1
" The flowers in Tibet were always taller, more fragrant and vivid. Her descriptions, imprecise but unchanging from year to year lead me to an inevitable acceptance that her past was unequaled by our present lives. She would tell me of knee-deep fields of purple, red and white- plants never named or pointed out to during our years in India and Nepal- that over time served to create an idea of her fatherland, phayul, as a riotous garden. I pictured her wilderness paradise by comparing them not to the marigolds, daises or bluebells I crushed with my fingers, but to the shape of household artefacts around me: lollipop, broom, bottle. Disparate objects that surrendered to and influenced the idea, space and hope of a more abundant and happy place. "
― Tsering Wangmo Dhompa , Coming Home to Tibet: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging
17
" I realized early that despite her gregarious and inherently buoyant disposition, a certain sadness resided in my mother. Even I, her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, could do little to soothe the sorrow that has taken root with the separation from her parents, her two sisters and her brother. The contrast in the life my mother experienced before and after leaving Tibet was so extreme, it must have been impossible for her to make sense of her life and to escape the inexhaustible longing for the past. Caring for me on her own inside crowded rooms of tenement buildings in towns and cities, she must have felt she had dreamt her past or that she was dreaming her present existence. The places and residences we lived in were never quite home to her and led her to cling, more tenaciously, to the past. My mother had guarded her past sorrows from me because she knew me well enough to sense I would carry her grief as my own. "
― Tsering Wangmo Dhompa , Coming Home to Tibet: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging
19
" In towns, the nomads remain outsiders for a while. They become a class divorced from their occupation as herders. They are called drokpa in an undertone that indicates an unsophisticated, uneducated person, a person still in progress. In their own villages they are known to everyone for their horsemanship, their ability to round cattle, their weaving skills, for being a good child to their parents, or simply for their ability to make good yogurt and dried cheese. "
― Tsering Wangmo Dhompa , Coming Home to Tibet: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging