My grandmother's story

I remember a story about a dragon that my grandmother told me when I was young.

It was about how when she was young and in her village in Taiwan, she saw a dragon rise up from the ground and fly into the sky. One could see the distinct prints of the dragon scales left behind on the ground.

It was something like how the place the dragon rose from was a construction site. In my imagination, the people were digging around, and piling or drilling into the ground, although I am not sure if back then, they had the same kind of technology to do things like that. All that construction work might have disturbed the earth dragon. In my imagination, many people gathered to see the dragon rise away, and the dragon was sometimes white, or green, or golden-yellow.

I find the disturbing thing about how old people tell stories is that they don't give you the descriptive details that you want. I want to know if the dragon breathed out smoke or fire or mist, or if it somersaulted before it flew away, but no, that was the way she told me - in its brevity. And in passing. They like to tell interesting things in passing, and by the time you're coming to terms with what was just said, they're already talking about other things - like if you'd like to have an apple, or drink some milo, or how is your mother - things that require you to respond mundanely and forget your curiosity.

Then, as I grew up, whether dragons are real or not became lesser of a discussed question. The scientists would say perhaps, back in ancient China, people imagined dragons from dinosaur bones and giant snakes or whatever. Perhaps, if I call my grandmother now to ask her to repeat the story, she may tell me that she doesn't remember anything.

But I remember the story. And I believe that she had no reason to lie to me that she saw such a thing happen with her own eyes. She's not somebody who would tell me things for fun, you know. She was somebody who scolded me for pouring talcum powder on the ground (so that I could skate around the room), because it was a waste of money.

I suppose I might have dreamt up the story and think of it to be real. Since I did not keep a diary when I was young and I don't have records of the conversation to refer to. If she did, she must have told me the story over a decade ago, and I don't even remember properly what she told me last week.

Then again, my grandmother might have dreamt it up too.