Crisis Kit

by Miho Nonaka

When your anxiety rises beyond seven on the scale of ten, such skills as “Sit with Discomfort,” “Change the Channel,” and “Thank Your Mind” no longer work. Your final resort is sensory. Come up with at least one item per sense that either shocks or soothes.

Taste:

Wasabi chocolate. One Valentine’s, I bought it for the boy I disliked very much. The truth is, he disliked me more than I disliked him, even before tasting the chocolate.

Touch:

Your chapped lips against my chapped lips: the cusp of a Chicago winter.

Smell:

Moon jellies — cloudy, rotten blobs on the beach. Little sister wailing.

Sight:

City like a remote opal Father and I watched from the darkening hill. Mother away because of her lungs.

Sound:

Wind chimes under the eaves of the temple that no longer exists. A man’s voice peddling goldfish in August.

Taste:

Rice balls shaped by Mother’s hands. A hint of salt, a crisp sheet of nori.

Touch:

Fake jade dragons, chenille chicks from Chinatown.

Smell:

Sweet olive in the fall, blossoms like crushed orange stars. Playing hide–and–seek in the neighbor’s garden, I would skip my piano lessons.

Sight:

Spring snow at the sanatorium. Each flake, an insect with slight wings.

Sound:

Sibelius’s Violin Concerto played by Midori. A needle of terror in the air. After being disowned by her father, she arrived in New York at age eleven and speaks to me only in English.

Taste:

Caramelized back of an eel over white rice. Grandmother couldn’t stop dreaming of it during World War II and many years after that.

Touch:

Mochi balls. Or our son’s cheek in the first three years of his life, when he still looked more Japanese than American.

Smell:

Pure alcohol of the now ubiquitous sanitizer. Borders closing.

Sight:

Azalea Festival. Shrub after shrub, pink, orange, white spheres made of flowers like open eyes. There was nowhere to hide. Years ago.

Sound:

Passing night train wakes our son at regular intervals. It’s bound somewhere. Somewhere exists.