Lucy

       Lucy is in prime form tonight.  Having put Jamie to bed, I’m sitting in the living room maximizing my writing time by looking up people I never really liked on Face Book.  I'm just laughing at Scott Holgscrum’s page—who knew they had FB in prison?—when I hear, bam bam bam—“Wi-illll!” 

Followed by a scuffling sound, then, “It’s not fair!”

“Lucy,” I hear Ellen say.  “It’s a toilet.  Use the other one.”

“But I wanted this one.”

“Use the other one, Lucy.”

“I was here first.”

“It’s a toilet, Lucy.” 

What follows is something not quite a wail, not quite a groan, not quite a ragged-throated banshee hurling itself off a cliff—though this last one is perhaps closest. 

Five minutes later we’re in their room, getting night-night kisses when Lucy says, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, owowowowow!”

“What is it?” I said. 

“I bumped my head!”  Her tone is belligerent.  There’s no other way to say it:  my six-year old blonde-headed daughter sounds like a truck driver drinking beer at a football game.

“Oh you poor dear,” I say, even though that’s not what I’m thinking.  “What did you bump it against?”

There’s a pause.  “The pillow.”

I don’t laugh, just lean over and give her a kiss on the forehead.  Instantly her arms are around me and she’s squishing me in an octopus hug.  So check that:  a strong belligerent truck driver.

 

A few weeks ago, we were out for dim sum with Chris and Valerie and my parents.  Lucy was sitting next to Valerie, which is not unusual.  Sure, Valerie’s a native Hong Konger who’s occupied this earth for, let’s say, a minimum of 37 years, and Lucy’s an obnoxious six-year-old Norwegian-American pixie who daily tests the theory that she’ll make it to seven—nevermind any of that:  these two are essentially the same person, cut from the same cloth, stuffed with the same gooey red substance that’s half lava, half treacle, half math-defying joie de vivre. 

Anyhow, we were out for dim sum and I was talking to my parents while Ellen was trying to keep Jamie and Will from hurling shrimp rolls at the old men reading newspapers at the next table.  It was at precisely at this moment that Lucy turned to Valerie and said, “Do you have a fussy face?”

Valerie leaned over, not sure she’d quite heard right.  “Um, excuse me?”

“A fussy face,” Lucy explained.  “You know, for when you’re angry.”

“Oh yeah,” Chris said.  “Valerie’s got a bunch of those, actually.”

At which point Valerie gave Chris two or three to select from.  Then she turned back to Lucy.  “Do you have a fussy face?”

Lucy nodded.  “Want to see it?”

“Yes,” said Valerie.  “I most certainly do.”

Since I wasn’t part of this conversation, I have to admit I’m relying entirely on Chris’s description for this part.  According to him, what came next was instantaneous:  Lucy’s face shifted from its usual malleable, round, amicability, to a stone-cold blankness that was simultaneously a glare. 

“It froze my blood,” Chris told me later.  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 

This story kills me on so many levels:  one, that Lucy has such an expression; two, that she knows she has it, and hauls it out very deliberately at moments she deems appropriates; three, that she’s named this face; four, that she’s chosen to name it “fussy,” a word I haven’t heard used by anyone under the age of 72 since Gilda Radner died. 

When we first moved to Hong Kong, we thought Will would be the one who struggled the most.  This was a boy, after all, who self-medicates after a bad day by hiding in a book, never mind that his best friends are visiting, he’s in the middle of a birthday party or that it’s his birthday party for which the friends are visiting. 

Lucy, on the other hand, is pure salt and vinegar, sugar and raisins, pure—I dunno—Punch?  Energy?  Everclear in a six-year-old bottle?  

She’s the kid who, at the ripe old age of four, declared that Pad Thai, of all things, was her favorite food; who loves to go fishing for “crawdad” (singular, mind you) with our neighbor Daisy; who, when you get her up to go pee in the middle of the night, will kiss your neck.  While still sleeping. 

Whereas Will can barely think of one “favorite thing,” at the end of the day, Lucy can generally reel off 27 different things.

You can imagine our horror, then, when a month after we arrived in Hong Kong, Lucy’s teacher informed us that Lucy didn’t seem to be enjoying school, that she sat in the class room all day looking like someone was threatening to pull her teeth out with rusty monkey wrench if she so much as smiled. 

Some of this, of course, can be explained away:  she’s six after all, and her jerk parents pulled her away from friends she’d had since she was born, denying her the chance to attend the school she’d envisioned herself going to for years, dragging her to some crazy country around the world where she has to share a room and doesn’t have half her toys and can’t run around screaming in a half-acre yard butting against a huge cemetery. 

And, I dunno, she’s my daughter, after all—which would put pretty much anyone in therapy, if you ask me. 

So partly I’m inclined to dismiss the concerns of Lucy’s wonderful, talented teacher, and the occasional (say, hourly) temper tantrum or fit of tears and just leave her be. 

Except for this: 

 

It started in the fall, or what passes for fall in Hong Kong—those few months where the temperature actually becomes bearable and the humidity is low enough that you don’t feel like you’re being suffocated by a wet sock every time you step outside. 

One evening we were lying on the couch, reading stories, and Will and Lucy kept scratching their legs.

“What’s the matter?” I finally asked, the seventeenth time Pooh was interrupted as he attempted to be a rather rainy cloud floating toward some honey in a tree.

“Itchy,” Will and Lucy both said. 

I sat up, turned and looked at their legs.  They were covered—absolutely covered—with small red dots. 

“Ellen?”  I called, fear creeping into my voice.  It’s one thing to come to Hong Kong for a year, another thing to come and contract leprosy.  I wondered for a moment what it would be like spending the rest of my life running from my children every time they tried to give me a hug. 

It turned out it was heat rash, “Prickly heat,” the kids’ P.E. teacher called it, when the pores of the skin become clogged and inflamed. 

