Bethesda Local Writer’s Showcase: 2025 Adult Essay Contest

Adult Essay Contest – 1st Place

Golden Gifts
By Sarah Craven – Cabin John, Maryland

Golden apples falling at your feet. This was a phrase my father often used to remind me of the many gifts and privileges in my life. Lately, I have reinterpreted his adage through the lens of golden plumeria —the tender and fragrant blossoms of the tropics.

In 1969, my parents moved our family from Maryland to Honolulu. My mother famously told my father she was willing to live there for “one year—and not a day more.” Yet, by the following year, they were signing the deed to a house on Wa’a Street—the Hawaiian word for canoe. The house, small and open-air, sat on the curve of the street under a rainbow shower tree shading the carport. A prodigious mango tree stood sentry at the corner of the lot, and the back garden brimmed with golden plumeria trees. Neighbors often knocked on the door, asking for a few ripe mangos or plumeria blossoms to string into leis.

We made our leis with long wire needles from Long’s Drug Store, threading them with dental floss. A  plumeria lei could welcome a visitor, mark a birthday, or celebrate a graduation. Even a single plumeria tucked behind the ear carried meaning—on the right if you were single, on the left if you were committed. The plumeria’s delicate fragrance and fleeting beauty became part of the rhythm of our lives.

This spring, my mom, now 99, reluctantly moved from her beloved home to The Ivy, a senior living community a short drive away. The irony of the name Ivy – a plant non-indigenous to  Hawaii – did not go unnoticed. Her new studio apartment overlooks a serene garden filled with fragrant plumeria trees. In the early days of her transition, she sighed wistfully, noting, “They are pretty trees but they’re not MY trees.”

Recently, a Wa’a Street neighbor texted, upset about plumeria blossoms from my mother’s trees drifting into her yard. I promised to trim the tree but couldn’t resist sharing how, years ago, those blossoms were treasures, not troubles. She wasn’t swayed. Perhaps I’ll send her a lei needle.

Two plumeria plants thrive in my Bethesda home, once mere sticks hastily bought from the Honolulu airport gift shop on a trip back. To my surprise, they blossomed, offering three or four flowers at a time.  I tenderly care for them, floating the infrequent but cherished blossoms in a small dish of water so their gentle fragrance seasons my home with memories of Honolulu.

Some things change—our homes, our stages of life—but some endure, like plumeria blossoms, quietly falling, a testament to beauty’s persistence. These small, simple treasures have been a constant through decades of change, bearing silent witness to our joys and sorrows, milestones and departures. 

My father’s wisdom lingers: golden blessings abound if we’re willing to notice. Sometimes, they fall at our feet, waiting to be gathered. Life, like the plumeria, offers fleeting beauty and connection. We must pause to honor them, weaving a lei of memories, an offering of gratitude.

Adult Essay Contest – 2nd Place

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light
By Kathy Wei – Bethesda, Maryland

Summertime used to feel like magic, where the air itself shimmered with excitement. Anything was possible. You could feel it in the smell of dew through an old screen door, the sound of tattered sneakers kicking up dirt in the yard, the taste of a sticky popsicle as it melted down your arm. It was humid enough that just standing still caused a thin layer of sweat to settle over your skin. But rather than feeling oppressive, the heat was pure freedom.

Maybe it was because school was out for months, which at the time felt like forever. Maybe it was because Mom and Dad were busy, so the kids were left to ourselves. Maybe it was because there was nothing to do inside, and so much to see outside. Whatever it was, the magic was strongest at night. The dark of summertime is soft, like a velvet blanket. It nestles quietly overtop everything it touches, dulling each of your senses. Your eyes are muffled by a deep orchid tint, your ears dulled by the constant chatter of grasshoppers, your body slowed through the thick air that clings to your every movement. Summer nights are sluggish. The harder you try to fight it, the more the heat weighs you down. And when you are too tired to look forward and keep going, you lie down and look up. 

When the sun dips under the horizon, only the faint glow of the sky lights your way. The concrete sidewalk fades beneath your feet. The road you follow instead is above your head, a vast plain broken into paths by the silhouettes of the treetops. It is under this cover of darkness that a society emerges. The neighborhood children meet after dinner under the gnarled old tree in the apartment complex’s courtyard. James picks the first game, because he is the oldest and the tallest. They race each other up and down the road until it no longer holds their interest. Panting, they lie on the grass and begin to trade their treasures. Three acorns go for a smooth pebble. A forked stick for a bouquet of dandelions. Two children argue angrily if a noisy brown toad is worth four or five muddy crystals fished from the creek. All of a sudden, they stop. The real prize has arrived.

