Family

I am on a mobike riding to Chaoyang park to meet Aidan and Lydia. The bike hits a bump and the basketball pops up from the front of bike basket. I catch and and place it back down all in a semi continuous motion feeling somewhat coordinated for once. And then focusing on not hitting another bump I get to the park, a massive urban park on the order of Golden Gate Park. There is a sea of mobikes and other bike sharing brands. I notice people are dressing like it is summer which I like and why not, it is 85F outside. Aidan and Lydia are already warming up on the court, waiting for me. They have the half court to themselves which surprises me in the complex of six or so full courts. I pay my 20 RMB and join them. I should be warmed up from the bike ride but I settle for taking set shots and moving in straight lines. Lydia is dressed to play, she’s been asking me to help her with it and we’ve been doing some dribbling and passing drills after dinner. She is somewhat coordinated but struggles to dribble with her left hand and is pushing her shots. She does look the part, long and lean with black knee length shorts. Long and lean is relative when it comes to Allios and Aidan is more like me. Squat. But he moves well, zigging and zagging. He loves the step back three pointer and the underhanded driving layup. We play a game of 21 and and game of red-white-blue. I win. Hey, I won’t be able to do this much longer. During the second game a few other people join our court and shoot around. I take same jumpers and make around five mid rangers in a row now that my knees and shoulders are warm. Aidan says, “wait, aren’t you like 50, you shouldn’t be able to move like that”. Now, is that a compliment? More people join our court and start a game of five and five without asking us. It is a bit rude but we are almost done anyway. I’m trying not to let others rudeness get to me these days. I get a ride share car for Aidan and Lydia and they head to their mom’s home. I decide to walk home, past the park goers, kite flyings, roller bladers, and bikers. It is labor day weekend here. The next day Sabrina and I would explore the forgotten and kind of forgettable Temple of the Moon in the west of Beijing. We then biked through the ulta modern western finance district, through hutongs, and then along the main East/West street that cuts between Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. As we get close we can see the square and forbidden city are all decked out. Flags blowing in the wind and then a water fountain show not unlike one might expect in vegas. It was a reminder of what a cool place this can be. ...

It’s a late March morning and I’m walking with Elisa to the south gate of our apartment compound. It is one of those mornings in spring where it feels warmer outside. Two birds in a tree above us catch our attention. They are making a racket, either fighting or playing. I ask Elisa which. She says fighting since they both probably want the same part of the tree. 100 feet in front of us we see a black bird with white strips swoop down onto the path. It walks a bit and then picks up a tree branch. The bird climbs effortlessly with the branch looking awkward in it’s beak. Halfway up a nearby tree it lands and uses the branch as part of the nest she is building. I don’t recall every seeing that firsthand before Elisa and I get to the apartment compound gate and have to wait a couple of minutes for the car. I check my phone and show her the car location and tell her the last three license plate digits. We mostly stand in silence. When the car gets there we climb in back, Elisa in first so that I can get out first to protect her from bikes when we do get to her school. I check news and sports and my day’s schedule on the ride in. I ask Elisa if she has any tests that day which isn’t probably a great choice of topic. We get to school and we get out. Her friend arrives at the same time and she squeals Elisa’s Chinese name when she sees Elisa. Elisa scoots over and they walk hand and hand into the school. I turn the other way. Power on my headphones, pull up the hoodie, and do the 10 minute walk to the subway station. Crab into a car. I will be at work and hour later, in time for my 8:30am call. On this day I need to meet Elisa after school because somewhat unexpectedly the ayi had the day off. I meet her and Elisa’s eyes light up when I say “video game?” which is what we call the arcade at a nearby mall. She plays for a bit while I stand. We then go for one of her favorites, what she calls “chinese hamburgers” because I can’t remember the name of the food. We devour a burger a piece. We then call a didi (like uber) to take us home where Aidan and Lydia are waiting. Thinking about the bird from this morning I realize the nest is a little bit stronger. ...

