Mother's urging

On an early spring afternoon, Lin Weixi had just finished a video conference with the Antarctic expedition team when her mother's video call request popped up. The mother on the other side of the screen was wearing an apron, and the background was the familiar tile pattern of her kitchen at home.

"Weixi," my mother said as she peeled garlic, "Your Aunt Zhang's nephew just came back from abroad and works in an investment bank. I sent you his photo..."

She scrolled her mouse, and sure enough, a standard photo of a man in a suit appeared on WeChat. The man was smiling appropriately, and the background was a glass-walled office building. She replied with a smiling emoji and continued to organize her polar photography data.

"I'm free on Saturday, would you like to meet?" Mother's voice was tentative.

"I have to finish the manuscript this weekend." Her hands did not stop typing on the keyboard.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and then the father's voice came in the background: "The child is busy at work, don't keep pushing him."

But my mother had clearly come prepared. Before hanging up, she sent me a compressed file containing the resumes of three men: an engineer in his thirties, a university lecturer, and an artist who owns a gallery. Each one's profile was as detailed as a job application, even listing allergies and pet preferences.

She dragged the compressed file into a folder called "Life" and continued adjusting the photo's saturation. The blue of the Antarctic ice shimmered in her eyes, drawing her closer attention than the color of her blind date's suit.

On Friday night, Shen Siyu and her child came to visit. The two-year-old girl wobbled around holding a toy camera, imitating her movements as she adjusted the lens. As she made tea, Shen Siyu said, "My mom keeps urging me to have a second child, as if our lives are the unfinished puzzle pieces."

She smiled and handed the baked cookies to the child. The little girl broke the cookies into pieces and used them to create a crooked star pattern on the coffee table. This image was more vivid than any photo in her dating profile.

While organizing her hard drive late at night, she discovered an encrypted folder. She tried the password using her high school class number before it opened—it contained PDFs of all of Chen Wang's papers, from his undergraduate thesis to his recent nebula research published in Nature. Each one had a download timestamp, the earliest being seven years ago.

She made a cup of coffee and randomly clicked on an article. Amidst the complex formulas, a note of thanks suddenly popped up: "Thanks to the B University magazine for providing the aurora photography data. Special thanks to Ms. Lin Weixi for her long-term technical support."

This official wording made her laugh. She recalled how they argued until the early hours of the morning at his institute over data accuracy. Finally, when he compromised, he said, "You always see details that I overlooked."

My mother called again on Sunday, this time with a different tactic: "I'm not asking you to get married, but at least someone should accompany you to the emergency room, right? It was so dangerous when you fainted from a fever last time..."

She looked out the window and said, "Mom, I'm waiting for a real heartbeat, not an emergency room companion."

There was silence on the other end of the line. After a long pause, my mother whispered, "When your father was pursuing me, he waited for me at the factory gate for three whole months."

This was the first time she had heard this story. It turned out that a quiet man like her father also had a passionate youth.

After hanging up, she clicked on her blind date's WeChat Moments. Engineers shared code, lecturers published papers, and artists posted exhibition announcements. Everyone lived their lives with all their heart, but their worlds were separated from hers by a transparent wall.

She updated her Moments background to a picture of the aurora borealis in the Antarctic night sky, with the caption, "The universe is vast enough." Chen Wang liked the post; it was his first appearance in six months.

She didn't reply and continued writing the interview, but when she saved it, she gave the file a new name: "Waiting for the Aurora on the Ice Field."

There was a postcard from Greenland on the refrigerator, his scribbled handwriting a bit smudged. She gently tore it off and replaced it with a schedule for a photoshoot in Norway next week.

Late at night, Shen Siyu sent a message: "Actually, you know the problem—you've seen whales leaping from the sea, so how can you be moved by the ripples in a pond?"

She smiled back and turned off the desk lamp. In the darkness, the camera charging indicator light looked like a distant star.

In the morning light, she received an email from her editor-in-chief: the Norway project had been approved, for a two-year period. When she replied to confirm, she copied the email address that hadn't changed in seven years—Chen Wang's student account, still ending with his undergraduate alma mater.

Five minutes later, a reply came in: "Just received an invitation to visit Princeton, the time overlaps. Perhaps we can meet in Tromsø?"

She closed her computer and made a fresh cup of tea. The sycamore tree outside the window had sprouted new buds; spring had arrived, but her northern lights were still further north.