It hung around for a long time, well into November.  After a while, Will seemed okay with it.  Lucy, though, found a new hobby. 

“Lucy!”  Ellen would say.  “Stop that!”

We’d be sitting at the table, eating dinner.  Even from where I was, I could feel the table rocking as Lucy scratching furiously at her legs. 

Or we’d be standing out on the patio, throwing rocks at the students who live below us, and Lucy would be rubbing one foot against the other calf, then switch, and rub the other foot against the opposite calf. 

Or we’d be cuddling and she’d be scratching obsessively, or . . .  or . . . .or . . . .

Eventually what happened was that her legs were covered with tiny red pin-prick scabs. 

Which she’d pick.

And pick.

And pick.

And then she started picking scabs on her face as well, one so much that it was in danger of scarring. 

All of it reached a climax when we were in Vietnam.  Will had his eye on a little metal monster made of nuts and bolts and other cast-off hardware.  A guy was selling it outside a shop one day, and somehow Ellen and I got talked into buying it for Will, despite the fact that it cost roughly the same as a meal for 60 at the best restaurant in Hanoi.

Exercising the ultimate wisdom of a six-year old—“It’s not FAIR!”—Lucy insisted we get her something extra-special as well—more specifically, an ao dai, the traditional pantsuity thing that Vietnamese women wear when they want to drive dumb white men insane with lust. 

Not that I’d know.

Anyhow, Ellen and I gave in, largely because we’d already spent $90,000 on random knick-knacks and junk for ourselves.  The first outfit we looked at was reasonable priced, but upon closer inspection turned out to be made from a very cheap fabric akin to what you’d find, in, say, a Gladd bag. 

“But I want it,” Lucy said. 

“No,” we said.  “Let’s go eat lunch and we’ll find another one.”

“But I want this one!”

“This one is made from cheap material,” we said.  “It’ll fall apart in a week.” Because, of course, when faced with a hungry six-year-old, the best thing you can do is use reason.  “You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “That’s exactly what I want.  Now give it to me!”

But we didn’t.  Instead we continued down the street, belligerent, drunken football fan trailing behind, found a restaurant, and got some food in our bellies. 

Things were better after that, until we were leaving the restaurant, and Jamie was grabbing Ellen’s nose and Will was telling some story from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, and Lucy said, “Want to know what I do when I’m angry?”

And then she grabbed the soft skin on the inside of her elbow, and half-scraped, half-pulled it. 

Until it was red and raw.

 

Now I want to be honest with you. 

First, this only happened once.  Yes, there’s been lots of scratching, and yes, as my friend Janel has pointed out, that might be bordering on OCD.

But even so.

Next, Lucy is, by almost any measure, an insanely happy child: She loves fried dumplings and can eat 16 at a sitting; she’s a fast runner and her favorite color is blue.  She can actually read a few books by herself now, and delights in doing so for Jamie; she likes the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson mystery series, and hasn’t yet learned what a couple of drugged-out loser wanna-be porn queens those two have become. Yesterday, she spent part of her allowance on a roll of strawberry flavored Oreos, then split the pack with her two brothers.  She’s only missed three words on her spelling test all year, which isn’t bad, given that there are ten words per week, and they include terms like gastroenterology (I’m trying not to take offense that one of the misspelled ones was “father,” where, inexplicably, Lucy included an extra “d,” an unnecessary “o,” and a couple other letters, like “l,” and “t.’).  

When we were in Vietnam, Lucy reached into a hot pot, pulled out a chicken foot, and said, “Will, look!  I’m eating a foot!”  And took a bite.  And though she complains about sharing a room with Will, sometimes the two of them walk ahead of Ellen and I, whispering to one another, and we know they’ll remember this experience for the rest of their lives. 

Oh:  and eventually she got her ao dai. 

In short, she’s the same Lucy.  She’s not broken.  And she won’t be, not anytime soon.

All of which is a rather roundabout way of saying that I’m uncomfortable writing about this.  In the five or so months since I first wrote about my concerns about Lucy and our decision to move to Hong Kong, I’ve written fewer posts specifically about her than I have either of the other two children.  Partly this is because of fear of exploitation on my part:  I know when I write about the family and my fears, my reading numbers go way up.  Might as well go on Springer. 

One of the mixed blessings of my job, however, is that I often—through papers and journals—get more of an insight into college students’ lives then your average 44-year old bald white-guy with fading eyesight.  Over the years I’ve read about students’ hatred of their mothers, about the first time they smoked crack, about being raped, about anonymous sex in a public park, about anorexia, alcoholism, and discovering their own sexuality.   I’ve read about their first loves and their fears that they’ll never be loved and how their parents are forcing them to study a field they don’t care anything about.  I’ve read about their fathers’ marijuana addiction and their fathers’ deaths and their intense love for their fathers.

And I’ve read about cutting.  

For those of you not in the know:  good.  Stop reading right now.  Trust me, you’ll be much happier. 

For the rest of you, well . . .

Cutting is a form of SI, or self-injury.  It’s practiced mostly by girls, but some boys do it as well.  It involves taking a semi-sharp object—a pin, a knife, the tip of a screw driver—and rubbing it hard against your skin until the stratum comeum is worn raw and blood starts to appear. 

Or it may involve taking extremely sharp objects and making actual incisions in the skin.  Because they wish to hide this practice from those around them, practitioners of cutting generally mutilate their upper legs, their bellies—or their arms. 

Why, you ask?  Why do they do this horrible, destructive, stupid stupid thing to themselves?

Every time I think about that question, I think about the LA riots following the verdict in favor of the policemen who clubbed Rodney King in 1991.  Standing in a grad office watching as people set fire to stores and turned over cars in their own neighborhood, someone turned to the rest of us and said, “This doesn’t make sense.  Why are they destroying their own stuff?  If they’re mad at whites, why not go wreck white stuff?”