Twinkling lights appear in front of their eyes, floating lazily in meandering loops. The stars have come to down to play. The children swiftly swish their jars through the air, lids already sloppily poked to allow their captives to breathe. They marvel as they do the impossible, holding pure light in their hands. Long ago, people looked to the night sky and read patterns in the millions of stars. By the time we were young, those stars had all but disappeared from our view. But it didn’t matter to us, because had stars we could touch. No one thought to ask: what do we do when the fireflies are gone too? 

Adult Essay Contest – 3rd Place

Object Permanence
By Lisa Park – Fairfax, Virginia

My daughter used to wave at me from the school bus window and blow me kisses. Now, she gives me a hug and traverses the big steps onto the bus. I follow her shadowy outline as she finds a seat with a friend. I wave to the back of her head. 

She used to love peek-a-boo. I covered my face with her favorite blanket, Where’s mama? then dropped the blanket. Her face—all chub and cheek back then—erupted into an elfin cackle. I did it again. Cackle. The best sound. 

She had developed object permanence. When babies realize that objects out of sight still exist, they search in expectation. She anticipated my return.

On Sunday nights, an ache would begin somewhere between my heart and head. I couldn’t localize it; it was nowhere anatomic. I kept busy, kept going. I packed milk for the next day. I stuffed my work bag with breast pump and clean bottles. By Monday morning, as we stepped through the daycare doors, I held her tightly to my chest, inhaling her baby shampoo and milk scent. She’ll be okay, the teachers said. You can go now.

I wonder how long my daughter watched my outline through the door. I imagined her looking and looking, crying at this game of peek-a-boo gone wrong. 

Her teachers sent me pictures. My daughter finger painting, red paint crossing over paper margins to color the table, my daughter sitting, dimple-thighed on the grass; in each picture, she was attached to another being—the teacher’s arms around her, the teacher’s hand holding her hand. I held her pictures while I sat in my office pumping milk for her. 

When I picked her up after work, our bodies relaxed into each other. Our brains had mastered object permanence, but our bodies had not been sure. 

The way to make separations less painful, they say, is to make sure your child knows that you will come back.  Practice the returns. The moment when the blanket drops, and you both are there, face-to-face.

My third grader sits in the back of the bus with the big kids. As her confidence grows, my trust in the world wanes. She has object permanence, but I waver. I can’t forget an image of an elementary school-age girl crying in the window of a bus, after a school shooting, being driven somewhere to reunite with her parents. I don’t even remember which school shooting. The world is impermanent. So are people.

Because I’m the parent, I keep these thoughts to myself. I hold them back when I would rather hold onto her. I stay steady and calm so she stays steady and calm. The tense muscles in my neck tell the truth, but only to me.

The best part of the day is when she returns from school. The ache relents. The muscles relax. Her delighted face, inches from my delighted face. When I’m not sure what to do, I remember the returns. 

Adult Essay Contest – Honorable Mention

On Exile
By Kyi May Kaung – Chevy Chase, Maryland

There was this friend of mine, who sent me a masthead from a journal on Immigration, suggesting I write for it.  

I replied, “I am not at immigrant.  I did not come to immigrate.  I was not emigrating.  It would take too much energy to try and prove I am an immigrant.”

I didn’t write anything then.  

I came on a Fulbright Fellowship for a doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania.  Fulbright and the Burmese military dictatorship decided my field should be Transportation Economics, but by the time I finished my coursework, I found that Transportation Economics was not the answer for Burma.  

Specifically, I saw a report from Fort Bragg that showed the surface of the Myitkyina Airport, probably from satellite photography.

In Burma you could not study Political Science.  You could only study Marxism, and there were only two textbooks.  I started reading Pol. Sci. on my own in van Pelt Library.   I discussed things with the professors.  One who always wore blue jeans to class, said, “You’re already at Penn, which is a good place to be, so I suggest you look around for a political scientist to be your dissertation supervisor.”   I found the late Henry Teune.  I also found my dissertation chair Herbert Levine, a Russia expert.

By the time I finished my Comprehensive Exams, the 1988 mass pro-democracy demonstrations took place in Burma.  The clampdown started on September 18^th.

Fulbright insisted their agreement was with the Burmese Government, and pulled our scholarships.  My childhood friend would later tell my sister, she did not finish at Wharton because she was disturbed by me calling her on the phone and discussing my personal problems.

As I remember it, I only called her two times, during our asylum applications.  Penn found us a lawyer.

So I am an asylee, a political refugee, who sought refuge and asylum.

In one fell swoop, I lost continent, country, city, job, marriage in Burma.

It’s not a disaster, as Elizabeth Bishop wrote.  To apply for asylum, I had to prove that I in particular, would be in danger.  

It was not enough to say the whole country was in turmoil.

