(Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash. Dandelion Seeds)
In the last few years, I have, unconsciously at first and more deliberately later, begun processing events, memories, and emotions through poetry. I once kept a journal but stopped after I had children—there simply wasn’t enough time. Now I have discovered that poetry allows me to bypass a linear timeline and capture a feeling or lingering ache in far less time than a journal entry would require.
One such ache is watching my mother age and dealing with the regret that I could not be with her most of the time, except when I go back to China to visit. Living oceans apart means our relationship exists in sharp, compressed episodes separated by long stretches of ordinary life. When I was in my early twenties, I pursued my dreams across the ocean. Mama was young and rigorous then. The idea that I should not pursue my goals because she might need me to be there someday didn’t occur to me. Call it the single-mindedness of youth.
Now she is too old to endure international travel. I go to her as often as I can, but still, no visit can replace the convenience and intimacy of being in the same city. I tried to capture this in “Regrets of a Dandelion Seed.”
Soon, I will bid farewell to this city
to return to the place where I settled into new soil.
Two months have passed, too quickly.
I was a dandelion seed
who left my root-bound mother,
carried by a dream across the ocean.
What the seed did not know,
not clearly, not then—
was that flight brings new horizons, but also loss.
As Mama declines, I also find myself cherishing the things she made for me. She was an outstanding seamstress. In my childhood, she made nearly all my shirts, trousers, and dresses. In those years when there were no magazines to copy, she needed only to look at a dress another girl was wearing to recreate it, discarding features she disliked and inventing enhancements of her own. Because of her ingenuity, I was often the best-dressed among my peers.
On my last trip to spend time with her, I struggled against the scale before my return journey. My bags were full of books and research on the Cultural Revolution, the young men and women who answered Chairman Mao’s call to “go up the mountain and go down to the countryside,” and Beidahuang, the northernmost region of China bordering Russia—a setting of my work-in-progress novel. My luggage was over the limit, and I needed to remove items. But everything in my bags was something I needed and treasured.
My poem “Mama’s Hujian” grew out of that struggle. Years ago, when I told Mama that my shoulders ached in the cold evenings when they were exposed outside of the quilt, she made five hujians for me—short, padded jackets designed to keep my shoulders warm. I have slept with them every winter for the last decade.
Whenever ache comes, I reach for her hujian,
each thread a reminder of her touch.
For this visit to Tianjin, I brought one.
Its fabric has thinned, color faded,
yellow spots blooming with time.
I set it on a chair to give away,
beside socks and a pair of worn-out shoes.
Mama’s hands reappear,
tucking cotton between the layers.
I lift the hujian to my cheek,
my coconut cream from last night,
mixed with her jasmine lotion,
long faded, but there.
I fold it back into the suitcase.
— “Mama’s Hujian”
(Image of Hujian, Photo by Pamela Pan)
People often ask, “Do you show the poems to your mom?” I shake my head. She does not read English, although she would be glad to know that she lives in my writing. But I did not write to tell Mama I love her—she already knows. Rather, the poems allow me to express ideas and emotions difficult to convey in daily conversations. Instead of naming abstract love or longing, poetry lets me approach them through images and details, a medium that feels natural to me.
Another heavy event in 2025 was watching my cousin battle cancer. He was in his sixties. Once robust and vibrant, he grew increasingly ill. As his condition worsened, mortality occupied my thoughts. The pain was too difficult to speak aloud, so I wrote.
When cancer comes, like it did for my cousin,
invading the liver and bile duct,
pressing on the stomach—
a fist that never unclenched, only tightened.
You lie in bed,
watch the sun drop past the window.
Just months remain to see this sky.
How can you not feel fear?
This life you hold, this breath, these hands.
—“Before the Last Light”
People often ask, “Do you show the poems to your mom?” I shake my head. She does not read English, although she would be glad to know that she lives in my writing. But I did not write to tell Mama I love her—she already knows. Rather, the poems allow me to express ideas and emotions difficult to convey in daily conversations. Instead of naming abstract love or longing, poetry lets me approach them through images and details, a medium that feels natural to me.
Another heavy event in 2025 was watching my cousin battle cancer. He was in his sixties. Once robust and vibrant, he grew increasingly ill. As his condition worsened, mortality occupied my thoughts. The pain was too difficult to speak aloud, so I wrote.
When cancer comes, like it did for my cousin,
invading the liver and bile duct,
pressing on the stomach—
a fist that never unclenched, only tightened.
You lie in bed,
watch the sun drop past the window.
Just months remain to see this sky.
How can you not feel fear?
This life you hold, this breath, these hands.
—“Before the Last Light”
When grief, aging, and mortality crowd the mind, they can feel infinite and overwhelming, like a storm with no boundaries. By putting them into the structure of a poem, I give them a shape—something I can look at, hold, and carry without collapsing under the weight. And once transformed into a poem, the experience becomes something beyond my own: an art readers can enter, connect with, and perhaps even find beauty in.
What do you use to process difficult events or emotions? I would love to know!
Note: Some of the poems I share here are from my second poetry collection, What Does Happiness Look Like, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2027. It explores themes of migration, motherhood, and teaching, and the unexpected joy and abundance found along the way.
(Image of Orchids. What Does Happiness Look Like: Poems by Pamela Pan. Cover Design: Monique Rardin Richardson
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