Family

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. ...

It is about 11:30pm when I return to the hotel room in Tokyo, Asaka district. The day has been long and since I started out tired to begin with, I worry that sleep will not come easy. The restless night of the over-stimulated and over-tired may await. It then dawns on me that my son has turned five today. Or was it yesterday? Or is it tomorrow. Or both. I settle on both. Aidan is 17 time zones away and is 5000 miles away, with Yang in the Bay Area. He is probably awaking now, his first day of five. ...

It is Chinese New Year eve and we arrive at the small public square across the street from our home. The square is dark and empty. While Aidan and Lydia wait with anticipation, Yang asks the security guard if it is ok for us to set off our fireworks here. “Keyi, keyi 可以 (sure, sure)” comes the response. We make our ways towards the center of the square and light our sparklers. Its cold and dry and a bit windy so the sparkrs take a bit to light. Once lit, Lydia is waving and dancing and Aidan is stabbing and jaunting. Another group of people joins us on the square and they light fireworks that shoot maybe five stories high and explode in light. We quickly run through our meager supply and dash to the fireworks stand to buy more. I want to buy a box of high flying exploding rockets but don’t want to lay down they cash (40 USD). We buy some more sparklers. In an unexpected occurrence of common sense, the fireworks stand does not have any matches. ...

I’m making my way to the subway and the song in my headphones goes “we are born to shimmer, we are born to shine, we are born to radiate”. Which is a good thing because it is damn cold here. Later, I am sitting on the coach, Aidan is directly across the small wooden table we have, in his small wooden chair. We are playing cards. He called me at work and asked to play when I got home. So here I am, developing a not quite five year old into a card shark. The game? WAR, five across. Which means we both lay five cards face down and then flip one by one. Whoever wins the best of five gets to keep all 10 cards. This is a nice balance between what Aidan can learn and what my boredom will tolerate. In the middle of the game, Yang’s mom Yihang comes downstairs, opens our large living room window and then sits near the window. She is trying to let some fresh air into the house. Which, I might add, works like a charm. How can I tell? Well, it is about 10(F) degrees outside and I am suddenly freezing. Aidan seems not to notice. Was I surprised? No, not really, but that’s a story for another day. ...

While Aidan is free with his affection, Lydia makes you earn it. Last summer I would come home from work and spot Lydia sitting on the couch, peacefully. Lydia’s response after the split second it tool to notice me? A joyous “baba’s home!”? Not exactly. In a flash, she would stand up and race to put on her ultra-man mask and completely cover her face. I did not take this as a particularly good sign. This was her regular greeting for me until she discovered the red plastic stick which she used to whack me. I tried to take it as a sign of affection. Not necessarily positive affection, mind you. ...

One of the things I like about being a parent is the consistent discovery of my children’s astonishing humanity. As corny as it sounds, this humanity gives one a purpose and a strange desire protect the child against any corrupting force. This story is a series of anecdotes about Aidan’s humanity. We are driving to IKEA, well I am driving since Aidan isn’t quite five. Aidan is in the back seat. I bribed him to come with me with the promise of an ice cream cone which I know they sell at IKEA for one kuai (about 15 cents). Aidan is asking me for to play my Chinese lessons (http://chinesepod.com) on the car stereo because he enjoys it more than the music and some of the lessons have proven quite funny in the past. When we listen to them I think he learns more English than I learn Chinese. Aidan, in fact, has recently started to help me with my Chinese learning. I can ask him how to say “car” in Chinese and he will pronounce it for me, but not as one would expect a child too, but slowly and with perfect tonal pronunciation so that I may repeat. His pronunciation is far better than any Chinese teacher I’ve had. And if you don’t know anything about mandarin know this; tones and context are very, very important. Through this process Aidan is learning that his father is tone deaf and has the memory of a stone. ...

About every third day Aidan will refuse to go to school. When this occurs we follow a series of well thought our strategies such as “sure, you can stay home” or “how about we buy you chocolate”. You can tell we are strict disciplinarians. Actually, after some discussion and only implicit bribing Aidan tends to relent and go to school. Aidan and Lydia at school. Aidan is slightly outnumbered. ...

All I wanted for my birthday was a MRI. I’ve experienced periodic severe back pain ever since a work morale event in 2000. We were playing basketball and a person who had no right playing but wanted to be part of the gang tried to block my shot and instead crashed his arm into my head (Later he would chip one of my teeth). Ever since that day I’ve had this severe back pain every few months that last a day or so. Sometimes it would last longer but not be so severe but limit my ability to walk to that of a 90 year old man. Recently during a trip to the US and then upon return, the pain incidents have been more severe, lasted longer, and with more frequency. Twice in the past two weeks the pain has forced me to stay in bed and lie extremely still for most of a day, or days. I’ve seen doctors twice in the past to have it checked out. The first was back in 2000 and the doctor said most back pain goes away in six months and my xray was normal. He also said I should lose some weight but declined to give me a specific number at which he would no longer make that recommendation. I did not go back to him. The second time I went to the doctor was in 2005, at the VIP ward of Chaoyang hospital in Beijing. A VIP ward grants you access to pay five times the fees with a doctor who speaks passable English. After looking at my XRAY he said he found the problem but later retracted that it was normal. His recommendation was that I dress warmly and not let the cold wind get to my back as he suspected that was causing my current pain. Apparently the cold wind is very sneaky and can slither it’s way between the sock and the pant leg, up the inside of your clothes, and then attack your back. So, with that as background, I decided to go again and based on the recommendation of a friend with very similar symptoms, ask for a MRI. As luck would have it, I went the afternoon of my birthday. ...