I’m cooking dinner. Not really sure why I’m cooking dinner. Had a huge lunch with the kids, Sabrina, and Sabrina’s parents at a local tex mex place. The quality of the tex mex wasn’t great and that was known going i Back to cooking dinner. Lydia helped with the Kale chicken salad and then I asked the kids to get off their pads and phones until after dinner. The pad and phone time battle is a losing one. And I guess one about control. Not sure what the real harm is. Then again, as I mentioned, I’m not sure why I am cooking dinner. So there’s that. But the kids do get off the pads and phones and soon there’s laughter in the house. Uno is being played between Elisa, Aidan, and Sabrina. Lydia is on the couch doing “art” which is an upgraded term from what she used to just call “drawing”. I finish cooking, a kind of chicken casserole that takes an hour. Lydia and Aidan set the table and the five of us sit around. Elisa as usual doesn’t want to try anything. She’s satisfied with the sweet potatoes I cooked earlier. Aidan takes a few bites and says he’s full. Sabina, Lydia, and I eat well. From kitchen to table - two hours. From table back to pads and phones - 15 minutes. The 15 minutes was filled with talk about school and some laughter. Leftovers for lunch packed and dishes washed the end of my week with the kids is about up. Time to make sure they shower and sleep with their pads away from their beds. The weekend last most weekends I have with them was uneventful. Friday night pizza party, movie night. Saturday afternoon basketball with Aidan and Lydia, Lydia suddenly wanting to learn after our trip to the US. A play date for Elisa. Sunday was mostly lunch and digestion. And then cooking. ...

Aidan goes into the restroom with a pair of scissors and starts to cut his hair. A few minutes later he emerges, unsuccessful, and asks if he can go get a haircut. I need one too, my homeless look not working so well this winter so I say “sure”. We recently moved so we don’t have a goto place to get our hair cut so we just head out looking since it seems every block in Beijing has a hair salon. Until you are looking for one. We do find one after a couple of blocks. It looks small and not busy so we look a bit more but end up going inside. A middle age woman greets us hopefully and Aidan asks if they can do a haircut. I have ask if they can do us together and she says sure and then she taps a young man sleeping in a chair who turns out to be my hairdresser. ...

It is a week before Christmas and Elisa asks me what I got Aidan for Christmas. She really wants to know and when I won’t tell her she tries to find out if I’ve already bought the present yet or not. And if not, what would I buy. She asks me over and over again over the next few days and then again on Christmas eve. She never does asks me what I got for Lydia. ...

It is just over a year ago and I’m trying to flag down a cab to send the kids to school. And it’s windy. And the temperature is below freezing. And there is freezing rain pelting the side of our faces. And the cabs are passing us one by one without stopping. It’s at that moment that I switched to Uber and from the next morning onwards booked cars from the comfort of our apartment or the building lobby. Didi had been around for some time before that with the ability to book taxis ahead of time. I occasionally did this, or had a friend do it for me, when waking up in a hard to flag taxi place but in my apartment downtown taxis were mostly available in the mornings except when you really needed them. Once I switched to Uber the I quickly became a convert. About half the price of taxis, can get a car anytime, and can track the kids progress when I sent them to school or to some event. Uber app was also in English and was easy for me to set up payment. Over the year the service started to get more expensive and it felt like the quality of the drivers stopped as we were constantly having to communicate our location despite GPS. One of the last times I used Uber to send the kids to school we were looking for a white car with 9X0 as the last three license place digits. We walked a half block to where GPS said it was, say the car, waved at driver and then tried to open the door. Door locked, we knocked, looked into the window which was tinted and tried to open the door. Still locked. Then the driver turned away. Turns out the place was P20. Uber still showed the car at the corner and when I called the driver he said he was coming. I cancelled and put the kids into a taxi. Uber lost to Didi in the competition here. For a while it was great as a consumer. Both sides so hungry for the market they were subsiding our rides. But when Uber lost the Uber App was replaced with a China and Chinese language only App. At which point I switched to Didi and it’s Chinese only App as well. Since we moved I’ve been taking Elisa to school using Didi (the elders kids school is a short walk away). The first day was similar to my first Uber day. Raining ice, winding, cold. I could not communicate well enough in Chinese with the Didi driver and needed someone to help me. Later I got the routine down and can take Elisa without help. After dropping off Elisa at school I then have a 10 minute walk to the subway so I can get to work. Fortunately a new service recently launched a couple months ago – 1 RMB bike rental where you grab a bike and drop it wherever you stop. There are actually two such services and now you can see bikes returning to the streets of Beijing. ...

