The first thing I remember …

It is the thing that I have forgotten. It is a soft rain, so soft you can’t see the drops. You only feel its cold and moist touch on your skin, enough to dampen your hair, your shirt.

“It is dew,” my brother says.

He notices the puzzled look on my face. I remember now. It has been more than forty years since I last felt the dew in the early morning. The time of day in the tropics, same every day. The roosters crow and then the sun rises, at six o’clock. Everyday.

You can count on it. In the dew, people walk with baskets balanced on bamboo sticks, up and down, bouncing toward the market. They carry cabbages, potatoes, mangos. In this dew, children get ready for school. In this dew, Ma cooked me my favorite breakfast: rice left over from the day before, turned over in the frying pan with browned shallots, a few peas, and an egg.

In this dew, I am puzzled–where have I been all these years, so long that I have forgotten the simplest thing that I should remember? Dew! It feels like home. It is moist and soft, like a caress.