Family

It is Friday morning July 5th and I am planning on taking a mental health day when I check my work calendar and realize I need to be in the office in the afternoon to lead a meeting and to conduct an interview. Drat, I think. Either that or some other four letter word. In any case, I plan a mental health morning as the only real break I’ve gotten the past three weeks feels like the 12 hour flight from San Francisco to Beijing. Work has just been too much. But this morning, no work, just me an Elisa walking to her kindergarten. ...

It is 11:15pm and along with 15,000 fellow runners I’m waiting for the start of the Sundown Marathon. I’m not feeling the same buzz I normally get at the start of a race; I’m just waiting as I’ve been waiting all day. The problem with a midnight race is you can’t spend the day sightseeing and expect to be able to run. Especially when the race takes place 85 miles from the equator. I’m not sure if the relatively boring day led to my calm at the start line or it was a factor of the race starting so late. Like last year, I was alone because Yang could not make the trip. ...

I am in Lido Park with Elisa when she says she says “babi, I want to pee pee” which isn’t great news since I suspect wherever in this park the restroom is, it won’t be clean. This doesn’t bother Elisa at all; she just wants to go on the grass behind the trail that circles the lake. I ask her if she can wait and she says no. Then I notice her “boyfriend” mao zaheng is being led by his ayi to the area Elisa wants to pee. The boyfriend drops his pants, squats, and takes a dump. I now know why Elisa wants to pee. It is a sympathetic pee. I ask her to wait and she agrees. I mean, Yang and I have been married for almost 12 years and I don’t think she ever wanted to pee when I took a dump. At least not with me. ...

It is maybe 1992 and I am sitting along the back wall of a conference room when my manger asks me to describe the work I did on some project. She is asking me because her boss’s boss, our General Manager, is in the room to check in with the team. I am immediately nervous, heart racing. I am not nervous because I’m about to speak to someone important but because of all the people in the room. All the people paying attention to me. A reaction of fear. I start to introduce myself and then to describe my project. My mind goes to someplace where there are no words. I cannot formulate a sentence. I string words together but not in a way that has any meaning. One set of words are not connected to the next set. I am staring at my lap. I glance up and catch a knowing and partially sympathetic look from an older coworker. Mostly knowing. I glance back down and mumble my words until I am done. The situation, which was orchestrated to give me visibility and a sense of recognition has left me shattered. ...

I am communicating with Yang via Weixin (WeChat app in English) because this is how adults in China communicate when not in the same room. Even sometimes when in the same room. Yang tells me that she needs to go to Guangzhou over the weekend for work but that she will be back before I go to Singapore for my half marathon. I tell her fine, but that’s a long time to be in Guangzhou. She says only a few days. I say I leave for the marathon on May 30, no April 30. Oh, she says. Weixin, or no Weixin, there are communication gaps. ...

I have the afternoon free so I pick up Aidan and Lydia from school. Their school is very close to the apartment we lived in when we first got to Beijing in 2005. In some ways those days were simpler before what was unknown became known and then unknown again. Our apartment, which we call Chaowaimen after the name of the building, was changing tenants so I brought Lydia and Aidan by for a visit. ...

Yang and I are with the kids in downtown Seoul wondering where our hotel is. The only thing we are sure of is we don’t know where it is. I am wondering around the corner like a bird with a clipped wing looking for a wifi signal while simultaneously yelling at Elisa not to play with the traffic. Eventually I give up and go into the cramped coffee shop, order an Americano, and slurp wifi. ...

In is 8:30am on Sunday morning I am sitting in Starbucks having my venti coffee and reading the Chronicle on my tablet. I see Yang’s mom walking towards me on her way into our apartment complex. I think for a moment about whether I should call out to her our just make eye contact which is my normal social outreach. She notices me and walks over. She asks me if I’m cooking today and I say yes, I will make something for St. Patrick’s Day. She then asks me if I think the kids will like “your food” as she calls it. It is a rhetorical question. Before I can answer, she states that she will make some Chinese food for dinner as well. ...

I am at a massive goodbye team members and welcome team member’s lunch that occurs at the end of every release. There is about to be a toast of plum juice when my cell phone rings. It is Yang. She sounds weak as she tells me she can’t move her arm. I imagine she is on the slope at Chongli, a three hour drive away, where she went for one last snow boarding run. I wonder how in the country where I am illiterate I can get help to her. Then she tells me she’s on the way to the hospital with the snowboard instructor driving her car. I go into Doctor on TV mode and ask her questions about the injury. Is there blood? Bruising? What part of the arm? Any other part of her body hurt? What did she hit when she fell? From her description it sounds like a separated shoulder. I go back to the lunch and the toasting and the spicy intestines which I do not eat. ...

I am inching downwards into the IKEA parking lot when I notice the car in front of me has two large Chinese flags as bumper stickers. Large enough that one covers the left side of the trunk hub and the other covers the right side. Because of the size one cannot but help notice them. And then I notice the car is a Honda Accord and that explains everything. I went to IKEA to pick up some home furnishings thinking it wouldn’t be crowded because of Chinese New Year. I was wrong. Even though the rest of Beijing felt like the city had exhaled its population, IKEA was packed. My first stop, preordained in IKEA’s layout, was the sofas and being that I’ve never really been happy with our couches in Beijing I set out to finally get one I actually like. I know, living large. IKEA Beijing, being the largest IKEA outside of Sweden, has plenty of couches all of which, by the time I arrived, had people sitting on them. This was remarkable because I arrived at the couches 10 minutes after the store had opened. Even more remarkable was that quite a few people appeared sound asleep. ...