The answer, I suppose, and this is nothing profound, is because the emotions are sometimes just too much:  they have to be released, never mind logic or the consequences.

As near as anyone can tell, it’s the same thing with cutters:  they’re struggling with an emotion—negative, I assume—that’s so big yet so intangible that there seems to be no way to deal with it.  Lacking the coping mechanisms we develop as we get older—martinis, anyone?—cutters seek some way, any way, to release these emotions.  Have a hurt that you can’t explain, that you can’t define, that you can’t see or touch or erase?  Put it here. 

When I hear about stuff like this or read about stuff like this, all I can think is:  what kind of world have we created, where kids do stuff like this?

And, of course, the subtext here is:  what kind of world have I created for my daughter?  By deciding to come to Hong Kong, by taking her away her friends and her room and her school and her, well, life—did we mess her up irreparably? 

 

I’m overdoing it, I know.  Relax, you say, it’s just one moment, one incident.  You think too much.  She’s just a little kid.  You can’t read that much into this.  She’ll be fine. 

I know, I know. 

But . . .

a)    She’s my little girl;

b)   I spent my senior year of college watching my girlfriend try to starve herself to death;

c)    She’s my little girl;

d)   I’ve seen students end up in the hospital for behavior like this;

e)    She’s my little girl;

f)     I know what it’s like to have big emotions;

g)    She’s my little girl; and

h)   She’s my little girl, so to hell with you. 

 

My friend Janel, who had a Fulbright in New Zealand nine years back, knows what it’s like to travel with children:  she took her two daughter, then ten and 12, with her for a full year, by herself.  Sitting on the ferry to Macau, she tells me about this experience, about how her kids needed to find rituals, something to shape the apparent chaos (at least in the eyes of a child) of life abroad. 

“It’s stressful,” Janel said, keeping her eyes on the horizon.  Janel and I are both prone to sea-sickness, and though we’re friends and colleagues, we both agree that throwing up in each other’s laps is just a bit too intimate. 

“And kids don’t know how to cope with stress,” she goes on.  “You need to find some way to help her do this.”

I think about this a lot.  Both the boys have some pretty handy coping mechanisms:  Will hurls himself into books pretty much every chance he gets, dropping into a near meditative state from which we can extract him only by poking him with a sharp stick and mentioning popcorn.  Jamie’s method is less sophisticated, but equally effective:  it involves running up and down the halls screaming at the top of his lungs until he collapses on the floor in a sweaty heap, occasionally wetting his pants. 

But Lucy?

She’s just learning to read.  When she screams we need to plug our ears.  She’s not crazy about art.  She’s too small to cook with us.  She . . . ?

 

I’m tempted to end on a positive note.  And certainly, there’s lots to be positive about:  Lucy is a vivacious, energetic, loving, joyful (even, apparently, when she’s “fussy”). So there’s a lot good.  And not much bad.

But the last time I wrote about Lucy, and talked about our fears for her, I ended up by saying I knew everything was going to be okay.  I just knew it would.

I still think that way.  Really I do.

But sometimes when I wake up I the middle of the night, and I’ve had too much caffeine or too much Toblerone or some discussion with some faculty member didn’t go so well and I can’t get back to sleep, I lay there, my mind racing over all the things that are wrong with the world (health care, Sarah Palin, Osama Bin Laden, Sarah Palin cuddling in bed with Osama Bin Laden and discussing ways to screw up health care), my thoughts inevitably fall on my children.

Thinking of them makes me feel better, of course.  Especially thinking about Lucy who, as my dad often says, makes you want to smile just by walking into the room.  And for a time, I can bask in the warmth of knowing she’s just down the hall, that in the morning after she’s gotten a little cereal in her and brushed her teeth and woken up completely, she’ll crush me with one of those octopus hugs before going out the door to school. 

So that’s good.

But sometimes—sometimes—when I’m having these thoughts, there’ll be something lurking just outside the circle of light, something black and hard, something cold and threatening to wrap itself around my spine.  

And when that happens, what I know and what is real have nothing to do with it.  And I wonder--and this is the only time this happens--if Hong Kong was a mistake.

  

Is BEA the spawn of the devil, or just the worst bank ever? Prt. I

      One of the first things we did when we arrived in Hong Kong was open a bank account.  Because we live in a fairly isolated location, we decided to have our account at the BEA (Bank of East Asia) branch on campus. 

We’d been warned that opening an account in Hong Kong could be a difficult task.  HK is a huge banking center, and as such, attracts a lot of bank fraud on various levels.  A friend of ours works for the FBI at the consulate here, and says that all of the Triads have shifted their focus from high-risk/low return crimes like drug trafficking and vice, to fraud, just because the returns are so good.

That in mind, we came armed for bear.  When I went down to the campus BEA our first Friday here, I carried Ellen’s and my birth certificates (originals, not copies), our passports, our marriage license, and proof of my employment by the Fulbright organization and my host institution. 

Waiting in line, I glance at the clock:  12:00.  Good deal.  I would be able to set things up just dandy, then get back to the flat and spend a little time with Ellen and the kids.  Just the day before, we’d discovered that Ellen’s father had died while we were en route from the States, and that she would have to fly back early Sunday for the funeral.  For some reason, my initial check from the Fulbright organization had both her name and mine on it, so getting it deposited and the money flowing would be essential if I and the kids were going to eat at all for the next week. 

When my turn came, I stepped up to the window and, presenting my various documents, asked to open an account. 

The woman behind the counter, young, dark haired, dressed in a bright red and neatly-trimmed BEA suit, looked through the papers I’ve handed her.  I notice, as she does so, that her nails are extravagantly manicured, a glossy red with small pink gems set near the tips. 

