It's Your Birthday

Last Wednesday, September 30, was Hawkens' 15th birthday. Sometimes I feel the need to type it out in black & white, unconvinced as I am that it's been that long since he was born. The parenting journey is fraught with self-doubt and sighs of relief, and mine may have had more than its share of the former. Sometimes I think it takes sheer cockiness to decide to have a child, to think you have enough of a clue to raise another human being to a healthy state of mind and body.

Looking back I see it was indeed cockiness dabbled with cluelessless on my part, but tossed with a healthy pinch of intuition, a dollop of faith or wishful thinking, a barrel of luck, and a giant heart ready to bleed out love (gag). Trial and error, maybe that's all it's ever been throughout the history of mankind.

So here's our young hero today: enamored of Alice in Chains (proclaims it to be the greatest band, despite my telling him he's wrong); plays his bass guitar at all hours of the night; putting off doing theatre until the second semester in order to cope with new academic challenges ("do you know what Asian Fail is? anything below an A-!"); taking Honors Geometry and has a posse of Korean kids to eat lunch with; admonished me today for not raising him with a clearer idea of what it means to be a Democrat vs. Republican (I assigned him some internet research out of this); discovering athesism and annoying me with quotes. (I sure hope his grandparents aren't reading this post.)

Happy Birthday, Hawkens.

Home Is Where the Hawk Is

We've created a home, Hawk and I. Or rather, we each retreat to our unspoken spoken-for places and leave each other alone. He is a teen, after all (and I am a recluse). The townhouse is quite nice. It's three floors, but I'm so unused to climbing for every frickin' thing that my knees are now protesting. Or maybe that's just oldish age. Anyway, it must be true that the Chinese have small, teensy feet (and the corollary--oh, let's not go there) because the stairs are so narrow even my size 6 have to turn sideways to ascend and descend.

But the wood floors, they are a thing of beauty.

I hired an ayi (a housekeeper) a week ago. My ayi, she is a thing of beauty, in her housekeeping talents, that is. Some teachers at work warned me that it's just the honeymoon stage, and she will slack. What rubbish! After coming from Argentina where my maid actually left a dead cockroach under a glass...well, this ayi love affair will last forever, I know it! My eyes almost watered the first time I opened a drawer and saw all my undies painstakingly rolled and tucked and facing the same direction in tidy rows and columns, alphabetized by brands (ok, I made that last part up). OCDness so has its place! (Weda + ayi sitting on a tree...)

Lest you think I'm a total unfeeling bourgeois first-world jerk, I acknowledge the moral implications of having a maid. But I also know I am helping to put food on her table, so it's a gray area I'll continue to live with.

It's a tenant's market right now, so landlords in all expat compounds have been bending backwards to accommodate. What has this meant for us when we moved in? A brand new LCD TV, a brand new fridge, and a custom-built dresser and bookshelf for Hawk.

Never one to sit at home when there are shiny malls to be discovered, I've been taking the shuttles from the compound and exploring various areas of the first and second ring road. (Beijing is laid out in rings. The center is the first; the burbs where I live/work is beyond the fifth.) One evening on a return shuttle, as luck would have it, I happened to meet a lovely Chinese woman who lives coincidentally around the corner from me. Sensing a fellow shopaholic, she walked me through all the must-see places at each shuttle stop, and even passed on the number of her artist mentor/teacher, whom I will be taking painting classes from. She wanted us to do an English/Mandarin conversational exchange, but alas...I am serious about learning Chinese and would rather have a real teacher in a real school. So she and I will simply have to be shopping buds.

More soon. Hawk and I want to blow this pop stand and look for a hot pot joint. Wish you were here to slurp some broth with us.