On Frozen Pond

From the moment he looked right up to the night sky, Minh had always been an avid stargazer and as a result, he would go on to dedicate his life to mapping the stars. His affinity for it started first as wonderment despite not knowing which stars he was studying out in the open fields of his family farm. His fascination with stars became of greater significance when it became a beacon of hope. Shortly after the fall of Saigon, Minh, at age five, found himself navigating the waters after many people around him had either been captured or thrown overboard by pirates or sacrificed themselves when the boat capsized at times during their voyage. Those events became heavily ingrained in his memory thereon, that when he watches Jack sacrifice himself for Rose in Titanic, his emotions were more magnified than for the average viewer, as he remembered how he came to survive and how helpless he felt out in the vast ocean. He recalls that on one of those nights, a particular star stood out to him, Polaris. Having been fixed at the very same location each night, his observation of it helped guide the sinking boat towards America.

Little to her knowledge, Grace had taken a shining to Polaris her whole life too. Though she only became aware that she had been staring at the very same star the whole time when her father, Minh, had pointed it out to her during one of their family camping trips to Boundary Waters, Minnesota. When Grace put two and two together, she longed for more camping trips to learn from her father’s knowledge of the stars. Though she also had another reason, to spend time with her grandmother, Kim, who had taught her how to skate.

Kim had discovered skating for the first time with her fellow refugee friends, while they were on a fishing trip. On a fall day, the temperature plummeted unexpectedly and the lake became frozen over. Kim’s friends were amazed how the lake turned into ice in such a manner of time. First, they found themselves trepid to slide on the ice but Kim was not afraid of the water or of them capsizing in it.

“We’ve been through worse,” she said grinning at her friends.

Though as brave as she was, it was with her husband, Huy, that they mustered the courage to skate together across a smaller frozen pond, with their makeshift skates. Over the years, they would save money to buy proper skates, and eventually, Kim developed expertise at inspecting the conditions that she and her husband were comfortable enough to take a five-year-old Minh out to skate. Minh would go on to continue the tradition with his wife, Joyce, and daughter Grace, who was also five when she first hit the ice.

With each trip to Boundary Waters, Kim found the fond memories would evoke images of home. One day, the same fish that Huy’s buddies caught had been frozen and was left out to thaw. For a whole day, Kim was transfixed on the droplets and with each drop, the dripping water merged into memories of her home. In Vietnamese, the word for water and country were the same. She equated this sensation as a sign. Kim eventually grew attached to her new home, even if it was the polar opposites of the tropical climate of where she came from and though she initially preferred sunny California to be her new home, she had no choice in the matter after reuniting with her siblings in Minnesota. Besides, on this frozen pond, Kim found fondness for her new home, especially in the summer when the lake was warm enough to swim in, and had temporarily transported her back home and to her parents.

Kim had a Catholic father who had given her the name, Renée when she was baptized, it derived from Latin for reborn. Kim’s mother, a Buddhist, was not bothered by this as her husband convinced her that just in case things did not work out in that dominion, maybe God could sneak Kim into heaven by virtue. There was no harm in trying, he thought. Though Kim, regardless of her spiritual beliefs, would have had enough of the right karma in both realms to have sufficed her in her journey beyond this life. She was a selfless child, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, and community member. As a Buddhist, Kim believed that her material body regardless of its form or arrangement would go on to become something else in her death. The science behind it was evident in the laws of thermodynamics, as for being reincarnated to her favorite spirit animal that remained to be seen. Minh remembers his mother as a great admirer of the bears she had seen on their camping trips. She related to the arduous journey of their lives and its protective nature towards its cubs, for which she knew all about.

When both Kim and Huy truly departed the physical world in the manner of cremation, Minh relocated his family to Texas where he accepted a job at NASA, his lifelong dream. Though another reason was his chance to be born again. Minh claims the day that he was truly born was through one of the two following moments; when he first laid eyes on Polaris, the second was when his father brought him a telescope, allowing him to truly see stars for the first time - both he attributed to as a factor for his raison d'être.

For fourteen years, Minh became fixated on exploring star systems and had mapped out Polaris religiously - which he undertook in his spare time as a side project. One day, Minh was troubled by a discovery he made. He even made a scene, when his cup overfilled at the water fountain and spilled onto his trousers. All his colleagues thought he had gone mad when after looking at his watch, he ran outside the building without a word. Little to their knowledge, Minh was running late for Grace’s college skating championship. The journey from his office to the skating rink was an immense distance. On the way, Minh drifted off numerous times. At one point he even got lost in the mirrors, watching the wheels of his car spin.