Eventually she looks up and says, “Individual or joint?”

Ellen and I have always been equal partners in everything, including money.  I wouldn’t have it any other way, especially since I couldn’t balance a check book if my life depended on it.   So I’m confident when I say, “Joint.”

Red nails gives me a look like I just told her I wanted to lick her shoe.  Once again she thumbs through the sheaf of documents with which I’d presented her. 

“Just one moment,” she says, and gets up.  I watch has she winds her way back to the desk of an older woman wearing an identical red suit with white piping around. 

They talk for a few minutes.  I watch from the other side of the window, wondering, suddenly, fearfully, slightly paranoid from lack of sleep and jet lag, if my past as a wannabe rock star has finally caught up with me.  Or maybe they found out about that time Krist Zimmerman and I stole two Strohs from his uncle and ran off to drink them beneath the big trestle, throwing the half emptys away because it tasted like someone’s donkey’d peed in a can.  Or maybe—

“You must give proof of your address.”

The young woman was back at the window, looking at me—what?  Seriously?  Suspiciously?  No.  Blankly, really, as though saying what she’d been told to say, with no real wheels turning behind those pretty dark eyes of hers.

“My address?” I said. 

She nodded.

“Here?” I said. 

Again a nod. 

I reached for my Fulbright assignment letter, twisting my hand awkwardly into the little chute under the big plastic shield they put in front of every teller’s window here to stop the crazed maniac bankrobber who’s allergic to synthetic glass.  Blank face watched me for about twenty seconds before finally reaching down and pushing the paper two inches forward so I could reach it.

Holding it up so she could see, I pointed to the terms of my grant, one of which stated that the university would provide housing.  “But see,” I said, “it says right here:  I live on campus.”

She’s unimpressed.  “But we need your full address.” 

I stare at her.  Then I turn and look out the window at the campus upon which the bank is situated.  Turning back, I say, “My address is the same a yours.”

No, she explains to me:  they need my flat number.  I tell her my flat number, but this is not good enough:  they need it in writing.  Apparently, it’s entirely possible that I could live on this campus, but in a different flat than the one I say, and by living in that different flat, completely defraud the Bank of East Asia of every penny it holds.  I’d always assumed, of course, that bank fraud was much more difficult than that, but who am I to argue with a woman diamonds on the tips of her fingers? 

So I gather my things and head through the door into the blasting heat of Hong Kong in August.  Walking all the way to the other end of campus, I find my then-boss Anita’s office and ask her how I can get written proof that I actually live in 802 SSQ.  Anita makes a phone call or two, then tells me that the Estate Office will write a letter for me and that I can pick it up any time after 3:00. 

 

At 3:00, I go to the Estate office and pick up a letter that says, and I quote, “Paul Hanstedt lives in SSQ 802.”    

Trusting—as English professors tend to do—in the power of language, I return to the bank, letter in hand, and offer it to the blank face in the red suit.  She looks at it, glances at the rest of my documents, then takes them all back to her older colleague at the desk. 

Ten minutes later, she returns to the window and says, “You would like a joint account?”

“Yes,” I sigh, happy that at last we’re getting down to business. 

“Where does your wife live?”

I look at her.

“This letter.  It only has your name.  Where does your wife live?”

I stare at her.  She meets my eyes, but gives nothing away. 

“My wife lives with me.”

She glances at me, glances at the letter, glances at me again. 

“You know,” I say.  “My wife is not employed by this University.  I am the only one who works for this school.  There’s no reason why they would include her name on any of my correspondence, including this letter.”

But she won’t give. She slides the letter under the window.  I take it, gather everything else I’ve brought, and turn out into the afternoon blast of heat.  Again. 

 

Gilbert Wong, the director of the Estate Office, has his desk on the third floor of the building right next to the bank.  I climb the stairs and go into the lobby of his unit.  I don’t see his name anywhere, so I ask someone who picks up a phone, dials a number, and speaks quickly in Cantonese.  After a moment she replaces the receiver and says, “He’s in a meeting.”

I must look pained, because she frowns.  “Can I help you?”

I explain the situation. I mention Ellen’s dad.  The funeral.  The odd check with both our names.  My three children at home, who are going to be unhappy enough in a new, hot, smotheringly humid country without their mother, nevermind being fed stewed bits of old sock for dinner.  The woman takes pity on me and picks up the phone again. 

Two minutes later, Gilbert Wong appears and shakes my hand.  He’s a slight man, with a slightly goofy glasses and a warm smile.  He listens to my apologies, listens to my story, listens to more of my apologies, then says, “No problem.  You come back at four o’clock.  Will that do?”

“Oh god,” I say.  “Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  I’m so sorry!”

 

But of course, that won’t do.  When I return to the bank with an amended version of the letter that now reads “Paul Hanstedt and Ellen live in SSQ 802,” I’m informed that that is very nice, but they need proof of my address in the States. 

The bank closes at five, so I don’t even bother gathering all my stuff this time; I just head out the door, speed walking it from the A-block where the bank is, past B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, the library (C-block) and D-blocks 1-4.  Picking up my pace, I cross the parking lot outside our building, wave to the guard in the booth, stroll through the southern half of the building to the elevator bank, press the button, wait for  the elevator, get in, press the button, go to the sixth floor where this elevator tops out, go down the hall to the next bank of elevators, press the button, wait, get in, press the button again, get out at the eighth floor, walk all the way down the exact same hallway only eight floors higher, to the southern half of the building where our flat is. 

Going in, I grab my wallet.  “They need my driver’s license,” I tell Ellen.  She’s on-line, trying to book tickets. 

Back in the heat, I go the whole way down the hall again, press the button, wait, go to the sixth floor, walk to the next bank of elevators, press the button—

Well, you get the point. 

