ON THE SLOPING shoulder of Paradise Ridge, just south of Moscow, Idaho, my dad’s spinning kick drives him higher — one arm near his face, the other outstretched, soaring above the sunset-colored springtime boughs of the peach trees that he planted with those same two hands. His feet regain the ground. He’s not even practicing kung-fu in earnest, just egging on the family dog with acrobatic motions before sending a tennis ball flying deep into the pasture. The slope is steep on this little ridge outside the city, and the slightest gain in elevation lifts him above the loess-brown hills visible in the drainages beneath a fringe of wheat and timothy. I call it timothy as if this was still a pasture, though through the decades it has become a sea of bunchgrasses, knapweed, rogue pines and the ever-expanding Chinese vegetable garden that my father has cultivated ever since he and my mother bought the property in the early ’90s.
Over the past year, the conflict between China and Taiwan has escalated yet again, though it has been overshadowed by other violence. I’d debated flying to Taipei with my children, but, talking on the phone with my parents, I mentioned that it might not be too smart to fly straight into the possible threat of a missile attack. “You know, that’s why we bought the property,” my mother said.
