absolute.

We never shared a common language. Most days, we understood each other through gestures, through repetition, through simply being present. When words were needed, they came through others. Sometimes Kawa Tso, Daze’s daughter, would sit between us, translating from Tibetan to Mandarin with the seriousness of a child taking on something important. Other times, it was relatives passing through, one who travels south each year for seasonal work, another who is a monk. Even people outside the family became part of this fragile network of understanding: staff at a small local hotel where I would occasionally go to recharge my batteries, or friends I met along the way.

Kawa Tso is growing up between languages. She studies Tibetan and Mandarin at school, and when I last saw her in 2024, she had just started learning English. I often think about the different directions her voice might travel in the future.