By the time I get back to the bank, I’m sheeted in sweat as only a big bald white man can be.  Handing my driver’s license to the woman behind the counter, I bend over, leaning against the metal trim, trying to catch my breath. 

She takes the card in two fingers, as though holding a document that’d just been handed to her by someone sheeted in sweat as only a big bald white man can be.   Looking at it carefully, she says, “And your wife?”

I stare at her.  Then I say, “You have got to be—“ and spit out the number seven phrase on the list of words I avoid saying in front of my great aunt from Toledo. 

But of course she’s not.  Never mind that I explain that my wife’s address is the same as mine.  Never mind that I point out that, as my wife and I live at the same address in HK, clearly we safely assume she and I live at the same address in the US.  Never mind that I rant and rave and beat my head against that now slightly-foggy plastic pane separating the two of us. 

No, none of that matters.  So again I head into the heat, doing more of a jog now than a speed-walk, past B-1, B-2, B3 etc.  I cross the parking lot, nod to the guard, go to the elevators, take them up, get the card, take them down, and repeat the journey again, only in reverse this time.

I’d like to tell you it ended there.  I’d like to tell you that when they asked for our Social Security numbers I knew both of them, or at least had a phone so that I could call Ellen and ask hers; that, when I returned with her number, they didn’t insist on having not just the numbers but the cards; that when I returned with both cards (originals, not copies) they didn’t insist on a blood sample; that when I came out of my faint from the needle they didn’t ask for a pair of dirty socks from each of us; that when I returned with the dirty socks, they didn’t look at me like I was an idiot for not also having brought two clean pairs as well; that when I returned with the clean pairs they didn’t ask for a hair sample; that after a fifteen minute search, they didn’t ask for . . . well . . . samples of other things that I generally don’t discuss with the 11 people who regularly read this blog. 

I’d like to say all of those things.  Really, I would. 

I’d also like to say that when I was eventually sitting there, looking at the final papers as they were being drawn up, that I didn’t notice that Ellen was going to have to come down and sign in person.  And that, since neither of us had a phone, I didn’t have to hustle out of the bank at a dead sprint at 4:47 PM, realizing halfway back to the flat that they still had Ellen’s passport, and that, without it, she couldn’t return to the States on Sunday. 

But none of that would be true. 

What actually happened involved me bursting into our flat at exactly 4:53 and screaming, “You have seven minutes to get down there or you’ll miss your father’s funeral!”

Then I collapsed on the floor in a veritable Great Lake of my own sweat and uttered the five words that had been on my tongue since noon:  “Lucy: get me a beer.” 

Is BEA the spawn of the devil, or just the worst bank ever? Prt. II

         A few weeks later I was sitting in my office discussing quality assurance and other dirty dirty things with colleagues, when the phone rang.

I probably stared at it for a good 20 seconds, shocked that anyone would call me in a country where I know exactly 3 adults, two of whom were presently sitting in my office.

Eventually, one of my colleagues stood up, grabbed the receiver, and gave it to me. 

“Hello?” I said. 

“This is Angie,” a voice said.  “Calling from BEA.”

I started to twitch.  I couldn’t help it.  Just hearing those letters caused the corners of my mouth to dip, my ears to itch, and the lids of my eyes to do a maranga.

“Umghrr,” I said, as articulately as I could. 

“We need you to come in.”

“I don’t have anymore left,” I said. 

“Anymore what?”

My heart wasn’t so much racing as beating itself over the head with a jackhammer wearing Adidas.  “Blood.  Hair. Sperm.  Whatever it is you want from me.”

This time the pause was all on their side.  Good, I thought.  Let them know what it’s like to be violated. 

“We need to register your Hong Kong ID card,” Angie said eventually.  “We are still using your passport.  This is not okay.”

“Oh,” I said.  “I’m in a meeting right now.  Can’t it wait?”

There was only a beat of silence before she said, carefully, as though explaining something to an eight-year-old who spent too much time sniffing Daddy’s turpentine:  “We need to register your Hong Kong ID card.  We are still using your passport.  Tthis is not okay.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll be right down.”  And I hung up.

When I turned back to my colleagues, one of them said, “Is everything all right?”

I nodded, picking up the quality enhancement protocol we’ve been working on. 

The other one frowned, confused.  “Do you need to go somewhere?”

I shook my head.  “It can wait.”

 

But of course it couldn’t.  I received three more calls from Angie while at work.   We now had cell phones and somehow they get those numbers as well and start calling them, too.  For the longest time I just ignored the calls, hoping the bank would give up.  I didn’t frankly believe that it made one bit of difference whether they had my ID number or not.  They already have my passport information; what difference could it make? 

Then one Saturday night at 2 AM I rolled over to find a slight woman in a red suit standing beside my bed, holding an axe. 

“We need to register your Hong Kong ID card,” Angie said.  “We are still using your passport.  This is not okay.”

I stared at her.  Her face was expressionless, but even so I could see that her jaw was set.   Her fingers, tipped by a lovely vermillion manicure, were just a slighter shade of pale around the handle of that Estwing Camp Axe. 

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll come down first thing in the morning.”

“Now,” said Angie.

“Okay,” I nodded.  I was about to pull back the covers when I realized that all I was wearing were the Sponge Bob underpants Lucy got me for my birthday. 

I tugged the sheets up and gazed at Angie.  “Do you mind?”

She shifted the axe from her left hand to her right.  “I don’t mind at all.”

 

I’d like to say the story ended there, but—well—you know how that goes.

After Christmas my parents came for a visit.  Because they planned on spoiling the living Chris Kringle out of their grandchildren, they brought with them a number of traveler’s checks.  For a long time we were too busy to make a run to the bank, but then one day we’re at the mall and the shop we’re looking for wasn’t open yet, so I pointed to a branch of the BEA and suggested we finally take care of things. 