Everything following the death of his parents and him taking the job at NASA became a blur in the midst of his obsession consuming him. But the spinning wheel hypnotized him to recall childhood memories. Looking through the rear-view mirror, Minh remembers the times his father would be on the other end of it, smiling back at him from the front seat. He recalls his father’s eyes smiling at him with deep love that gave him every chance of being where he is now, not forgetting his father’s tenacity of submerging himself in the ocean to repair and steer the boat when it sank. Tears stream down Minh’s face now as he drives past a family rollerblading in unison.

Amongst the cheering patrons, Joyce sits excitedly anticipating Grace’s performance. A smile spreads across her face as Minh makes his way to her. From the grandstands, Minh admires the skaters drawing figures in the ice in an impressive display. Sitting beside Joyce now, Minh kisses her passionately as if the world was ending. It catches her by surprise but she’s delighted.

A figure skating team returns to the ice, swarming around in various pairs with perfect synchronization. Taking center stage is Grace, appearing to be spiraling out of control until completing a Biellmann spin with relative ease. The audience is astounded as Minh becomes lost in the motion, the synchronization of the skaters begins to blur. The rippling movement of their spinning stuns him when he imagines them now as asteroids. This spurs Minh into remembering earlier he had been mapping out trajectories and taking multiple images of star systems. It was in one of the images that he had spotted an unknown object. After some comparisons, he grew despondent after finding more objects in these trajectories.

Minh returns to the moment with Joyce’s excitement for Grace’s elegant toe loop. Grace is unable to contain her smile now when she glides in the direction facing her parents. Had it been any other day, Minh would have only focused on the pride he had for his daughter but he could not shake this feeling. All around him everything was spinning; from the tick of his watch to skaters circling one another. All he envisions now was what he had seen earlier at work. A simulation on the projector shows large chunks of debris revealing themselves to be asteroids, skyrocketing and entering our solar system. One by one, the numerous asteroids peck chunks off of Jupiter, and Mars in cataclysmic fashion, then eventually Earth. By now, Minh thought the defining moments of his life where he would claim to have been born again, were over, but this was to be his last and final revelation, for which he could not bring himself to tell anyone.

A spotlight follows Grace’s exquisite movements as Minh looks on proudly at Grace, then to Joyce with a loving smile. The ice reflected in Joyce’s eyes harkens back to a date they had at an ice rink. Minh recalls gliding across the ice gracefully together with Joyce, who had finally overcome her fear of capsizing with the very same help from the boy who had helped navigate their sinking boat. Eventually, over the years, Grace would be between them, as they guided her across the rink.

After completing an electrifying and gravity-defying triple salchow, Grace now seeks a reprieve. But with all the cameras flashing, her life flashes before her as she propels forward. Grace recalls skating with her grandmother for endless hours, up until the day she had scattered her grandmother’s ashes across the frozen pond. Throughout the years, Grace perfected her moves, picking herself up, over and over any time she fell. Grace returns to the present but as she glides across the rink, memories flood back to her again, as she winds up for her final hurrah. Grace remembers chasing her parents on the ice, then overlapping them with a joy she had never known – that was the very same moment that propelled her to be where she was now. When her parents return the favor and chase after her, it drove her to skate faster than ever before.

Now, Grace glides faster, winding up like a cyclone. The audience gasps as she floats in mid-air. Minh becomes paralyzed as Joyce grips his hand. Only a few hours ago, he held hands with his colleagues, praying as they watched countless projections of missiles fail to impact the incoming asteroids from an exploding supernova of a nearby star system. The catastrophic onslaught of asteroids traveling across the cosmic void bombarding and knocking Jupiter off course is now heading in Earth’s direction.

All memories of Minh’s life lapsed at that moment, he recalls Kim crying for the first time since the boat capsized midway on their journey from the fall when she witnessed a mother bear who dove in after its cub had fallen through the crack in the pond, to never return. Minh had longed for the frozen pond to be intact, to not see his mother cry once again. This time around, he hoped Grace would not fall through the ice or fade away.

These thoughts hit Minh hard, harder than the way Grace lands a spiral death drop leaving a complete maelstrom of scattered ice in her wake and the audience in complete awe. Minh watches on as Grace stands enamored in the spotlight as she experiences all the glory before the fateful and perpetual impact will catch up to her. Unbeknownst to her, her father shakes uncontrollably as he reverts to a fetal position and braces for impact - knowing what’s to come, everyone, he ever loved, and everything on this earth instantly turning into dust.