The Theme: You Are Here
The Winners:
Film:
Title : You Are Here
By: Pollyanna Leung
Age: 14
Irvine University Park Library
Art:
Title : One of the Many Beautiful Flowers in La Habra
By: Ofelia Sanchez
Age: 14
Poetry:
In Lovely Rain
We march down the tunnel
Overrun with joy
Our team flies down the field like hawks
Talons curled
We jump to our feet
There is a sudden silence
My heart is in a coil
First down
We explode like happy cannons
Silence
#21 fumbles the ball. Again.
Our adversaries behind us erupt
We bury our faces in our hands
It starts to rain
The churro man comes
He knows he is our hero
And now we have
Hot cinnamon churro in cold wet hands
I am drenched
In lovely rain
Artist Statement :
This poem is about time spent with my dad at USC Football games. The stadium, during a game, is one of my favorite places. It is a place to bond, laugh and enjoy a perfect day...even in lovely rain!
By: Carter Jenkins
Age: 14
Prose:
Title: The Flower of Sharon
I pick up the red phone in the vice principal’s office.
“I’m coming to pick you up at school now because we’re going to go see grandpa at the hospital so ...”
“What! Mom, is something wrong with Grandpa?”
“Well . . . I’ll explain to you in the car. Wait in front of the maple tree!”
“…”
A cold shiver goes down my spine. It’s July 20. In one week, Grandpa turns 78. He will celebrate the tenth anniversary of his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease. He will not recognize any of my family’s faces, not even mine, but he will celebrate it just the same. And we will hold back our tears and put on our happy faces, just the way we have done for the past nine years.
I walk down the crimson hallway to grab my bag. I forget my habit of counting each cracked brick in the gray pathway or fingering broken locks dangling from age-worn lockers. Today, there are just too many.
“I have to go to the hospital.”
Tears swell in my eyes as I interrupt class to speak to Mr.Walton.
“I’ll be missing the rest of school because . . .”
I blur the end of my sentence but something tells me he understands. 40 pairs of dry eyes stare at my pair of red, blurry eyes as I throw history textbooks in my bag. The silence is suffocating and I half-run out of the room, tears dropping on the threadbare carpet. Class resumes immediately.
* * *
I run past the chipped staircase next to the theater. Two posters hanging behind the theater yell, “Come watch Alice in Wonderland at Woodbridge Alice
I dash in front of the science building, past the vending machine that sells Cheez-its, Goldfish, Cheetos, and apple-flavored chips. It’s the only vending machine at school that sells apple-flavored chips. A childhood temptation crosses my mind. About as chewy, sweet, and pink as temptation can get, animal cracker after animal cracker endangered my nutritious diet in second grade. When Mom forgot to pack lunch before she left, ‘guess I’ll just have some more of these’ and when Dad came home with no dinner, ‘once again, animal crackers save the day’.
And then Grandpa started cutting green apples in the shape of animal crackers. I don’t know how he did it because it was the third year of his disease and he was starting to forget how to stop his Toyota
Quarter in, chips out. I stuff apple chips into my backpack, hoping maybe he’ll remember me now, just maybe.
The hundred year-old maple tree stands next to Greg Cops Street, named after the first principal at Woodbridge High. When Grandpa and I lived next to the “big red school that someday you’ll go to, cutey”, our childhood games often revolved around that majestic tree. There was Arirang, a Korean version of the game green-light-red-light, where a Chanter would sing a short song facing a large tree and turn around immediately to catch anyone who was not frozen still. But when the Chanter was singing, everyone else would sprint to touch the maple tree first and win. If you fell, or even twitched your pinky after each song, a mean Chanter could always call you out. Grandpa was a very mean Chanter.
Until one day when he stood facing the maple tree and started singing “The flower of Sharon is . . . the flower of Sharon
“I don’t remember the song, cutey. I don’t remember what comes after ‘the flower of Sharon
“Grandpa, why can’t you just sing the song? I just wanted to have some fun with my closest friends and you can’t remember two lines!”
“Was it ‘the flower of Sharon
“Grandpa, why can’t you just sing the stupid song?”
