Discerning the Cracks

S M Chen
5 min readJul 4, 2021

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

  • Leonard Cohen (1934–2016), Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, novelist

My eldest brother is 12 years my senior. I am 12 years older than his eldest child, a daughter. She is 12 years older than my son, who is 12 years older than her eldest son. Then it stops there.

This particular niece met her husband while attending an overseas college. In addition to being a man of the cloth, he plays a mean guitar and game of ping pong. Although currently without a parish in the traditional…