Family

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. ...

Two years ago almost to the day I lost my ATM card and the experience of getting a replacement was such a hassle I swore I would never let it happen again. Until a couple weeks ago. It is pretty easy to lose an ATM card here as most of the machines spit out the card at a remarkably slow pace that for some reason reminds me of a tractor. Both times I lost my card I was stressed out about something and I’m sure I just grabbed the withdraw and walked away leaving my card to eject into an invisible hand. After realizing I lost my card and checking the cash bins near the ATM machine it was time for me to solicit Yang’s help and go to the bank. One of the things I dislike the most about living here is its difficult for me to do any kind of complicated transaction without someone’s help and in general I tend not to like to ask for help. ...

I stand up to get some water to wash down my lunch and I feel a bit dizzy and not for the first time in that day. I’ve had a bit of a cold and a Beijing smog fueled cough and I’m thinking now I might really be coming down with something. That and I was up at 3:45am to watch the 49ers NFC Championship Game. So I decide it is time to go home for the day and put the quarters into the machine again tomorrow. ...

I sit across from my friend’s date, yet it is not his date, it is an exploration. I cannot speak because they are flirting in Chinese and it is only with great effort that I can even follow. I also cannot speak because I’ve lost my voice. I’m not sure what was the cause of the voice loss and although it sounds like I swallowed a possessed frog, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t actually swallow a possessed frog. It is not clear that my voice loss is noticed because I don’t really speak all that much anyway and when I do people can barely hear me. ...

It is 5:10pm as I head out of the office 10 minutes later than I had planned and nine hours after I arrived. This would be a full day for most but for me is a short day. Like most of my days since winter started. I wish I could say it was because I’ve finally been finding the balance in life but that’s not it. I’m just not all that motivated. Could be my mom’s passing. Could be a month of below freezing temperatures. Could be a midlife crisis, mine or another’s. There is no “why”. It just is. Maybe I could rewind the chain of events and find the “why” but that’s not where I’m at right now. Mainly because I think there are many “whys” that can be blamed. Live in the moment and fix forward is what I aim for. ...

In the crazy world that is the Chinese holiday schedule today is my fifth day off of the past six. Tomorrow begins a stretch of working eight days in a row. For most of the five days off I’ve been inside alternating between reading, watching tv, playing with the kids, and eating. Today I decided to get out of the house for a bit. The plan adventure was a walking audio tour of Beijing. But not just any walking audio tour, this one was based on an unofficially unsolved murder of a foreigner in Beijing. ...

I get home at 6:30pm to the sight of Aidan and Lydia sitting at the dining room table, eating noodles, and watching videos on the laptop. Elisa is at the other end of the table from where she can see the living room TV while having a bite to eat. The two things that I’ve repeatedly asked is that the kids don’t watch TV when eating and that we eat together as a family. It is New Year’s Eve and I am not exactly feeling like the king of the household. It doesn’t help that Yang is out somewhere with her friends. ...

I wake up with a stuffy nose and a dry throat. It is five AM. It is 0 degrees Fahrenheit outside. It is Christmas Eve. I down a cup of instant coffee and eat three of brazil nuts and then begin my workout. 30 minutes later, drenched in sweat, I make my breakfast and listen to ESPN radio over the internet. I shower and dress for the office. Christmas Eve is just another day here. Well, mostly. The kids being in the international department of Fangcaodi have the week off school whereas the rest of the students need to go to school. For our house these means the kids are still asleep when I head out the door for work. Normally, they are leaving at the same time as me and I get to harass them about waking up and eating some breakfast. On this morning, I am missing that. ...