Mei walks fast along the bark trail that runs under the big trees through Forest Park. The giant park wraps the west hills of the city - there are places where you can view the gleaming skyscrapers below, where they frame Mount Hood which rises out of the layered, usually misty foothills to the east.
Conscious of the biological complexity and relative warmth of the temperate rainforest in late January, she breathes the clean air which moves off the Pacific, over the coastal range and into the city - and her mind fleets back to the Michigan winter,what a contrast with that stark, white, icy dormant beauty.
Part of her mind senses the moment, nature - then she lets herself become aware of her feelings again, begins to search them out again through her thoughts. Angry thoughts.
Mei studied and graduated from Michigan in organizational behaviour - business. Her first generation Chinese parents want her to be a doctor, had worked hard, sacrificed, drilled in into her head when she was a child, too young. Tai nian qing de. Out loud. Angry.
She had moved out to Portland, leaving her parents in Michigan for now, to honor her parents, to become independent by starting her career in a place that sits across the great ocean from China, where it had all started. Maybe she just came here to get away.
There are no jobs, no one is hiring for organizational behaviour, or anything else. The recession is getting old, the government, the schools are desperate for money. For the first time in decades, citizens have voted to raise taxes on the rich - for a single person, over $125,000. She checked the university records, back when she was born, new graduates from her university were making $25,000, with inflation, she should be getting $61,000. Half way to being rich. Many Oregionians were in a funk about how new taxes would drive away business and jobs.
Mei is tired of being poor, wants to get on with her life. Mainly, fit in - it's hard growing up second generation in a small town in Michigan, and here feels like an average Portlander, compared to who she meets and what other people are doing and saying and feeling. Comfortable here.
But she feels guilty about still being a burden on her parents, who are subsidizing her small apartment and student loans while she works in a coffee shop near the university in the city below these trails. In time, her parents will accept her life choices; she wants them to enjoy their life and not have to work as hard to help little - Mei Mei. Angry, teary eyes. Xiao Mei.
Someday, they'll have grandkids, they'll live close, not too close, closer to China, here where the winters are more like the old home province, with a river, and gorges, more Chinese people like them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9uZUVD_3bk