I am not “pure Burman,” I am third generation Sino-Burmese-Mon, as in Mon-Khmer.  My friend was Burmese-Muslim, but she was “more Burmese” than I.  She spoke of her grandmother who kept her hair in a sadone, on top of her head.  She wore her longyi (sarong) all the time on the unsafe Penn campus, where a police officer came and briefed us to wear clothes and shoes we could run in.  We also attended sessions on date rape.

I don’t know the immigration rules for Burmese right now when there is an all-out civil – (uncivil) war, going on, the junta bombing towns and villages daily.

Burmese diaspora, Burmese massacres are accepted terms now, like Tamil Massacre, Rohingya Genocide, Cambodian Genocide.

Nabokov wrote in Speak Memory, that his mother did not need anything because she remembered everything.

Adult Essay Contest – Honorable Mention

Handkerchief
By Celina Santana – Bethesda, Maryland

The contents of my grandfather’s ninety-eight-year-old life are sorted into the following piles: 

1. Keep
2. Scrap metal
3. Recyclable
4. Salvageable parts
5. Flammable and better off flamed
6. Worthy of auction
7. Unidentifiable and to be snuck off the premises while he sleeps
8. Useable and likely wanted by neighbors
9. Objects he swears are worth a fortune that we’ll dispose after his death

#

I balance on the balls of my teenage feet as the wagon bumps and jerks behind the tractor. My jeans have dirt pods for knees. The tails of my brother’s old church shirt are tied below my belly button; it’s rolled-up sleeves are bulky rings around my wrists.   

The baler’s hydraulic arms pack eighty pounds of alfalfa and binds it in string. It spits out one, then a second, and my grandfather reaches forward and plunges steel hooks into each. It smells of spiced grass and honeysuckle. He swings both bales by their fresh cut bellies and tosses them to the back of the wagon, casting a rainbow of sweat, purple lucerne, field dust, and strain. 

#

Molasses brown juice diluted thin with saliva streams through week-thick stubble. To see the iron-proud chin of my grandfather stained and overgrown is the first understanding that time lacks compassion. How insignificant the decision might seem to anyone in the regular pace of the world. But here, in between thick West Virginia walls, the choice to blot again a handkerchief against his chin, or not, is profound. Both the dribble and the remedy are an assault on the long-earned pride of a man that once built steel structures to scrape the sky. I cannot suggest he unstuff his lip of the loose leaves that grow from his hand-tended land: it is all the man has left to tend. Fledging leaves of tobacco yearn for water, refuge, and time the way his children and grandchildren no longer do.

Yeah right, I say to the thick breeze in his wake. Moving away means a fresh start. I pull the tie out of my hair and let it fall over my shoulders. It feels heavy in the afternoon heat, shimmering with the glare of the sun. I get a clean slate.

Adult Essay Contest – Honorable Mention

Are You My Mother?
By Lindsey Wray – Arlington, Virginia

Are you my mother?

You, who taught me how to sound out the short “a” for “apple,” but who could no longer read the word “apple.” You, who didn’t know an apple is the sweet and crispy fruit you used to slice up for my little fingers to handle.

Are you my mother?

You, who planned birthday parties that were the envy of my friends — custom-made games and cakes with homemade frosting — but who no longer knew when either of us was born.

Are you my mother?

You, who adeptly sewed Halloween costumes and school play outfits, and who helped me learn to sew for school projects. But you, who didn’t understand what to do with a needle and thread.

Are you my mother?

You, who read books to me in bed, on the couch, at the kitchen table, again and again, and then listened when I read them to you. You, who later couldn’t make sense of the blur of words spoken to you.

Are you my mother?

In the children’s book “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman, a baby bird hatches while his mother is away finding food. The bird leaves its nest and begins exploring the wide world in search of his mother. He asks a dog, a cow, and even a bulldozer: “Are you my mother?” He’s not sure how to recognize her.

“I have to find my mother!” the bird exclaims at one point. “But where? Where is she? Where could she be?”

At the end of my mother’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease, I wasn’t sure where she was some days. I recognized her less and less, but still more than she recognized me. Where is she? Where could she be? Alzheimer’s erased her from the pages of her own book, yanking her out of the nest she worked so hard to build. 

The little bird in Eastman’s book remains determined to locate his mother: “I have to find her,” he says. “I will. I WILL!”

As my mother entered her final decline, finding her got more difficult. Sometimes I’d see her searching, too — leaning down, seeming to eye an item just beyond her gaze. Looking for something lost, perhaps, or for something familiar. 

Yes, yes, you are my mother. I have found you. And I think what you were looking for was a way to fly.

For more information on the Local Writer’s Showcase, please visit https://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/localwriters