Family

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. ...

It’s one of my recurring dreams. The high school baseball team dream. I play shortstop or centerfield. Early in the dream nothing is expected of me but then I play well. Then it feels like “making it” is just on the cusp of happening. It’s going to be the next segment of the dream. What “making it” actually is I don’t know, the dream did not reveal but in the way that dreams do it felt tangible. Then it’s gone and I wake up. I interpret this dream as one of longing, longing for the high school baseball career that I cut short. No regrets? I do have regrets. ...

It’s Friday night when the rumors start to come in. New covid-19 infections in Beijing. An outbreak at a market. We continue with our movie night pizza party. No Country for Old Men. The next morning the rumors of infections are reported as news. Eight confirmed cases. Market shutdown. 10,000 to be tested. By the afternoon the infected count was 46. The market, which is massive and supplies other markets in Beijing, was shut down causing vegetable shortages across town for the day. Later in the day on Saturday schools and workplaces began checking if anyone had been to the market. Reports on twitter of community volunteers going door to door checking if anyone went to the market. ...

Google Photos reminded me that 13 years ago we took Aidan and Lydia to the Badaling Wildlife Park. My memory reminded me of a few other things that day. The caged white bus that we sat on. Passing locked gates into the animal habitats. First a wolf. Then another gate. Lions. A live chicken thrown out the vent in the top of the bus and the lions come pouncing. Paws slam on the bus windows. Chicken gone, looking for more. Me thinking this might not have been the best trip for Aidan, then four, or Lydia, then three. Past the lions there were bears. The bears looked worn. I’m sure others but I really remember the wolf, the lions, and the bears. Later during the walking section we saw people staring down a 25 foot high wall at lions below. They lions looked up eagerly and sometimes jumped. Not at the people. At the chickens extended at the end of sticks like a fishing pole. ...

I’m in Parkway Junior High School’s gymnasium with 18 other 9th graders. There’s a coach. It’s day one of practice. We are forming a team for the annual student/teacher game. The coach, a PE teacher, wants to pick first, second, and third teams but doesn’t know who’s good or not so he asks us players. I don’t say anything. I think I’m good enough for second team and expect to get picked for third since no one really knows me. To my surprise, I get picked for the first team. Not for merit but because the boys who knew each other well were uncomfortable picking amongst themselves, so they picked the outsider. Something I recognized in the moment and is now filed away as a life lesson. By the third and final practice, I was on the third team. Not so much for my actual play but because I took some undisciplined shots (even if they went in). And because I came to one practice high. When game night came we were sure we would destroy the old and clumsy teachers. Riding the bench to start the game two things were clear - I was incredibly nervous and the teachers were way bigger and better than us. At some point in the second quarter the coach sent me into the game. I felt a bit of swagger (maybe like Frank Knight felt at St Mary’s many years later). I was still very anxious. Throat incredibly dry. I had no real court vision. But I had a plan. Force contact and shoot free throws. It worked. When I got the ball, if there was a teacher nearby I drove into him. It sounds a lot clumsier in words than my memory. I was fouled three times and went 6-6 from the line. The teachers caught on to the plan and backed off me and I made two jumpers. Five touches in my two short stints on the floor and I led the team with 10 points. The teachers won easily. The players went to Fentons after the game along with some cheerleaders. A chance to be part of the cool crowd. ...

I remember going with my dad to look at bikes. Not a bike store mind you, but at someone’s house in the Westbourgh neighborhood of my home town. It felt like some kind of magic that we could be getting “new” bikes. I vaguely remember a short discussion on price. $25 or was it $45. For two bikes. Two “new” bikes! They were girls bikes. Not cool. At first it didn’t matter and then it did. I’ve had vivid recurring dreams of biking full speed into the slack chain link fence in my school’s playground. I would brag the the fence would catch me like a net. It didn’t. It hurt. The dreams are so vivid that from time to time, I think I may have really done it. ...

We’ll take a break from the coronavirus updates to talk about Elisa’s life’s work. Slime. She says she first heard of the concept of slime in the 2nd grade when a classmate had something similar to slime and it made a noise when you played with it. Later she found videos showing the real thing and how to make it. Then came the onslaught against our shampoos, conditioners, dish soap, and bowls. I can’t say I know exactly how the making of slime works. I guess I could ask Elisa and watch the videos. Or not. It appears to involve taking these soapy ingredients along with some special slime ingredients and putting into a bowl to stew. After a few days - or is it weeks - the slime is ready to be kneaded. Elisa does the kneading in almost a meditative state. Pull in half into one hand, compress the other half in, press down onto the table, pull back into hand, repeat. She can do this for an hour. From the various bowls and states the slime is in, this looks to be a multi-stage process. At the end of the process she puts the finished slime into a small container and has occasionally mailed them out. She posts videos of her slime on TikTok. She may in fact be a Slime celebrity. ...

Spring made an appearance yesterday. I left my winter coat on the rack and found my hoodie and went for a walk along an urban river with Sabrina, Lydia, Elisa and our dog Kobe. The urban river is not very wild, not very deep, not very clean, and frankly not much of a river. But it’s a lot cleaner, deeper, and wilder than five years ago. This is Beijing, after all. ...

On what better be the height of the coronavirus epidemic, we moved. The move had been in the works for a while, since before coronavirus was a thing. When it became a thing, I didn’t think we’d be able to move. That the complex lockdowns would not allow for it. That the no visitor rule - we had movers - meant movers could not come in. That the community policing would object. The people from the actual communities we were moving to/from would complain. But we packed and planned as if in denial while practicing defiance. ...