I come home after dinner with a friend and Aidan is waiting for me. “Bobbi, I want to play baseball” he says. He’s been wanting to play baseball a lot lately. I say “ok” and the game is on. Aidan digs out the plastic baseball bat and the small glove I brought him from the US. One problem, no ball. He starts to dig into the toy pile which sits in the corner of our dining room (we live in kind of a small place – no play rooms for sure). I join the search but neither one of us is having any luck. Aidan asks for the Ayi’s to help. He asks in Chinese and I know the word for ball (qui 球) so I know he’s asking. Soon we have two ayis and myself looking. Aidan, obviously smarter than me, has moved on once he delegated the task. He is now putting on the glove. He mistakenly puts it on his right hand so I show him it goes on the left. Sure enough one off the Ayis finds the ball and the game starts. ...

Despite my efforts to moisten, the skin on the back of my hands cracks and bleeds, a victim of the harsh cold and dry Beijing winters. She awakes to a text message and stumbles out of bed to check it. The floor is cold and whatever warmth she felt while bundled alone under the covers is now gone. How she wishes she had placed the charger near the bed and could avoid this trip all together. She checks the message, it’s from her boss asking where she is. It’s 11am. She text messages back that she’s developed a cold and is spending the morning recovery. She’s been developing a lot of colds lately. ...

I get home around 7:30pm after stopping at 711 to pick up my spaghetti dinner. The ayi’s would have cooked my dinner but Yang is not going to be home in time and the babies eat dinner at preschool, so it didn’t seem fair. Not fair because even if Yang tells them not to wait for me to eat they will wait for me. Part to be polite I guess, part to make sure I have enough food. Also not fair because they would have to cook something for my tastes when they could just cook something they like. Anyway, when I get home Aidan and Lydia rush up to me. Lydia wants me to see her Barbie book. Aidan wants to play fight. ...

We are driving to see the Lady with the Chisel. Aidan is in the back seat lying strips of banana peal side by side. I ask him if he wants to help his father with a Chinese lesson. He says yes. I switch what’s playing on the car stereo to an episode of ChinesePod about calling someone tall. Aidan is not super interested and he asks for another lesson. It seems these ChinesePod lessons, at the level I listen too, actually help his english a bit as they talk more english on the show than Chinese. ...

As we get older certain dates explode off the calendar with a vengeance. For those that follow the lunar calendar – like the older generation in Beijing – dates appear like clowns in a funhouse, you never know which corner they are around. This year, my father in law’s birthday was announced just days before the actual day, making a near orbital collision with Yang’s bday and Thanksgiving. What does this all mean? ...

I’m in line, backpack strapped to my back, pushing my duffel bag with my feet, and pulling my carry-on toward the united airlines business class check in. I was too cheap, or too sane, to pay $3 for a luggage cart. Sanity or disturbance is an argument I often have with myself. I check in the duffel bag, check in the carry on, and leave the counter with just my back pack and boarding pass. As I walk towards the gate, I see a vaguely familiar face. A bit older, a bit thinner, quite a bit more worn. But yes, it is her, Mary. My first instinct is to bolt pass her, pretend I don’t see her, as I often do when I see an person from my past. But I’m trying to get past my past – so to speak – and make my past, my past and not let my past be my future. So to speak. ...

I call Beijing from my temp office trying to catch Yang and the kids before they head off to work and school respectively. Yang is just stepping out of the shower – suddenly i feel i’ve been away too long – so she hands the phone to Aidan. Aidan tells me he has a stomach ache. This is his way of avoiding school. When reminded he just finished breakfast without any sign of stomach problems he quickly switches to a headache. I can feel his slight smile at playing this trick, him knowing I know what he’s trying to do yet doing it anyway. Aidan’s giddiness is almost palatable on the phone and causes me to smile. We talk bit, Aidan asking for toys from America and me promising at least one. ...

The day before the Halloween party Yang and I took the kids to Watson’s to buy baskets to stash the large quantities of Halloween candy they would be collecting on our behalf. Aidan and Lydia decided this would be the ideal time to try out their new costumes – Aidan as Spiderman and Lydia as Cinderella. On the way across the street to Watson’s, Aidan and Lydia were quite excited. Aidan occasionally breaking out into spontaneous spidy moves. Once at Watson’s they gathered a fair amount of attention and stares. Aidan didn’t like it and began crying. Not the cry when he is angry or tired but the cry when he is really hurt with big, solid tears running down his cheeks. People nearby thought he had bumped his leg on something, but Yang new better. He immediately asked to go home. hua jia (回家) in Chinese over and over again. I held him and carried him home. Lydia was oblivious to the whole thing or at leased seems so. ...

The Beijing Marathon was supposed to start at Tiananmen Square and finish at finish at the National Stadium near the new Olympic park. But planning being what it is here, they overlooked that the national congress was meeting this week and had to re-arrange the route to both start and end at the National Stadium. Well, end there all except for the half marathon which I was entered in. My first challenge was to find the starting line. The sign at the entrance pointed left, so I went left. And left, and left, and left. I found the 5K starting line with loads of runners waiting. I went through and around them only to find the 10K starting line a few hundred yards ahead. I was starting to get desperate. I tried to go around the 10K starting line only to be stopped by a guard. Two japanese men also wanted past. The guard held is ground. We tried to explain we needed to be at the other starting line, to let us past. Out race jerseys and numbers indicated either full or half marathon. The guard did not understand nor did he wish to understand. A few more of us stranded marathoners gathered and with a push forced our way past the now two guards and to the marathon starting line. The race had just started so we joined, it was 8:15am. ...

Her brother has a friend who is opening a beauty saloon in the Asian Park section of Beijing, so she packed her bags – really just one – and left our family this morning. The beauty saloon represented a better opportunity and the chance to learn a skill that she can use when she returns to her hometown in a year or two. At least this is her plan. Everyone plans to be here a year or two. ...