There Are Some Things That We Do Not Expect

We find hope

and faith

and a desperate thirst for freedom

sometimes, when we’re least expecting it.

I round the narrow way and find myself behind another slow moving bike. Pass the temple gate shrouded by the massive tree which sees over it all.

Veer left

and left again.

I’m sleepy.

My slow moving friend seems like she’s window shopping, ambling by to parse arrays of fresh vegetables, golden fruits, and neatly stacked goods. She pauses to bark at a shopkeeper, and I sneak past.

This delightful, varied lane is familiar to me, to the point it borders on mundane.

It is only when I step back to truly see what is here, I remember why it is one of my favorite streets in Hanoi.

Color

Vibrance

Family

Home

Life.

There’s a range of tiny shops, mostly food oriented – mongers, grocers, butchers, their raw meats warming under battery-powered fly-shoo spinners and chopping blocks sitting outside the facade, awaiting what surely must be regular daily customers.

I’ve made this cruise a hundred times

and so, find myself distracted. Thoughts of work, of students of concern, of soon to be to-dos and get dones.

I lose track of myself

Until

I round another corner on this meandering path, and something unexpected jumps out at me.

No, like, literally jumps out at me.

It’s flying through the air

Look! Up in the sky!

The sunlight glances off its shiny skin

No, not skin.

Scales.

Is that a bird?

A plane?

Superman?

I honestly have no idea.

It’s upon further inspection, when I really start to pay attention, that I realize it is in fact, a large silver

fishy.

He lands on the pavement, and flops, and flips, and flips

and flops

in front of me.

And as I swerve to avoid him and stare down, he seems to stare back – all wiggle and fury signifying nothing.

I realize that he made his way onto the road with a leap of faith, a dash for freedom, fueled by an instinct toward survival.

I’m outta here, boys.

He’s left behind his friends in the small, round swimming pool which must have become his temporary home on the way to the dinner table.

See ya later, suckers!

(*See, suckers are a kind of fish, so)

And I must say, of all the things I wasn’t expecting to see today,

This was most definitely one of them.