Family

We are just finishing a walk with Kobe and about to enter our apartment building when Sabrina hears a whining sound. Low crying. It’s coming from the side of the building. I turn on my phone’s light and we peer down. Two newly born kittens, one wailing with all her might to be barely heard. I suggest Sabrina tells the management office which is right next door. It’s after hours and the staff is gone except a middle-aged man who says he won’t do anything about the kittens. So Sabrina steps down and gathers up the kittens using a plastic bag as a glove. I don’t want to touch them. We take them into our apartment and place them on a blanket on the dining room table. One of them is already dead and Sabrina separates it from its sibling. Sabrina feeds the crying kitten some goats milk she had for Kobe (why our dog needs goats milk is another question). Kobe is frantic so I take him downstairs. Lydia and Elisa are down there, and I tell them about the kittens. I suggest they don’t go see them, that it’s a bit disturbing. But they both want to see and so they go upstairs. After a few minutes, Sabrina takes the dead kitten downstairs and buries it in the garden while I standby with Kobe and Lydia holds the other kitten upstairs. ...

Easter arrived almost undetected this year as did my 16th anniversary of living in Beijing. We have some simple family traditions around Easter. Family breakfast. Egg decorations. Easter egg hunt. Candy. Nothing on the religious front although seemingly by osmosis the kids know they story of the resurrection. We’ve maintained these traditions despite the family’s reformulation eight years ago. This year’s breakfast was shifted to lunch at an Italian restaurant in Shunyi which is a western style enclave on the outskirts of Beijing. Shunyi’s resident stereotype is the expat exec who’s on a two-year assignment in Beijing and wants to keep his family in the same living and school conditions as back home. In reality, the residents are quite varied as all it takes is money to live there and plenty of people in Beijing have money. We used to visit friends regularly out there before the reformulation and I’ve only been there a couple times since. I have actually spent more time since then in what I call the “other Shunyi” (I wrote a bit about it here). ...

Aidan, you are 18 today. You are both unrecognizable from the newborn baby whose breathing I would check in the middle of the night and inseparable from the young man I toss and turn over hoping a weekend night out passes without folly. I’m writing to you for it’s easier for me to give shape to my emotions in this way. In this contained way. I am writing to you to make a connection if not now then when you are ready for one. I am writing to you so that you might listen and I might be heard. ...

In 2012 when I rejoined Microsoft my intent was to work. Just work. I needed the rhythm back in my life of getting up, going to the office, putting in a solid day, and then going home. No ego, nothing petty, no politics, not getting caught up in other’s perceptions. For the most part I was able to do this. There was this one petty thing. I was having a one on one with my new manager in her office and I noticed she had tea and a small plate of fresh fruit. It would be delivered every morning and refreshed in the afternoon by the floor’s “tea lady”. The tea and fruit treatment were reserved for those with some “position”, not for the everyday person like me. I thought it must be nice to have that position and be taken care of like that even if I’m not really a tea or fruit person. Then I would put the thought out of my head. Until the next one on one. ...

Elisa comes out of her room. Stops. Looks at the TV. Feigns despair and says “still?” referring to the 254-214 electoral college score. Then she asks why and she understands but doesn’t understand why on the third day the score is the same. Back in February when covid hadn’t really hit the states and causing measures here to get it under control, Sabrina and I moved. We moved one floor up from Yang’s apartment in order to provide more support for the kids who were going through some hard times. Because no outside people were technically allowed into the complex we moved from or two we had to sneak the movers in and move things quickly. ...

My allergies are acting up. Sneezing fits. Itchy eyes. Not sure what is causing it. Maybe it was the beer last night. We board the high speed train from leaving from Beijing and get off seven stops later in Sabrina’s hometown of Xiangyang. The train reaches speeds of 305 kph and it’s the stops that take the most time. Our first long trip since the end of the first covid wave so we are careful to wear masks. At least at first. Not so much for ourselves but as a social standard and because of security checks. But the mask wearing doesn’t last, at least not for me. There is very little virus, covid virus, in China these days. For these days. ...

Kobe is off leash as we walk along a nearly deserted part of the beach. There is a sheet metal lean-to hut just above the sand. A middle age man, tan and worn, who apparently lives there is walking from the hut to the beach carrying some lightweight anchor and other gear towards a make shift raft. Kobe runs up to him, curious and social as Kobe is. The man spins around to track Kobe. At first I think he’s being playful with Kobe. Then it’s clear Kobe and the man are both spooked. Kobe darts up and then darts away. The man gestures the anchor at Kobe. I can’t understand what the man is staying. Kobe runs around, the man follows. The man lurches at Kobe with the anchor. Aidan says the man says he will kill Kobe. Aidan jumps between the man and Kobe. The rest of us block Kobe’s path and I grab Kobe and leash him. I was about to explain to the kids there are some crazy people out there, but that word is out of favor these days. ...

It was one of those nights where sleep wasn’t easy until it was. It’s at that time Kobe, our beagle, decided to wake us up. 5am. First whining. Then reaching up onto the bed and pawing us. Finally, the beagle bark. There is little that makes me angrier than being woken from a deep sleep. And I was angry. I wanted to hit Kobe. So, in my most athletic move in a least a decade I lifted leapt from the bed. Was perfect except my food caught in the bed sheet and I fell uncontrollably to the ground, elbows then face. I looked up. Saw Kobe looking down. I surged off the ground, but my foot was still hooked to the sheets, so I fell right back down. Kobe just backed up two feet and then ran away when I was finally free. ...

There are moments and there are days and then weeks when I feel I’m the last of my kind. Like the Jason Isbell song Last of My Kind but played out with my own harmonies. It’s hard to describe what makes me feel this way and get the feeling across. Sometimes it just the raw feeling of isolation. Feeling isolated when it’s Friday night and I’m too old to hang out at the new hip place in town full of those young beautiful people. Feeling isolated when it’s Friday night and I’m too tired to go out anyway. Feeling the last of my kind when a photo memory shows a Friday night from five years ago. Music, a toast, maybe a dance. Also, a friend who no longer calls China home. They all leave after a while. Except for me. ...

Father’s day was two weekends ago and while my father crossed my mind on that day, he did not linger. Taking after him, I was self-absorbed with no slight too small. Instead, I found myself thinking about him today while I was on one of my long solitary Sunday afternoon walks. On today’s walk, I found myself trying looking for a through line connecting my son Aidan, 17, to me at 17, to my dad when I was 17, and then back to me now. ...