Ordinary Time

Recently I've been listening to a class on cultural literacy as I clean the barn. It's been interesting, but I wasn't expecting to be be blindsided by it. I like to think of myself as somewhat culturally literate. I read widely, I've had friends who come from myriad different places (though this was significantly easier in Evanston), and I have done some travelling which requires longer stays in a place and not just a few days.  This morning totally knocked me on my heels. The discussion was about cultures with collectivist outlooks verses cultures with individualistic outlooks. (The US is strongly individualistic while China is strongly collectivist, if you were wondering.) The teacher told a story tone of his children while they were living in Singapore and her reaction to some of the rules regarding dog ownership. Her reaction at four-ish years of age was extremely individualistic and he was surprised at the degree to which that outlook had been communicated to her e...

Since we celebrate both Tet and Chinese New Year here, we have both the Year of the Cat and the Year of the Rabbit. The Vietnamese zodiac has two animals that don't match the Chinese zodiac and this is one of those years. We celebrate mainly by eating food. As I mentioned, Y. spent all day yesterday making homemade baozi (steamed buns) starting with homemade dough. She made a lot. She made so many that everyone ate their fill and we have over a dozen left. (I'm quite sure they won't last through the day tomorrow.) We also had a steak and broccoli stir fry that uses a black bean sauce served over long noodles (because long noodles at new years symbolizes longevity.) The Tet celebration always involves fresh fruit, so I splurged on dragon fruit. Dessert was sugary preserved fruit and candy. Well, it was wrapped like candy. There was some disappointment when we discovered that it was merely preserved plums wrapped in candy wrappers. Not really what everyone was expecting or ho...

It has been a long, slow process to figure out all that was/is going on with R. The first few years were tough. Really, really tough as we got to know her and really just navigated all of her fear and disregulation. There was no order to it all, no cause and effect. We were all drowning in a turbulent sea of fear and reaction.  Then a few years ago we found the right combination of medicine that helped take the edge off her anxiety. Finally she had a little, tiny bit of margin where she could begin to feel our efforts to connect with her and make her feel safe. Much of her behavior was a mystery, but there were also moments of seeing things begin to sort themselves out and begin to make sense.  Over these past few years she has continued to stabilize. She can feel comfort when she sits next to us and not spiral out of control. She exhibits significantly more regulated behavior so that we do have some idea of what to expect from day to day. We all began to really get to know ea...

One of the more challenging aspects of parenthood these days I'm discovering is the tension between adolescents who are able-bodied and those who are not. As with all children this age, all of them desire chances to be independent. For many children, this independence is facilitated by bicycles. For other children, though they can ride a bike, distance and hills are challenging enough that it makes using the bike to get places pretty much a non-starter. The challenge comes when you want to allow children this very typical experience because it is appropriate for them, yet dealing with the blatant unfairness of it all with the child(ren) who just cannot manage it. I'm not sure this is a right answer, but we have decided to say yes to bike trips occasionally while at other times find different, more inclusive ways that everyone can participate. I find it to be an exceedingly fine line to walk.  Today was a day where I agreed for some people to ride their bikes to McDonalds to get...

As the day progressed and I thought about the week ahead, I realized that it would be wise to go to the Asian market to get what I needed for Tet/Chinese New Years on Tuesday today rather than trying to squeeze it in on Tuesday. I'm glad I did because my trip to one store became a trip to three stores. The first was Park to Shop. Being a mainly Chinese store, I was pretty convinced that it would have everything I needed. I could go, grab the things on my list, and head home to be back in time for tea. When I got there I realized that this was not going to be a fast in and out trip. It was busy! I've never had to park so far away and there were no shopping carts available. This last turned out to be okay because the one thing I really, really needed wasn't there. Earlier, when I had asked my people what they wanted to have for dinner, they chose a stir-fried dumpling dish that they all love and Y. really wanted some stir-fried lotus root. I don't know if you've notic...

[This is attempt at a post number two. Blogger is functioning far worse than usual (which is saying quite a lot), and after about five hundred words everything I had written completely vanished, despite it being saved regularly. Am I happy about this? No, not at all. I think the first draft was better.] Due to friends sharing pictures, I realized that today is the six year anniversary of meeting R. for the first time. It also means that on the seventh, we had the six year anniversary of meeting Y. for the first time. Six years has that both too short and too long feeling about it. It feels as though it has been an eventful six years. I know I have quite a few new readers here. What you may not know is that a week before we were due to travel to bring our daughters home, my father unexpectedly passed away. My mother's first words when I spoke with her (a friend had called to break the news) was that he would have wanted us to travel... so we did. I was grieving, our new daughters we...

A couple of months ago, I ordered a set of hand-painted Chinese peasant paintings through the woman who took us shopping both times we were in Guangzhou . They arrived today!! Do you want to see?  The paper is very curled so it was a little difficult to take pictures of them. Y. helped to choose which ones to order. Her favorite is the second from the top; the winter scene. I kind of love that we accidentally chose a painting from each season. Now to get them framed. That might have to be a tax refund expense because I really want to be able to hang these on the wall soon. They make me happy... and they make Y. very happy, too.

