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Tomorrow is your Mom’s birthday. I won’t mention her age. No one would be believe me if I did. She still looks great. Hot, even. Being in love with someone is like being on a life raft with them. At first you are aware that you are on that boat because the love is so new and all-encompassing and the memory of the chasm just on the other side is fresh and sometimes scary. Then the boat - or is it the sea - stabilizes and you feel confident and empowered as you go through life. That you can go anywhere together. Do anything together. Be anything together. And if you are lucky time will pass and you will start to notice that the life raft is not very big after all. And that the little life raft is fragile; that all it takes is one person to poke a hole in it and let the air out at which point your only hope is that the base is made of wood. ...

It is the day before Thanksgiving and I am at Carrefour hopelessly searching for a meat thermometer and pie crusts. This seems to happen to me every year and my Chinese is so bad that I cannot even begin to describe what I want and have it make any sense. And if I could describe it then it really wouldn’t make any sense. Not many ovens here to cook a Turkey or bake a pie. ...

During our first summer here I bought a bicycle. An old fashioned ten speed with narrow tires which I used it to bike to Chinese class and just get around town. Yang got a bike too and we would take Aidan and Lydia out. Elisa was just a concept. No baby wagons here, kids sit on the back in a simple seat. Here’s what the bike seat looked like when it was relatively new ...

As I type this the US presidential election is underway and the 18th Chinese National Congress will soon be underway. If you don’t live in China, you may not be aware of the impact of the National Congress. I’ll just say it’s a big deal. This post is about the vote that took place at Lydia’s and Aidan’s school yesterday. The parents voted 9-7 to replace Lydia’s teacher. As I understand it, the vote would be given as a simple thumbs up/thumbs down to the school and the school would comply with the parent’s wishes. ...

If the Giants won a World Series and no one applauded, would they have really won. Maybe not in China. Game four of the World Series was largely played during my flight from Beijing to Xiamen. When we landed in Xiamen, like everyone else I ignored the instructions to keep my cell phone powered off. Unlike everyone else, my main purpose was to check the Giants score. 4/3, F10 it read. The Giants were World Series Champs. ...

_[I woke up at 3AM on Sunday morning and wrote this hoping I would have a chance to speak at my Mom’s services. It served as the basis for my remarks at her funeral on Tuesday. RIP mama Allio.] _ When I think about my mom, I think about love. The love she had for life. The love she had for her children and grandchildren, and the love she had for my father. And the love life had for her. The children had for her. Her husband had for her. ...

Just before sunrise on October 13, 2012, your Grandmother died. I had just left with Uncle Donnie to fetch some Peets coffee and when we returned we saw your Aunt Korky in the TV room on her cell phone. Don knew that met my mom had passed. We woke up your Grandfather at around 2:30am because your Grandmother’s breathing had gotten more difficult and shallow. After struggling a bit with consciousness your Grandfather steadied himself for this. He said, “Anne Marie” with an urging that bordered on pleading. He then hugged her. He then went to take a pee. He spent the next hour standing and then sitting by her beside. She continued to labor with her breathing but was hanging in there. You grandfather eventually went to TV room, turned on the Today Show and fell asleep. Me, being jet lagged, was fully awake and sat in the chair next to him alternating between TV watching and playing with my phone. ...

My mom is frail and dying from cancer. I am thinking about the boxes under the house. The two boxes that I left there when I moved to Beijing seven years ago. I am thinking about how I need to clean up those boxes and not leave them for anyone to take care of when my parents are gone. I make my way up under the house and open the boxes which are not really boxes but covered plastic crates. One box is full of Mimi’s journals and after a quick inspection I shut the lid. Not sure what to do with those. I open the other box and it is also mostly journals. I pull it into the basement and go through this second box. A few personal things from my past life, but mostly nothing. Gone, baby, gone. ...

I get home from work and Elisa and her boyfriend Zhehuang are playing in the living room. Elisa is as happy as can be. Elisa leads Zhehuang around our apartment by an exercise band pretending to drive a car. I ask her if she wants to go to the market with me and she happily accepts. Lydia and Aidan simply give me ice cream orders. As we wait for the elevator I tell Elisa that she needs to go to school tomorrow. I watch her reaction and it is fine, or so I think. Once we get to the first floor she says “tomorrow, I have” and she gestures to her throat and coughs. She’s stayed home from school the past few days because she’s had a bit of a cold. That and school was stressing her out. It was easy enough to tell. A week ago, after her first day at school and then her second and then her third I would see a happy/manic little girl in our house. Over stimulated. Spending a day with strangers who she has yet to form an attachment too. There was other signs of stress too, like when she told Yang to pay the teacher 10,000 RMB so she doesn’t need to go to school anymore. Not to mention getting the cold in the first place. ...

It is the morning after my return to Beijing. I slide the couch over to face the TV. Nice. I sit on the couch shirtless. Comfortable. I put my feet up and sip coffee. Content. Then I notice the goldfish swimming all alone in our little tank. Hungry. Did we have just one goldfish? I have no idea. How long can goldfish live without food? No idea. I get up and feed it. Did I feed it maybe too much which will cause it to die? Maybe. ...