Family

I wake up Elisa at 6:40am and she starts to get out of bed. I turn back to the living room to say bye to Aidan and Lydia who are leaving for school together. I had been expecting they would be growing further apart but they seem to be getting closer this past year. Elisa dresses and doesn’t want to eat breakfast, which is normal. We go downstairs, I order a car via Didi, and we wait five minutes for it to arrive. I have a busy day in front of me and am in A go mode. Elisa is not. The car arrives and during the 10 minute drive she teases me about my bald spot, my belly, my intellect. I tease her back. When we get to her school two things cross my mind. The first, is a recurring one, the gratitude I have for these moments. Even though my weekly single dadum is five years in, I often reflect back on the moment I figured out I could swing it with my work schedule. And how that changed everything for me. And it’s a lot easier now than when I started since the kids are older. My second thought is, I recall my dad ever walking me to school. Not a complaint, just a realization. And then I’m walking to the subway thinking of my father. I’ve been wanting to write about him, and have tried to, but I keep losing the narrative, so I stop. I hope and expect that someday I will because I do want my kids to have a sense, a 360 degree sense, of where they came from. And just for my own personal story. I want to tell them that their grandfather had an edge. That like me, people didn’t see him relaxed often. That like me, he cared about things. That his life was a journey and the man he was when I was born wasn’t the man he was when he died. That he became more self aware or at least incorporated that awareness into his actions. I want them to know that we were all afraid of him and with reason. And I hope they are not afraid of me although I know sometimes Aidan is. I want them to know that my dad showed up. That he couched my baseball teams, came to my basketball games, got me a job in college. But I also want them to know he didn’t really seem to enjoy any of these things. That coaching baseball never seemed like fun to him, just a responsibility. I want to tell them that he worked 24 hours shifts as a fireman. That he would work day on, day off, day on, day off, day on, three days off. That we would track the days when he worked for we could breathe on those days. And we would dread when the three or four days off in a row came. I want them to know that my relationship with my father was complicated. He was my dad. He cared. It came out in ways. ...

It is week before Christmas when I return to Beijing from my father’s 90th birthday party and a subsequent business trip. I make it through customs and immigration and then walk through the arrivals areas looking to see if someone is there to pick me up. I do this even though I know those days have long ago passed. Down to the airport basement to take the express into town. A young woman greets me, her job is supposedly to help newbie foreigners. I brush past her, bo humbug. I find my way home. Sabrina has put up the christmas tree while I was gone and had done quite a stunning job with it. At first I thought it was a new tree. The kids arrive the next day and would stay through Christmas. I don’t know why, but I just wasn’t very excited about Christmas. Not anti Christmas, just not into it. Maybe because of the jet lag, which takes me a week to get over, or because of my dad’s poor health effect on me (he would pass the day after Christmas). I wasn’t even going through the motions of wrapping gifts and putting them under the tree. Worse yet, I was in a “mood”, both at home and at work. Two days before Christmas, it felt like a normal saturday and then I noticed Elisa, who is nine. She was sitting at the dinner table drawing and cutting. She was making presents and cards, keeping her work a secret. She then made her own wrapping and put them under the tree. That is what did it - I was in. I went to the store and bought wrapping paper proper - not always easy to find in Beijing - and wrapped the simple gifts I had bought in the US. Elisa really wanted to know what I had bought for Aidan and Lydia. We then went Christmas shopping, I provided the kids with some money to get some small things . Wrapping ensued that evening, with Sabrina helping Elisa. The next day I made the christmas meal shopping list and had to visit five stores before finding ricotta. We watched “die hard” as our Christmas Eve movie night. Morning came. We had dunkin donuts and then opened gifts, most of them, since Sabrina had to go to work (Christmas is a normal working day here). Kids were grateful and excited even though the gifts were really basic this year - basically I had no idea for what big ticket items to get. In the afternoon Yang, her mom, and a friend came over and we had an early Christmas dinner. I made my mom’s lasagna and devil eggs but the big hit was the chips and dip (sour cream plus onion soup mix). The kids left with Yang around 6pm and would spend the next few days at a ski resort. I cleaned the stray wrappings from under the tree and had a glass of wine or two. ...

Elisa is jumping rope on top of the yoga mat and trying to do a cross jump. She’s getting frustrated because she can’t do the cross and there is a school skill competition tomorrow. I watch her technique and besides thinking she is jumping too high, I have no idea. What do I know about cross jumps. She tries a few more times and the I hit on it - YouTube to the rescue. And sure enough there are plenty of YouTube instruction videos. We pick one. Tights are not good on everyone. The instruction is good, Elisa is rapt with attention, playing parts over and over again. She still can’t do it. She’s frustrated. I ask her to take a break. She asks me if I think she can do the cross jump tomorrow. Yes, I lie. ...

