The woman in the window seat is standing and talking loudly to the people in the row behind her. This seems to always happen to me on planes. And not just when I am flying with Yang. On this day I am flying with Lydia to Harbin. Lydia is in the middle seat providing a buffer to the overly hyper middle aged harbin-ren returning home. I am I the aisle seat.

Lydia has taken one of her dolls with her, the very doll Aidan and I bought her when Aidan and I visited Harbin four years ago. Or was it three years ago. The years are starting to run together here. I had no idea that was the doll we bought Lydia in Harbin, but Lydia knew and that was good enough for me. Lydia explained to me that one ayi had helped her replace the hair on the doll to the now blue braids and they other ayi had crafted the doll’s red dress. Then Lydia fell asleep and it was just me and the standing woman separated by two planets worth of personality.

Getting away with Lydia to the same ice festival I took Aidan too has got me thinking about how they are different and how they are the same from each other and from Yang and I. As I’m sure parents the world over feel, they are both like us and not like us at the same time. Lydia is popular and makes friends easily like Yang but she speaks quietly and and is comfortable with silence like me. Aidan is slower to make friends and likes technical things like me but will talk nonstop when given the chance like, well his mom.

But those are just surface impressions, like of the one of the woman in the window seat clapping as the plane landed in Harbin and then telling us in English “Welcome to Harbin” and Lydia responding to her in Chinese. The depth of them is all their own.