I've been pondering how fear can bring out deep seated beliefs that more in more regulated times are kept under wraps or politely ignored. When people are coping with significant fear there is little left over for worrying about social niceties. There are two particular areas of life where I have been dismayed to see increasing levels of less-than-spectacular behavior. I've kept my tongue... so far. The first? The increasing anti-Asian sentiments that I have been seeing and hearing about. I have Asian children so this hits close to home. We don't go anywhere these days, so my children have not been subjected to anything outright (as regards to Covid-19, they have certainly experienced racist behavior at other times), but I have friends who have. Some of it is pretty egregious and other behavior is down right frightening. I'm not sorry to not be able to take my children out right now. If you are white, please be careful about what you say and share. Jokes about bat e...

Jiaozi is Mandarin for dumplings. It is one of those words which instead of a child learning the English word, the family, instead, switched to the Mandarin. On Tuesday, our friend, the one who happens to be making the documentary , came over to show everyone how to make jiaozi and we all enjoyed dinner together.  Y. May May Tchao and H. L. Some of the finished dumplings. After a while, the children tired of doing it the normal way and started to treat the wrappers as origami paper. More dumplings L. Y. (notice her holding her camera) and L. And more dumplings... The finished soup bowls. They were delicious and I think I could probably manage to make it myself the next time. In other news, the first Here I Can Be Normal special needs adoption support group last night was a success. Others came, so I wasn't left talking to myself! Despite quite diverse experiences and children, there seem to be universal issues involved ...

Today was our day to head downtown and see the member's preview of the special Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit at the Field Museum . This was such a fantastic deal for us. Not only did we get to see the exhibit in a calm and uncrowded atmosphere, but it was a real family deal and all children in the immediate family were included at no cost. (This is increasingly not always the case, so I feel the need to really thank museums when they have true family membership deals.) J. was even able to take off from work to come with us, a double treat. We arrived in plenty of time, so there was the mandatory visit to Sue, the resident T-Rex. Plus, there was a chance to hold real, honest-to-goodness, prehistoric dinosaur poop. Who wouldn't turn that down? H. with prehistoric poop (and R. peeking out behind.) Then it was time to head to the exhibit. We also had P. and TM with us, but they decided they would rather play photographer than be photographed. The exhibit was ve...

Well, you know the old saying, "Pride goeth before a fall"? That was me last night. In my last post, I sounded pretty darn chipper about they way R. was processing her grief. Yesterday, after spending some time looking at her photo books that her foster mother had made for her, it hit full force. Night times are hard. When you are tired, it is more difficult to hold your emotions in check, and often it is when you miss that special person the most because they are one who tucked you in and made you feel safe. Last night J. and I were comforting two grieving children as they worked through the magnitude of their loss. Grief is hard and doesn't make for terribly entertaining reading. While we are over here dealing with grief, you don't need to continually read about it. Instead, why don't we talk about food? I meant to write a post about food in China, but never got around to it. Here it is, just a little late. Since food is one of the necessities of life, it is...

After approximately 24 hours of travelling we have made it home. It was quite the welcome, but before I go there, I need to go back a day and fill you in on all the gruesome details. Since the most economical flights tend to all leave out of Hong Kong, there is a whole system in place where vans pick you up from your hotel in Guangzhou and drive you two hours south to Hong Kong and drop you off directly at the airport. For a family travelling with not-entirely-mobile children, this seemed like a much easier option than taking the train and having to navigate luggage and cabs and so forth. And in theory, it is, depending on your driver. We evidently drew the short straw this morning. (Yesterday morning? Time can be so tricky.) There were moments when J. and I were both utterly convinced that we were not going to end up in Hong Kong alive. And we pretty relaxed travelers, not easily freaked-out by non-Western driving practices. The game changes, though, when you realize your driver i...

On our last day in China we spent a leisurely morning. We were slow to wake, took our time at breakfast, and just relaxed. It will be a stark contrast to tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off at 4:15 am. After lunch, we decided to get out and do something, so opted to head around the corner to a museum which is very close to our hotel and by which we have walked dozens of times between this trip and the last. Well, we should have visited it sooner. It turns out to be the "The Museum of the Nanyue King of Western Han Dynasty". (Their translation, not mine.) Essentially, in the early 80's, when a mountain was being leveled to build apartments, they uncovered a tomb from the Han Dynasty, c. 120 BC. It was a multi-chambered king's tomb, complete with king, concubines, treasure, and human sacrifices. The unusual part is that they left the tomb where it was and built an entire museum right over the top of it... and you can walk right in! How cool is that? Also, it'...

This morning, bright and early, was our consulate appointment where we officially applied for R.'s and Y.'s US visas so they can enter the US and become citizens. After all the paperwork we have filled out and sent in, it is more of a formality than anything, but you still need to make sure all the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted. Ours were and after J. had his fingerprints scanned yet one more time, the official behind the window said, "Congratulations! You can pick up your visas tomorrow." Actually our guides will be picking them up, so other than meeting with them to collect the documents, we're done. After over a year of working to bring these girls home, I can hardly believe we have reached this point. Just for fun, I bought the girls matching dresses for the occasion. You'll notice that suddenly the shoes are a big hit. When we arrived back at the hotel, it was time to do group photographs. There was a lot of waiting around ...