I’m in the Starbucks of Yang’s apartment about to pick up Elisa for a morning performance of Disney on Ice. I text up to see if Yang and the kids want anything. Vanilla Frap for Aidan, Chocolate Frap for Lydia, decaf coffee for Yang, and pita bread for Elisa. I’m thinking this sure ain’t breakfast food when Sabrina says she wants the New York Cheesecake. We get upstairs, fortifications in hand. Talk with the older kids while Elisa gets ready and Yang puts on some pants. Sabrina books a car and we take off. ...

Yang sends me a WeChat that Elisa’s school will have her participate in some government event this week. I text back that Trump is in town on Thursday. “That must be it”, she says. I am added to the WeChat group with the other parents of the 10 American kids selected from Elisa’s school. There are instructions in Chinese and English including dress code. The coordinating teachers ask for photos of what the kids will wear and we dutifully send. No black stockings for Elisa, white or grey is ok. Some details trickle in - welcoming ceremony, outside of great hall of the people, kids up front. There is no direct mention of Trump. We all know. ...

Lydia and Elisa had birthdays this week with Lydia becoming a teenager and Elisa turning nine. I’m feeling grateful for having these two beautiful, smart, caring daughters Four years apart they are at such different stages. Elisa holds my hand when we walk to the market and she cuddles up next to me when we watch a TV show. She’s outgoing and talks a lot. She likes to snoop around the house and was always to first of my kids to detect if I was dating someone new (fortunately, not a too frequent occurrence). She’s becoming less picky about what she eats and she is nostalgic for the meals and activities we used to do way back when she was seven. She finds silly things silly and funny things funny and dramatic things dramatic. All evidenced in her love for the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker Rush Hour series. Lydia is also caring and has grown up so much these past 18 months but she’s not so interested in holding hands or public signs of affection. She shows her love with jabs, the tell tale Allio sense of humor the cuts sharp and sometimes cross the line. For instance, we were talking about her mom’s upcoming birthday. I was proposing a countdown. Every day a big WeChat posts with “120 days until 50” combined with an unflattering picture. It’s kind of mean, but instead of stopping there we came up with “50 years of bad hair styles” and “Things that didn’t exist when mom was born” ending with dirt. Birthday party wise, we celebrated Lydia’s birthday last Tuesday. She helped the ayi make roast chicken and mashed potatoes. It is a similar to what we’ve had for Thanksgiving and I was pleased to see her picking up on the tradition. Elisa is on vacation with her mom and the other kids and will have a celebration tonight. My gift is supposedly packed. When she’s back, I will through her another little party including her nostalgically favorite ice cream cake. ...

I wake up at 8am and walk a half mile to Starbucks where I order an Americano. I prefer a brewed coffee but I don’t want them to make a pot just for me and if they already have made it could be stale. Negotiation. My card doesn’t work which annoys me but not as much as it used to. Progress. I sit down with my Americano and text the kids saying that I will see them for lunch but that I won’t do the 10am basketball. It is father’s day, 2017. Acceptance Father’s day this year fell on the week that the kids were with Yang and in my normal wo is me mode I wasn’t going to say anything. But the kids and overtly Elisa and Lydia were looking forward to father’s day with Elisa telling me two weeks ago that she already had my present and would I like to know what it was. So I got on a mobike and met them at an American style mall and we had lunch at an Italian restaurant. I ate a lot. The manager stopped by and Yang knew him from back when we used to go to the same restaurant in another location; pre-Elisa days. I had no idea who he was. I shook his hand, one of those weird man shakes. Lydia found it funny and weird and I’m reminded of my dad. We are going into the back door JCPenny at Tanforan mall. A man my dad knows is loading a van or something and they exchange greetings. But in what would now be called bro man speak with a couple vulgarities mixed in. I was like, wo, what is that. Never knew my dad had a personality. Door opened. I don’t think I ever saw that kind of personality from him pop out again. In fact it is hard for me to think of times where he seemed to be enjoying himself. No music. Laughter? Maybe watching The Newlywed Game on TV but even then I cannot say I detected enjoyment or joy. Joy was measured by the lack and negative emotions. Maybe that was as good as it got for him. Represent. I spent the weekend trying to organize the clutter of my apartment. A lot of the clutter is from the kids. Drawings. Leaving books and small toys around. I found a drawing from last year’s father’s day that Lydia made but did not quite complete. It showed her smiling, looking into my eyes, and giving me a gift and saying “I love you” under the title “imagined”. Below that she had another picture where she is handing a gift but looking away and saying “here”. The title below is “actual”. Been there. After lunch and a frappachino the kids and Yang go to a movie. I hug Lydia which isn’t something I do enough of. I hug Aidan who I also don’t hug much now that he is 14. Elisa is grabbing on my arm wanting her hug. They turn to go inside and then Aidan looks back. “Tell your dad happy father’s day” he says. I will. Generations. I walk back home. It takes me about an hour but I have nothing else to do. I listen to podcasts and music which I enjoy even if no one can tell. ...