It is the summer of 2005 and I’m heading out for a walk. A woman with a white skin looking down at a map looks up and notices me. And then walks up to me. She starts to speak French and I say I don’t understand. She switches to a fairly heavy accented English and apologies saying she thought I was French. The then asks where the Russian markets are. Apparently they used to be right here and she visited them a few years back but now she can’t seem to find them. I say I only know Yabao Lu, a few blocks away, but she says not that one. A few months later I was looking Google Earth and I used it’s time lapse feature. I went back in time for my apartment building. Back to 2001 or so. When what existed in it’s place was..you guessed it..russian markets. ...

Lydia (12) is the first of the kids to arrive at the taco bar. She sits down next to me and says “nice haircut. You were aiming for 20 and got 70”. This a Lydia zinger, of which she has many. She means it as playful and it mostly is and every now and then crosses the line into harsh. Just like me. And her grandpa. Lydia’s gift for language goes beyond my kind of sharpness and just a pure multilingual fluency. It’s much more advanced than I had expected given I’m pretty much the only one besides her English teacher who speaks English with her. She gets that from her mom. No one knows where she got her gift to draw Elisa (8) is the next one to come through the taco bar doors. Elisa is caring, loving, sneaky, and outgoing when restless. I like to say she got the caring and loving from me but more like the caring and sneaky. When in turn I got from my mom and dad respectively. She will put her hand on my belly, call it her “pillow”. She will put things on the wall and deny it later or she will poke around my girlfriends things. When she goes to the playground, she is like her mom, always making friends especially with the boys. At lunch on this day, after we order, she asks to go outside and walk around. This is in part because she is that restless extrovert like her mom. It is also because she is sensitive to smell like her uncle and grandmother on her mother’s side. Aidan (13) is the last to edge his way down the chair. He is a snowboarder and wakeboarder. At once hip and cool and at once cautious. When I remind him of something – be careful where you leave your bicycle – he will be agreeing and slightly defensive with me. “I know, I know”, is his mantra. Aidan’s origins are perhaps the most complex to dissect. He is so close to his mom that sometimes it’s difficult to know if he is like her or if he is trying to emulate her. Like me, but at a different time, he was hurt when his mom found a boyfriend and stopped payed less attention to him. Like me, I believe he always wants to do the right thing but sometimes get tired of always having to be good and things come out in an unintentional way. Like when he ordered a full size basketball stand and shipped it to my small apartment. He really wanted to play basketball with me and thought it would be convenient but didn’t think though that I don’t have storage for it. ...

Aidan, Lydia, and I are walking towards a Singapore hawker center (local food stalls) when Aidan says to me “you know that sound in Beijing..the ones cars make?”. It takes me a beat and then I realize he doesn’t know the word “honking” so I tell him, yea, what about it. Aidan says the cars don’t do that here. The kids and I spend a week in Singapore and Bali. A bit of a rushed trip as we could have spend a week in either place. The kids particularly liked Singapore and our all day tour there. Sea Aquarium strangely reminding me of IKEA with it’s massive size and never ending switchbacks. The cart racing. The tram to and from Sentosa island. The night safari. ...

Aidan says to me “we can eat at home more often” as Lydia reaches for her second hot dog and Elisa by some miracle digs into my version of 白菜. The July 4th dinner which we had on the 3rd is a success. We don’t really live where there are many American expats nor am I very close with Americans that would have a fourth of July BBQ. Back in my early days here I did attend a couple of independence day celebrations with other newish American expats. It felt weird to celebrate the fourth with expats since they are not known to be the most patriotic of folks (some of course are, especially the execs placed here with packages). For me, the fourth was mostly a day off in the states. I never felt super patriotic. At the same time, I don’t harbor any ill will. It’s just a day. But I do want the kids to understand and embrace that they are American so I keep up some traditions. ...