Approaching the front door, I peered through the glass, making sure neither Angie nor her axe were present.  Seeing neither, we went in and approached a counter.   Using my best Cantonese, I explained to the clerk that my mother would like to cash some traveler’s checks.  When she replied that they have no more xylophones, and that if they did, they wouldn’t be for sale, I switched to English.

“My mother would like to cash some traveler’s checks.”

The clerk, a woman in her late twenties with glasses and—duh—dark hair, looked us both over very carefully.

“I have an account here,” I said.  I wasn’t carrying my bankbook, of course, so I slid my—now carefully registered—Hong Kong ID card through the little slot. 

She looked at it, then punched my name into the computer.  After a moment she looked up, spotted my mother’s passport, and gestured for it.  My mother slid it under the window, and the teller opened it to the photo page. 

There was a pause during which my mother glanceed at me, pen poised over the first of her traveler’s checks, and asked if she should start signing. 

I shook my head.  The woman behind the counter takes one more look at the screen, then leans toward her microphone.  Looking at my mother, she said, “Do you have an account here?”

My mother looked confused as, I’m sure, did I.  “No.” 

“We can only cash your checks if you have an account with us.”

I’m already shaking my head, fighting off that now-familiar twitch of the eyelids.  “No,” I said.  “No.  That’s not right.  These are traveler’s checks”  I gestured at them.  “They’re for traveling.  You don’t use them when you’re at you’re at home, using your own bank.”

The teller—who, I realize, too late, was Angie’s older, eviler sister—just looked at me. 

Grabbing a fistful of my mother’s checks and trying hard to keep the spittle from flying from the corners of my mouth, I said, “These are universally accepted.  You can use them anywhere.  Anywhere.  That’s what they’re for.”

Angie the Elder/Eviler gave me a look that could freeze the privates of feral tomcat, then tossed out a phrase of Cantonese—something, if I’m not mistaken, about rice muffins and his holiness Pope Benedict’s poorly-dressed uncle—to a man hovering behind the line of tellers.  He came over to her.

“Yes?”

She explained the situation, undoubtedly, I’m sure, mentioning that was is the gweilo who’d put her sister back in therapy.  He nodded thoughtfully two or three times, then glanced up at me. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.  “We do not accept checks from persons without an account.”

It was happening.  I could feel it happening:  the top of my brain pressing against the inside of my skull, pushed there by the raging hot flow of magma.  I fought hard against the urge to go into detail suggesting a number of increasingly complicated anatomical experiments I thought they might try once they actually died and went to Hell.

 “No,” I said, shaking my head.  “That doesn’t make any sense.  These are—“

But he cut me off with a curt nod and a shrug of his shoulders. 

I sighed.  My mother gathered up her traveler’s checks.  We started to turn from the counter, and then the branch manager—for that’s who I assume he was—twisted the knife. 

“By the way,” he said. “You need to go to your home branch and register your Hong Kong ID card.  We are still using your passport.  This is not okay.”

 

One more story, and then I’ll leave you to your happy life of functioning debit cards and that bizarre American concept of customer satisfaction.

When we started making plans for the recent Chinese New Year, we decided we’d be clever and book a flight out of Shenzhen, twenty-minutes away and just across the border, a good hour closer to our home in Tai Po than the Hong Kong airport on Lantau Island. 

This was a good plan, except for the fact that the tickets we were after couldn’t be booked through the usual Travelocity/Zuji sites we usually use for things like this.  Instead, we had to go to a private travel agent who’d buy our tickets, and whom we’d then reimburse.

As if this weren’t enough of a pain in the butt, the tickets couldn’t be paid for via credit card.  No, we were told:  you must either come directly to the travel agent, or make a deposit in one of our accounts.  And then they gave us two different account numbers at two different banks. 

Since the travel agent was a good 45 minutes away by train, we decided the latter approach would be best, and on a rainy Tuesday in late January I skipped my usual lunch of martinis and salmon roe and strolled through the door of my friendly campus BEA. 

Angie was there, of course.  It’d been a while since our midnight encounter, and while I assumed Angie remembered me with a degree of loathing on par with my own feelings for her, I didn’t let this deter me from stepping boldly up to her window, handing her the piece of paper on which I’d written the account numbers, and giving her a big fat, dirt-eating American grin. 

“I’d like to deposit this money,” I said, handing her a wad of cash, “in either of these accounts.”

She took the money—of course—and spent a moment examining the piece of paper. 

“Either one will do,” I said, still grinning, albeit less boldly.  “Doesn’t matter which.”

She nodded absently and then, taking the piece of paper and my big pile of cash, wound her way back to the rear of the office and the desk of her older, equally absurdly-dressed colleague.

Twenty minutes later she woke me from my standing sleep and handed back the piece of paper. 

“We cannot do this,” she said. 

I smiled, a bit smugly, I will admit. 

“You can’t,” I said. 

She shook her head. 

“You can’t send money to another bank?”

She looked at me for a moment, then gave the smallest of shrugs. 

“You’re a bank,” I said, “that can’t get money to another bank.”

She nodded. 

“Do you,” I asked, “do any actual banking here?”

Her eyebrows rose just slightly.

“Because, besides depositing my money, and occasionally letting me take some out, I’m not entirely sure your bank actually does anything.”

Her eyes never left mine.  She seemed completely unabashed.  If anything, the corners of her mouth seemed to have risen slightly. 

I leaned forward, so that my mouth was just inches from the little slot.  “Tell me,” I whispered.  “What is it you people actually do here?”

I don’t know if it was then, or just a moment later, but very suddenly in the midst of this exchange, I realized that everyone in the bank—on both sides of the counter—was looking at me.  And I don’t mean coincidentally, the causal glance my way.  I mean very actively, their bodies turned in my direction, their eyes fixed on me as though with lasers. 

