At my first American Christmas, age 6 after having immigrated from Taiwan to California, I was given my first American stationery set. Each of the cousins (the kids) were given a white and red plastic Snoopy pencil box shaped like a large round crayon. The red top unscrewed to become a pencil sharpener. The real prize to me was a pad of stationery paper. The background on each pale green half-sheet size page of the booklet was a misty faded photograph of a deep green blade of grass, spotted with small round jewels of dew, and at the tip of the blade clung a large reflective tear-shaped drop. There was something magical about that image. It stirred in my young consciousness some association to a veiled memory that I could no longer identify.

It wasn’t until years later when I learned English that I could read the anonymously authored haiku, printed in white on the bottom right corner of each page:

Dewdrop, let me cleanse
In your brief, sweet waters
These dark hands of life