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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. ...

Your Mom is the light. I knew that from the first moment I saw her walking past my office in her tennis shorts. Her short tennis shorts. She had no reason to date me really except for he soon to be ex boyfriend of whom I will be forever grateful. I had no reason to date her, except as I already mentioned, she is the the light. Before there were you kids there was just us. Living in a small house in Fremont, sleeping on a bed on the floor. In those days we still played tennis together among other things. There was never enough time together. ...

I release the parking brake, back up slightly, and then turn away from my parents’ house and down spruce ave. In the mirror I catch a glance of my mom talking over the fence and across the driveway with Doris. My dad remains in front of us and he is waving goodbye. I offer a weak smile because that is all I have left and focus on the road. One I could drive in my sleep. We get to the bend in the road and Yang starts to cry and she is not the type that cries easily as far as I know. Aidan in the back seat says “mom, are you crying?” to which there is no response. We just keep driving. Aidan repeats his question a couple of times and Yang tells him in Chinese, “no problem”. Aidan understands what’s going on and starts to cry a bit too. Elisa, ever learning from her big brother joins quietly. Lydia remains silent as is the car except for the numbing beat of sports talk radio. We stop for Mexican takeout. ...

I am standing at my niece’s Tori’s baptism in Houston Texas. Somewhere nearby is Aidan and Yang. Aidan is maybe a year old so this is 2003. No Lydia yet. No Elisa. No Beijing Allios. My mom is standing next to me. She whispers into my ear that I could take Aidan up for a little dip; to be baptized. I politely decline, not reveling myself, caught in between being respectful to my mom and being respectful to myself. Her faith is strong and mine goes unstated. So, with my Mom’s remaining days dwindling, I thought I would use this letter to state my faith after all. And the message I want you kids to understand. ...

My self reward for a mostly successful first business trip with my new team was to watch the MLB All Star game. It was the perfect year to watch the all star game as four Giants were in the starting lineup. I scheduled my day such that I would be back to the hotel by 5pm and in front of the TV with peanuts in time for the first pitch. My only question is whether I would actually be able to sit in front of the TV and relax. ...

I crawl into the back of my parent’s scion tc and do the 180 degree spin into the seat. It is not unlike the crawl and spin move needed when I was a kid and getting into the back of station wagon. Back then, you see, station wagons didn’t have third row seats that folded down; they just had a flat area that was useful for lugging plywood and kids. I am number seven of eight kids, so I was seldom alone in the back there. ...

I am on the 4th ring road driving Aidan home and the subject of animals comes up. I ask him if animals can think and he thinks they do. I ask him if animals can speak Chinese or English or any other language. He thinks not. I ask him how they can they think without language. I ask him if he can think without language. He smiles. I do not know if it is a thinking or unthinking smile. I mention to him that maybe we do think without language. Maybe that is why sometimes you feel happy or angry and can’t explain why. We drive on. Traffic is heavy and I need to focus on the road. ...

We are sitting down to lunch on the first day of a three day weekend. A drill from construction nearby starts to buzz. And buzz. And buzz. It is loud and annoying. Lydia asks Yang to complain to property management. Yang makes a phone call and the drilling stops a moment later. If I had only known it was that simple. Living in an apartment complex in Beijing means you put up with a fair amount of noise. Most of it you just get used too. Cars driving on wet pavement, buses heaving, shutters opening, the occasional pipe making itself known. Construction noise comes from time to time too however the past 18 months it has been almost non stop from our neighbors’ apartments. By neighbors I mean next door, above, and below. It first stuck me in December of 2010. I was home, laid up with some kind of stomach virus. I could not sleep, think, or relax. Drill, drill, drill. As I spent the next year working from home the noises would subside for a few weeks and then pick up again. The only way I could get any peace was to wear headphones. It was a contributing factor on why I returned to a job in a normal, mostly quiet, office. ...