Family

We are not the type of family that works out everything out in advance. Take the case of Aidan’s and Lydia’s pre-school. When we moved to Lido we did not have a new school lined up for them. Yang did some initial research and didn’t find a school to our liking. Either not local hire friendly (read expensive, unless you have a fat expat packages) or too local. For a few weeks Yang drove the kids to their Chaoyangmen Wai school called Sanliturn kindergarten. The 30-60 minute drive each way was far from perfect. ...

June 1st is Children’s Day in China and Wikipedia tells me it is a common holiday in many counties although the only recollection I have of it is from China. Here it is bigger than Father or Mother’s Day, as children are such a focus. Since China instituted the one child policy, there are typically at least six adults looking after the one child. The two parents plus four grandparents. In many cases there is also an Ayi or two. It is not much of a surprise that the kids grow up thinking they are the center of the universe. I thought I was the center, and I was number seven of eight. The terms for older/younger brother (gege 哥哥, didi 弟弟) and sister (jiejie 姐姐, meimei 妹妹) have been extended to beyond the immediate family as practically no one’s immediate family has siblings anymore. ...

Aidan is sitting on our bed and telling me about the earthquake. He holds his hands our in front of him and shakes them side by side. He says the ground moves like this. Then he raises his hands face level and says the roof falls. And that many, many si le 死了 (dead). Schools where hit the hardest and after my last post I looked at pictures of small children lying side by side in the rubble and one picture simply of their backpacks. And if that doesn’t get to you, nothing will. ...

It’s Monday, and Aidan comes to our bed at 6:30am and tells me he wants to watch cartoons. I’m somewhere still lost in a dream about something most definitely not a cartoon but still manage to find the remote and tune into channel 42 – Kaku – the cartoon channel. I see a news broadcast, in Chinese of course since we are in China after all. The strange thing is the Kaku channel logo is visible so it must be the right channel. Aidan repeats his request for Cartoons so I flip through each channel one by one more so because I want sleep than I want him to have cartoons. They are all showing the same news broadcast. All 60 or so cable channels we have. ...

How do you eat an elephant? You start by taking a bite. Such was our move strategy when packing. Just do it. So we packed bit by bit over a week, in between meals, cat naps, nights on the town. And when the movers arrived Friday morning everything was mostly packed into plastic bins and plastic bags. There were three movers and three supervisors. Yang supervised from inside the condo and our ayi and I took turns supervising the elevator area and the truck area outside. We don’t have anything super valuable but it would still be a bummer to have stuff stolen, so we stood and watched as the workers lifted, carried, and placed. We also had to supervise as our apartment security guard would occasionally hassle the movers for no apparent reason. On time they asked them to keep a man at the truck at all times so that it could be moved even though they clearly left enough space. ...

I’m in this place of mind, maybe it is work, maybe it is the friends I keep, where I feel people over-think things. For the most part this doesn’t bother me – hey go to town on your discussion of three inch washers – but does kind of annoy me when I get asked to participate in the hyper analysis of such things. Yes, it’s true that if your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail. But it is also true that a hammer is a damn good tool. If you have a nail, you should use a hammer. There are lots and lots of nails out there. ...

Lydia finishes her 15 kuai ice cream and she wants more. She asks for one more, a pinky one this time, and being denied this asks for Aidan’s but not mine because it is chocolate. She is such a strong willed little girl who knows what she wants and knows when she wants it. One may consider he spoiled or selfish. I call her Lydia. In lieu of ice cream I ask her if she would like a piggy back ride. She gently suggests that she would prefer ice cream. Gentle as in “No!”. But she relents and it turns out she didn’t know how much fun a piggy ride could be, at least for the rider. ...

James Blunt came onstage, made a sound with his guitar and then his voice and the Star Live club in Beijing came alive. In a kind of middle aged expat, rich young Chinese kind of alive. I appreciated that he was on time. Yang and I were 20 or so feet from the stage, off to the side, and when as the rest of his band joined in and the lights came on Yang’s heart skipped a beat and she asked me to let my hair turn back to brown and grow it long and maybe grow a shaggy style beard. I noticed Blunt’s eyes were unnaturally white and alert as he ripped through the song and toyed with the audience. ...

Aidan tells me he is not sleepy as I pick him up. Two minutes later he is asleep in my arms as we ride the Beijing subway eastward, towards home. The subway train isn’t as packed as it was on the way to the game when people forced their way in and off the train and young girls took took pictures of Aidan with their cell phones. But it was still crowded and Aidan is getting heavy so I was grateful when a stocky older Chinese woman ushered me towards a seat as she chased out the existing seat occupant. I sat and looked at my son sleeping so peaceful and thought this would be perfect if we had actually saw the game. Then decided the game was secondary anyway. ...

My cell phone rings and it is Aidan. He just off the plane and is waiting with Yang and Lydia for the stroller. He starts to tell me about his new lego toy and that he put it together all by himself. I am waiting just outside the gate, wearing my blue sweatshirt, hood on. My hair has been an out of control mess for about a week and it will be another day before it is orange, so I feel more comfortable hiding it. ...