Behind the counter, the older woman had risen from her desk.  So, too, had the young man I’d seen back there pouring coffee and one or two others, all dressed in red, all with their arms hanging loosely at their sides.  Their eyes were fixed on me.  None of them seemed to blink.  None betrayed any emotion. 

I glanced around, taking it all in.  Then my eyes turned back to Angie, who was still watching me steadily, the corners of her lips barely creasing upwards. 

“What,” I said.  “What is it?”

But no one replied. 

It was getting warm in there.  Loosening the collar of my shirt, I forced myself to keep my gaze on this idiot savant sans the savant part.  Angie returned my look, unblinkingly. 

“Can I at least have my money back?”

No answer, just those dark eyes, that expressionless face.  The heat was increasing now.  I could feel sweat forming on my brow.  The air was actually thick, moist and cloying, as though someone somewhere was burning moss. 

“Okay,” I said.  “I’m out of here.”

And I turned, never mind the money.  I hadn’t gone two steps, though, when I realized something was horribly wrong:  where normally the view through the glass showed a peaceful square with a water fountain, meandering students, and dorms and mountains in the distant, now all I could see was darkness—pure night sky, thick and damp, no stars, no glowing windows, the only light intermittent flares erupting in a far distnace, as though from lost souls pleading for help.

I spun back to Angie.  The counter was gone now, and the plastic glass, and all of the desks.  She stood there, her red suit aglow, surrounded by the others, all of them staring at me. 

“What?”  I said.  “What is it you do here?”

She didn’t reply, just raised one arm, pointing at me with a single, manicured nail (a pearly pink with in-laid rose designs, in case you’re wondering). 

I took a step back.  Something stirred in my chest, as though tugged by a string. 

“What?” I asked again, absurdly.  “What do you want?”

No reply.  Just that pink fingernail (with a little glitter, I know realized), drawing, drawing, drawing something from my body, pulling away some ethereal part of me that was nevertheless the center of my being.

“No,” I said, taking another step back.  I could hear a churning sound behind me now, as though the blackness were a flowing river, could smell the sulfur, knew where I was, knew who they were, knew what they wanted. 

“No,” I said again.  They hadn’t moved, but somehow they seemed closer.  I could smell Angie’s breath, a dark, pungent odor, like really bad licorice, or one of those Halloween candies with the peanut butter that gets stuck in your dental work. 

“No,” I said. 

Below me, the room seemed to shift, as though the floor were tilting, as though time and space were beginning to swirl together.   Angie still watched me, that quiet, almost loving smile on her face.  The rest all pointed at me now, too.     

“No,” I said again.  It was hot in there.  So very hot.    

“No,” I repeated, and then said it one more time, just in case they were wondering:  “No!”

Angie just smiled.  The room began to spin.  I turned, trying to keep myself steady, trying to keep from stumbling, but then everything twisted sideways and I was falling, falling, really really falling, like, a really long way. 

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

In the cold and dark, and I need to pee: a kind of love story

        I have no idea what time it is, because the only light in the room comes from the tiny furnace unit in the corner.   The digital readout is glowing orange and reading 30 degrees Celsius.  Usually I hate these kinds of displays—visiting friends, I’ve been known to cover computer modems and VCR clocks with t-shirts and dirty underpants.  I have no pride when it comes to sleeping, and for me, sleeping means no fluorescent green or blue shadows on the walls, never mind that my eyes are shut.

Tonight, though, I love that orange glow, because it means I won’t wake up frozen and dead.  Even in bed, with something like 16 blankets on me, I know it’s freezing in our room.  Freezing.  So cold, that you want to wear your gloves and hat and stomp your feet to keep your toes from dropping off.  Alas, if only one could sleep in a snowmobile suit, we’d be just fine. 

 

We’re in Ping’an, two hours from Guilin, in the Guangxi province, a place known mainly for the pleasure you receive saying its name.  We’re in the mountains, on the Longji rice terraces, to be exact, and this evening when we sat down to dinner in our “hotel”—I use the term loosely because when we complained that our TV didn’t work the “staff” simply said, “It broken,” and went back to watching the Olympics—that night when we sat down to dinner in the dining room of our residence, it was so cold that steam poured—poured--off the dishes as they brought them to our table. 

 

Right now, though, what I’m thinking about is the fact that I have to go to the bathroom.  Bad.  Too much jasmine tea and beer, if you can imagine such a combination.  Lying in bed, Jamie’s snoring (he’s sleeping with Ellen and me) and the hum of the furnace filling the silence, I contemplate my options.  Eventually, of course, I come to the conclusion that the only thing I can do is sprint in my bare feet across the cold floor to the un-insulated bathroom at the far end of our “family room”—a gorgeous basement apartment lined in rosewood and decorated with the circular wood carvings indigenous to the region.  All of which is very pretty, but not very useful at X o’clock in the morning with a bladder full to bursting. 

So I count to 10.  And then I count to 10 again.  Then I decide that 100 is a nice round number, and that if I can’t reach it without falling asleep, then I really do need to go, never mind frostbit toes and other, um, extremities. 

 

The thing about Ping’an is that it’s unimaginably amazing, never mind its oddly situated apostrophe.  In the 24 hours that we’re there, the following events will attempt to destroy our pleasure: 

1)   The sun will remain hidden but for one, twelve-minute segment during which we’re all busy inside brushing our teeth.

2)   The temperature will never break 5 degrees Celsius.

3)   Jamie will throw up.

4)   My morning “shower” will consist of a trickle of water that embarrasses the word “trickle.”  Seriously, I’ve been spit on with more velocity.

5)   A bunch of old women will attempt to show me their hair.

6)   Lucy will have a chicken jump on her head. 

None of these will matter. 

