thank you, jhumpa lahiri

I read this story, "The Third and Final Continent," again just now, in a lull before class, and once again shivered at how true it rings, how beautifully it's written, how closely it strikes me. It feels so intimate to me and I almost get choked up towards the end, all the more so now because I know it so well. Here are the last few sentences:

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.