“Do you still remember Ms. Sun?” my father asked once. “The teacher who wanted to adopt you?”

That was many years ago, when I was in the first grade, and my family moved to Tianjin, a city in northern China. Ms. Sun was my math teacher, with a pair of eyes as big and smart as a monkey’s and two upper front teeth leaning slightly forward probably due to overenthusiasm. She often hugged me and kissed me in school, which was a little scary. Chinese people rarely hugged or kissed each other then. Even my mother felt embarrassed to do that to me. Two years later, when my parents decided to move back to my hometown, Ms. Sun offered to adopt me, though she already had three daughters and I was the only child in my family.

I have always wondered about her mysterious love, for I was a normal kid, not attractive to other teachers, and ultimately chose liberal arts instead of science. Now there is only one thing I remember about her. Once she asked all the students in the class to think about three numbers: when they were added together, the sum equaled the result of them multiplied together. A kid mentioned 0, another kid talked about two-digit numbers like 12 or 14, and many other students shouted complicated numbers. Ms. Sun kept shaking her head. I was a lazy person so I began with the easiest ones: 1, 2, 3. I raised my hand. Ms. Sun’s eyes lit up, and I got a handmade red flower as a reward.

“That’s the reason,” my father said. “She believed you had talent in math. She really wanted to help you.”   

         Even such small things have their own magic.

Pembroke 49 (March 2017)