Amanda is a week old when our apartment door rings to let in the neighborhood community doctor. I let her in, holding Kobe back from jumping on her. She wears a mask and talks with Sabrina. She examines Amanda. Gives some advice which I’ve forgotten and after about 20 minutes is gone. When Amanda is a month old, she’s back this time wearing tennis shoes. A bit sporty. More examinations, more talk, and then she’s gone. That was the extent of the official neighborhood wellness checks as we opted to use the services of the same hospital Sabrina gave birth at. ...

The morning of Amanda’s 98th day, I met Yang and Lydia in south Beijing at the secondhand car market to transfer our small car title from Yang to Lydia. This is probably worthy of a post on its own. Let’s just say it’s been a 2.5 year process to do the transfer so that I can eventually get a new car. With the transfer, we had to give up the car’s iconic black plate. Foreigner registered cars prior to 2008 had them and made us feel a bit “special”. ...

(disclaimer: memories are brittle and fleeting) My brother Jimmy passed away around noon Beijing time last Sunday, July 9, 2023. He was 72 or 73 years old. Very few people really know us for our entire life. Parents, older siblings. One of my earliest memories was with him. Not a clear memory, a feeling, an impression. Joy, fun, safe. I was maybe three and in his bedroom which was in my parents basement. It was a place of music and coolness and expressiveness. Later that year, another memory. Trama. A fight of some kind. He’s leaving home. Kicked out. Again, no concrete memories but a dire dark feeling. Shaping experiences. ...

It’s 95F and a bit humid. I’m finishing a run then walking next to the Utown mall across from my apartment. My mind is down a winding, messy path. Thinking about life problems. Work problems. I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about these things. Or I should say, I don’t have anyone I would burden with my thoughts. So, I find my mind, as it often does, talking to my brother Jim. ...

I’m listening to a podcast and the guest says there’s a huge spike in physical and mental fitness the year before people hit a milestone birthday. That the 29, 39, 49, and 59 years see an increase in gym membership and therapy sessions. That you clearly see a spike in marathon runners at 29, 39, and 49 years old. I remember when I was 29 and at home bored. I was alone at that point and not really wanting to be alone. I was in pretty good shape from playing basketball three days a week. I decided to go for a run. It was 100F degrees out. I flew down Concord Blvd thinking I would cut back on Ygnacio but was feeling so good I kept going. It was in the direction of a house where a woman I liked but shouldn’t like lived. I’m sure it helped with my pace. I cut over to Clayton road and headed back. I felt I could push my body to a near sprint. I ran in a few for-fun races that year and it was the fastest I would ever run seven miles. I signed up for some half marathons. ...

Sabrina’s pre-natal appointments started out monthly, then every two weeks and finally weekly. At the end of each appointment, they’d give her a pamphlet about what to expect in the next time period. At least until she hit 40 weeks and they had no 41st week instructions. Sabrina’s doctor, an elderly doctor that ebbed experience, suggested that if the baby did not arrive on its own by Wednesday, that Sabrina check in the hospital and induce labor. ...

I’m sitting across from Sabrina when the epidural doctor comes in. He is described by the nurses as an extremely good doctor and very handsome. He looks touched to me. A day prior, on Amanda’s due date, Sabrina’s labor was induced but not much had happened until the past hour when the contractions got more severe and Sabrina asked for the epidural. I’ve been running on caffeinated adrenaline with alertness, focus, and calmness. Emotion was in there somewhere but was hard to tap. Hard to tap until I saw the doctor prep Sabrina for the epidural. Numbing shot. Long needle. Epidural shot. I felt it then. This is real. ...

It is 2006 and one of our routines was to visit the Jianguomen Haagen-Dazs which was next to the international club where Yang and I would occasionally play tennis. Lydia and Aidan were two to four years old. Plenty old enough for an Allio to get hooked on ice cream. It was a kind of sit-down ice cream place which I didn’t know was a thing. White linen tablecloth. Glass stemmed water glasses I was terrified the kids would knock over. A menu would be brought over but that was no fun so I’d lead Aidan and hold Lydia to the ice cream case so they could choose. Aidan would go by flavor, Lydia by color and admiring the rose water. ...

We are driving to Hairun to drop off our dog Kobe before Sabrina’s baby heartbeat and contraction monitoring appointment. Sabrina snaps a groupie of her, Kobe, and me on the drive. I look old, chubby, and out of shape. That is my misplaced or correctly placed focus. Two days prior Sabrina felt the baby, Amanda, might be coming and got things ready for the hospital. She hesitated to wake me up. Need to work on that. By morning she was feeling better and we went to her normally scheduled pregnancy appointment. Sonogram. Baby and contraction monitoring. The elderly doctor, who I offensively refer to as the sugar nazi, insists Sabrina go to hospital for a couple days of observation since her blood sugar is a bit high. We go to hospital, run the same monitoring tests again and the hospital doctor says everything looks good. We go home. ...

About three years ago a co-worker asked me to give a talk with him on our experience as foreigners working in China. The talk was delayed for various reasons including indifference until last week. During the delays it was never far from my mind about the message I wanted to share. Certainly not the CCTV happy foreigner. Did I dare share the unvarnished brutal truth as ugly as it might be? No, can’t do that. For one, it’s not that ugly even if there has been moments that felt that way. Second, as the minority there is a bit Stockholm’s syndrome and I am careful not to overstep and put the majority on the defensive. ...