What do I do with my hands?

I’m in a row of folding chairs with my cousins, making paper into gold bullions.

It’s a stuffy room, crammed with people, incense, and flowers tacked to the walls—but mostly because we’re not sure the burning furnace is actually vented to the outside.

We’re laughing, perhaps too loudly for a funeral, remembering how my pópó reacted when I snuck my boyfriend into her basement, where I was living for the summer.

I get the distinct feeling of being a child, told to occupy myself in the next room, though almost all of us are adults, several married. Our parents stand in a line shaking hands across the room.

Some of my cousins are crying. A slideshow plays on a monitor perched on a fold up chair. I feel grateful for the enormous pile of paper, yet to become gold, on a center table. It seems never-ending, and Stephanie assures me it actually is—they’ll bring more if we go through it. We actually did go through it.

Perhaps folding is a more acceptable use of our time than scrolling on our phones or pulling out a handheld console, though of course the tradition goes back much farther than as a replacement for electronics. I never learned to fold paper bullions, though Stephanie knows how, from pópó. She filled jars of folded cranes and stars too when she was younger. The room is filled with two different languages.

I get the sense of clicking into place as the young and alive to the old and dead, maybe a function of the meditation the folding action allows, like prayer beads. How many more people will I fold bullions for? Will someone fold them for me?

Life is full of empty time, meaningless conversation, just being in the company of others, and all the joy and strain that entails. It’s nice to have something to do with your hands.