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To my delight, Lydia and Elisa are sitting at the kitchen table and playing tic tac toe. I do not know who is winning. The win for me is that they are playing and not fighting. It’s not that they fight so much as Lydia is a bit hard on her younger sister. Just the other day Lydia called me at work to complain that Elisa had broken the house rule of playing games on the computer for more than an hour straight. Don’t get me wrong, Lydia isn’t Matt on Joe level fighting and with Elisa, Lydia is mostly indifferent to unsupportive. I can only guess which parent that is from. More than guess, I guess. Anyway, on this weekend the girls were sans Aidan who was snowboarding in the US with his mom. Aidan gets the slopes of Aspen; Lydia and Elisa get tic tac toe. It was certainly warmer. Oh, the reason Aidan being away is important is because Aidan and Lydia are super close and when Aidan is around Lydia is harsher to Elisa. It may have to do with Aidan also being super close to Elisa but who am I to say. The father. ...

It was a warm August afternoon along the shoreline in Vancouver and the father strolled along the seashore with his wife and children. It didn’t matter that their home was far, far away. Home was where the family was. The eldest, a boy, wanted some popcorn so they stopped and the father let go of his need to control his middle aging weight and joined in. The mother kept track of the youngest who was barely a year old. ...

I am staring at the mirror and questioning. Questioning the value of gel. I thought it was supposed to make hair look better. Turns out there is a skill to it or at least a skill to making it look bad. Check. Last weekend I decided to go to a haircut place closer to where I live. Aidan helped a little bit with translation (“my dad wants a haircut”) and soon I was whisked away for a hair wash and then seated in front of a mirror staring at my wet, tossed hair. A man with cross between a Jheri Curl and a poodle on his head stood to my side and asked me something in Mandarin. Since he has scissors in his hand I figured he was the barber. I used my hand to show that I wanted my hair line to run above my ears. I thought everything else would be relative but he continued to ask more questions and I continued to point at other parts of my head until he gave up and just started cutting. This made me happy. At first. ...

I’m looking for my voice. It might be under the couch but I feel too stiff to bend down and look under there. It might be in a glass, but I am too worn down from tipping it. It might be on my fork but all I can sense is anticipation. It might be in a new pair of headphones but then I am mute. It might be in a young beauty but then I would have lost all of mine. ...

I am maybe 10 years old, in my childhood home, and bored. It was the age of board games and toys that didn’t connect to the internet. Our family was lucky enough to have an entire closet full of games and toys, yet I was bored. Bored to death. Not uncommon for a 10 year old in those days. I remember the house feeling empty. Maybe my older siblings were out and my younger sibling was out with them. My dad wasn’t home, that I recall for sure. In my boredom I was looking for my mom which wasn’t in general the wisest thing to do when bored. I had been met with “how could you be bored, you have a room full of games” which to her seemed like a luxury. I’m sure it was a luxury to her, compared with her childhood. In any case, I didn’t find her in the kitchen or the living room so I walked up the few steps into her bedroom. She was there. Something seemed “off”. I’m not sure what it was. I asked something like “mom, are you ok?” to which she smiled that “I’m not ok” smile to which I said “mom, it will be ok” or something like that. My memory of the specifics are not real clear, truth be told. What was clear was she was in a down mood and I caught her in it and that somehow just by being in that moment with her I provided some relief. I then retreated down the stairs. Later that day I remember her thanking me. She would mention this event to others over the years as some kind of evidence that my heart was a caring one. Emotionally, it was about as vulnerable as my mom and I were ever to each other which is to say we were not generally very vulnerable with each other. My adult life and relationships with adult women have followed a similar vein, sans one, who is no longer with us. ...

Elisa comes to my room and asks for a story. I am her second choice as Aidan is consumed with a game on his iPad. Elisa sits down and I ask “A story?” to buy myself a little time. I am excited and happy that she asked me as I like the concept of being a story telling father however I really have no idea what story to tell. “Elisa”, I say, “this is the story of the jack rabbit and the bear” and I really have no clue beyond that. Elisa rests her head on my chest. ...

The Father is looking for his phone and feeling a little bit disoriented. Or maybe it is the fact that he is looking for his phone that makes him feel disoriented. He never has to look for his phone, it is always with him. He’s in an excited, calm, refreshing, nervous, anxious mood as he calls out to his kids “wait for me, I need to find my phone”. The kids don’t really know what is going on. To kids, things are not evaluated at the “good”, “bad”, “normal”, “not normal” way that they will eventually think of things as adults. This is not to say kid’s feelings are simple or less complicated. In fact, they are more complicated than the adults for they haven’t learned to shut down or funnel emotions yet. Emotions are raw and joyous and painful and numbing and exciting. It is the Father who is cut off from his emotions. He’s been cut off for some time. ...

Elisa hands in her ticket which is scanned and returned to her. She walks through the gate and waits for me to do the same. I join her, we hold hands, and walk onto Main Street of Hong Kong Disneyland. Elisa in her taboo purchased snow white outfit (ie, not legit) and me in shorts and a Uniqlo superman tee shirt. There is Minnie Mouse under a gazebo with a line of kids waiting to take their picture. I ask Elisa if she wants to and she silently shakes her head no. Not the shy, I really want to kind of NO that I would have done at her age. Just a NO. We instead head up to the train station which is my idea to show her the whole park. We get on the train and make it half way around, to FantasyLand, where we depart. ...

My alarm goes off. It is 5:30am. It is Sunday morning. It is race day. I really don’t want to get up but I do and head to the kitchen where I make myself a cup of instant coffee. While my fever from the day before is gone, I feel like crap, and I know there is no way I can race today. The only reason I got up and dragged myself down to the kitchen at all was I wanted to see if this was my normal 5:30am feel like crap feeling or something worse. It was something worse. I went back to bed. ...

She stands in front of the floor to ceiling window 30 floors above Beijing looking out across the city. She can see nothing. Another bad air day in a city that used to count blue sky days. She bends, sitting on the bed without needing to look. The bed sheets are ruffled and tossed about without care. She gets up, removes the sheets, and makes the bed. Sleep did not come easy that night, at least not at first. She had the trappings of a luxurious life at her fingertips and a man that she was, well, interested in. Everything should be happy. Everything should be on track. She had come so far from her home town. She had come so far from her college days. She had come so far from everyone doubting her and telling her she wasn’t smart enough. Wasn’t tall enough. Wasn’t pretty enough. Wasn’t good enough. But here she was and not trapped in some unloving marriage to a man only a parent could love. She was pretty enough, she was tall enough, she was pretty enough. She deserved this. But she wasn’t happy and she could not figure out why. Not being happy didn’t quite capture it. She was plenty happy a lot of the time. It was those other times. Those times when she felt anxious inside not knowing what to do with herself. When she couldn’t relax. When shopping or the man or a good book or a good meal was met with indifference. It was those times that made her know she was not happy. ...