It’s been a chilly couple of days in Boston but I love the weather nonetheless.  Having lived in Florida for most of my life where summers seem to be year-round, I always crave the comfortable mid 70s.

During an afternoon stroll, I discovered a secret garden tucked away behind an abandoned preserve residing next to an unapparent stream of water from the pond uphill.  The gardener turned out to be a 74 year-old retiree who’s the fittest and most youthful elder I’ve ever met in my life.  We conversed in Cantonese and chatted on two more occasions because I couldn’t resist returning.  It reminds me so much of my village in China where my grandma took me in the summers.  As a kid, I used to play around the rice fields surrounded by small streams and tried to catch the slippery eels.  I feel as if I’ve been transported twenty years back and instead of cars and cement, I see endless rice fields swaying in the wind and hear the water thrusting through the streams.  I’m five years old all over again.