Then, I did something I regret until today. I started sobbing loudly to ‘punish’ my inconsiderate Grandpa who had damaged my preteen reputation in front of my friends. Of course I knew why he could not finish the Arirang song. He was entering his sixth year of Alzheimer’s and losing his memory so quickly like a cascade of snapshots pouring out of his mind. I could no longer expect him to remember our house number or even the lyrics his favorite song. But at least for that moment, I wanted to be a normal girl with a Grandpa who mostly remembered things, not one with a Grandpa who rarely remembered anything.
My embarrassment escaped when my startled friends muttered good-byes and headed home but even years after, my guilt from watching Grandpa apologize too many times that day and seeing him struggle to remember the last words of the song has scarred my heart, a punishment I wholly deserve.
* * *
“Your eyes are red,” is the first thing my sister says to me when I ride my mom’s car in front of the maple tree. “Did you cry? What a crybaby.”
Her words only bounce off my ears and I hastily wipe off some tears.
“Mom, what’s wrong with Grandpa? Is he having problems with medication? Is he getting surgery today? Is he all cured now and . . .”
“Grandpa’s lung is faltering and the doctors are worrying he’ll be gone in a day or two.”
She spits out the sentence like a cobra stabbing venom into its prey. Dark red poison penetrates my skin and strangles my heart.
“Does that mean . . . will grandpa . . . but it’s only been ten years . . . that’s not really going to happen, right Mom?”
“I don’t know but I hope not, honey. I’m praying and praying.”
Mom drops us off in front of the hospital to go park and my sister and I run across the scarlet-colored corridor to a room sporting a sign that reads Grandpa’s name: Kim Ki-Yong. Grandpa is tucked under a soft white blanket my relatives have brought and his bewildered eyes are blood shot and lifeless as they stare into open space. Aunts and uncles dressed in traditional, black hanbok crowd his bed holding hands and praying. Grandma is clutching tissues soaked with mascara-stained tears but more tears run down her wrinkled peach-color skin, dropping on to Grandpa’s snowy blanket.
I tiptoe into the silent room. My hands are quivering as I approach the bed, a bag of apple-flavored chips clenched in my left fist. An inconsistent beep-beep-beep is coming from the stethograph connected to Grandpa’s emaciated wrist. I squirm between my relatives to the front of the bed and the rustle of my bag of chips attracts Grandpa’s weary eyes.
“You are here,” Grandpa murmurs. “You are here to play with me.”
“Yes, I am. Grandpa, can you tell who I am?” I wave the rose-colored bag of chips in front of his face. The nostalgic scent of apple hovers in the air. “Do you remember when you cut apples into animal shapes for me when I was in second grade and when you sang the ‘flower of Sharon
“You are here,” Grandpa repeats.
He’s not looking at me and I realize he doesn’t recognize who I am. He doesn’t recognize any of us. The bag of apple chips falls to the floor and bursts.
The stethograph starts blinking uncontrollably as the beep-beep-beep sound slows.
“No, Grandpa, you were wrong.” His blurry eyes meet mine but I am no longer crying. “The flower of Sharon
Trying to ignore the darkening stethograph and Grandpa’s heavy eyes, I start to sing.
“The flower of Sharon
The song ends in a high note. And with a final shrill ‘BEEP’, Grandpa succumbs to the forces of nature on a sunny day, his five fingers tightly wrapped around mine.
‘Good bye, Grandpa. You are always here in my heart.’
Artist Statement :
Anyone who has lost a loved one knows how difficult it is to cope with the loss, even after time has passes. The last week of July marked one year since my grandfather passed away in 2010. I will never forget how much he loved me, and he will always be here in my heart.
By: Hoyeon Lee
Age : 15
Honorable Mentions:
Poetry:
A Different Orange County
In Orange County
whether black, asian, hispanic, or white
we all share California
However, as a community we do not ignite
harmony, understanding, compassion or love.
Let this be the time for when we can begin
the harmony, let's commence the love
Let's begin a new chapter, let's win
the world's attention by being one of
a kind.
Let’s ignite a change in Orange County
Artist Statement :
I was born in Anaheim and moved to Mexico Orange County
By: Christopher Jimenez
Age: 12
You are here
You are here,
A leaf in the endless tree of time
An atom borrowed from the dinosaurs,
Another borrowed from the wind.
