The image at the end of "The Weight of Sweetness" is the father moving away from the son, both metaphorically and literally, as the son is weighed down by a bag of peaches. Lee has always been obsessed with walking, the idea of steps and the image of feet. No doubt this stems from his family's own wanderings.

After escaping from Indonesia in 1959, the Lees journeyed through various parts of Asia, including Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, before coming to the United States in 1964. In The Winged Seed, Lee describes the effect of all this travelling on his own feet and his father's: "By the time we got to America, my feet were tired. My father put down our suitcase, untied my shoes, and rubbed my feet, one at a time with such deep turns of his wrist. I heard the water in him through my...