We live and die in a season
Like a leaf that buds in spring and shrivels in winter
Like a candle lit for a birthday cake
Alive only for a breath of time
Most leaves fall and are forgotten
Only a few preserved in the history book of time
How is it that these people were remembered?
They stood up while others sat down
They charged the sky with swords
They devoured discomfort
For it is only when we are challenged that we grow
And so you are here.
What will you do about it?
Artist Statement :
"You are here." We are always here, part of the earth, but only for a breath of time do the elements conglomerate to form us, then are scattered again. So while we are alive, we should make the most out of our lives.
By: Tony Zeng
Age: 12
Prose:
Title: Tomato Days
The leaves of the oak tree rustled as my mother pushed aside a branch and surveyed the tomato fields. They lay about one hundred paces away, at the bottom of the hill. The hot summer had turned the long grass on the hill yellow, forcing my mother and her friends to strip down to collared t-shirts and shorts, and pushing the boys from other towns far away to come all the way to the shallow river and deep reservoir into which it flowed. A few minutes ago, those boys had been splashing in the reservoir, their voices echoing off the tiny dam. Now, they were on their way home; walking past the acres of vegetable fields, climbing the craggy mountains that girdled my mother’s little village of ten families, so small that it didn’t even have a name.
My mother’s village rested on a hill that was cut in half by a dirt road. On either side stood several stout one-story brick houses, in the center of which was a small community garden. As my mother sat in a willow tree bordering the vegetable fields, everyone else in the village took their afternoon nap. Everything stood still and silent in the reservoir except for the song of the swallow and the whispering of the warm breeze.
Four friends peeked out of the tree with my mother; two boys and two girls who, like my mother, were 9 years old. They giggled and smiled, delighted to disobey their parents by not taking their naps, and stealing out to solve this mystery. But what was the mystery?
Seeing nothing, they hid their heads and continued playing finger games and folding paper airplanes while one boy kept watch. It did not take long until he saw something. He whispered to everyone, and they peeked out. Something rustled in the grass. What was it? Could it be a fox?
No, it was not. As my mother peered between the branches of the willow tree, she could make out six naked boys, from wee little ones to teenagers, all sun-tanned and dripping wet from the reservoir. They crept up to my mother’s tomato fields.
At ten paces away from the field, a damp head popped out of the long, yellow grass. Not spotting any danger, the boy jumped out with glee, then threw away his stealth. Like frogs, the rest sprang up too and lumbered noisily over to the tomato fields—shouting to each other, giggling, and scaring even the crows. Eeew! My mother and her friends could not help but snort and giggle at the sight of these naked, dripping wet, sun-tanned boys. Even though my mother tried to turn her head away, she could only gawk. She lit up like a scarlet paper lantern spying on these naked boys she did not even know!
Oblivious, the naked boys picked the ripest and juiciest tomatoes from the fields until they each held an enormous armful. The bigger boys bickered over the largest and juiciest tomatoes, their cheeks bulging and juice running down their chins while the little ones sprawled out on a patch of grass and gobbled as many as they could. At last, after watching them thieving all their hard-earned, juicy ripe tomatoes, two of my mother’s friends leaped down the tree and charged at the naked boys.
“Eeep!” a small naked boy cried as he noticed my mother’s friends bounding towards him, fists waving like furious farmers.
“Ha ha, tee-hee! Come and get me!” an older boy teased as he sprinted away. He hurled a tomato at his pursuers, but it flew by and splattered on the ground.
Soon, the other naked boys had spotted my mother’s friends and stuck their tongues out as they raced away.
“Come back here, you thieves and rascals!” my mother’s friend shouted as he chased after the naked boys. They jumped over rocks, flew by bushes, and darted over the tiny stone bridge on the river. The naked boys took flying leaps and plopped into the reservoir, safe from their pursuers. My mother’s friends could only stand at the edge, hurling insults back and forth with the naked boys along with a few tomatoes and pebbles until they finally gave up and came trudging back. As the pursuers came in sight, my mother and her friends howled with laughter at the sight of their scratched tomato-splattered friends; now, with the mystery solved, it was time to run back, clean up, and climb into bed before their parents noticed they were gone.
“You are here.” To me this means we must celebrate those tiny moments in our lives that make us who we are. The story below is about a moment from my mother’s childhood in
By: Tony Zeng
Age: 12