 

Chances are, you’ve seen pictures of Ping’an, or at least of the rice terraces surrounding it and similar villages in Guangxi.  And chances are if you’ve seen those pictures, you’ve thought to yourself, “Holy crap!  I want to go there!” 

And you are right—you do. 

Rising as high as a thousand feet, these terraces are vaguely reminiscent of Aztec temples, a series of steps cut into the sides of the mountains that date  back to 1271.  Unlike the temples, though, these hills curve, causing the terraces to bend and flow, swelling at the belly and narrowing at the hips.  Hillocks rise here and there and valleys crease into the larger mountains, and the effect overall—the patterns, the lines, the way a view shifts and changes when you walk just a few dozen yards—is nothing short of amazing.  It’s the kind of place where you take a picture, walk ten feet, take another picture of the same thing, walk twenty more feet, turn and go, “Ah, damn,” and take another.  And none of these photos do the view any justice.

And Ping’an is one of the few places where the presence of the occasional building or a distant view of the village actually adds to the natural scene.  This part of China is occupied by the Zhuang minority, a group that I’m sure I’d find really interesting if I’d just take ten minutes to research on the web, but about which, at this point, I can only babble, “Their houses are really really really neat!”

Because they are:  generally deep and rectangular, they (the houses, not the Zhuang—though I’m sure the Zhuang themselves are also deep, albeit not rectangular).  Anyhow, generally deep and rectangular, these houses are wood framed, with overhanging second and third floors and wide eaves.  Often, the framing posts are left longer than needed and carved into large, pleated balls which dangle from the overhangs and are painted red.  Coal-colored shingles cover the low, wide roofs, and the effect when viewed from a distance is of a cluster of long crows hunched over dinner. 

You’d almost think you were in Switzerland.  Except for those insanely beautiful rice terraces.  And all the Chinese people. 

 

Of course, one would hope that the Swiss would at least bother to insulate their houses, something the used to dirt-hard living Zhuang have chosen not to do, damn their tough-as-nails souls.

So finally, I’m forced to throw back the covers and plunge myself into air so cold the skin of my fingers tightens just standing up.  Dashing across the room, I skid into the pitch-black bathroom, feeling my way to the toilet.  Once I take care of business, I feel my way back to the bedroom and check on the kids.  One of them is fine, but when I straighten the covers of the other, the bed is wet. 

Crap. 

Fumbling in the dark, I find the clothes this particular kid wore that day.   I won’t name names of course, because, as I’m sure you understand, I’m clinging to the hope that someday Oprah will pick my book for her club, and if this happens, I don’t want to have to spend all of my ill-gotten gains on kiddy therapy.  Anyhow, clothes in hand, I wake the little bugger, strip off the wet PJs, and make another dash to the bathroom, shivering child in arms.  Three seconds on the toilet clears out what little pee is left in this particular bladder.  Then it’s back to the bed, where I lay down a towel or two while the now severely shivering, severely wet, severely cold, and severely tired kid attempts to pull on day-old rags, in the dark, with numb fingers. 

Eventually, though, the my child is back in bed, warm and snug, already snoring. 

I, on the other hand, can’t feel my face. 

 

We spend the first part of the afternoon we arrived wandering through the village, trying ever so hard to avoid buying every darn knick-knack and doo-dad on sale at the numerous souvenir shops.  Eventually, toes numb, nostrils frozen shut, we stumble into a restaurant for a snack and a little warmth. 

I use the term “into” loosely here, because, actually, most of the restaurants in Ping’an are so poorly jointed that the owners burn small, unventilated charcoal fires inside with no fear of carbon-monoxide poisoning.  The particular place we choose is actually an outdoor café of sorts, with circular holes cut into the tables, into which are placed red hot trays of burning wood. 

Normally, of course, I’d worry about having three kids under the age of ten huddled around an open flame ensconced in metal so hot it leaves scorch marks on the table, but at this point in the day I’m pretty sure a permanent brand on the forehead of a three-year old is probably preferable to that same three year old shivering so hard he loses all his teeth. 

We order popcorn and fresh-roasted peanuts for the kids and bamboo rice and dried cabbage soup for us.  The soup comes in a huge bowl and is warm and salty, with just a hint of sourness to keep things interesting.  The rice is a local specialty, prepared in narrow tubes of bamboo cooked over an open fire until the wood is scorched and the rice has a sweet, almost corn-like taste to it.   

Warm and taut-bellied, we cross through the village again and into the rice paddies.  We’re not out there five minutes when Will says, “You know what, Dad?”

I consider carefully before answering.  He’s getting better with age, but Will is not so much a glass-half-empty kind of guy as a glass-is-half-empty-and-probably-full-of-arsenic kind of guy.  Don’t get me wrong:  I’d cut off both my arms for the boy (though I’m not sure how I’d do the second one), but there are days I have to fight the urge to tug down the back of his Levis and search for a gray tail, he’s just that much like Eeyore. 

So when it’s cold and wet and you’re walking outside someplace where there aren’t any books or libraries or rocks to throw at his sister, and Will says, “You know what, Dad?” my impulse is to duck, emotionally, because you just know something snipey might be coming your way. 

Today, though, I’ve got Jamie on my shoulders and I’m hiking through the famed Longji terraced rice paddies and my belly is full of bamboo and dried cabbage, so I just say, “What?”

“This is my favorite part of our vacation so far.”

I look at him.  His hands are in the pockets of his green down vest, and his face his down as he walks, his skin a pale, almost blue-white in the cold. 

“Will?” I say.

He nods, but doesn’t look up. 

“We’ve only been on vacation for six hours.”

Now he shakes his head.  “No,” he says.  “I mean our vacation this year.  You know, the whole vacation:  in Hong Kong.”

Nevermind that Hong Kong isn’t really a vacation per se—okay, okay, strike that:  it is—this statement nevertheless pleases me in ways you just can’t imagine.  I mean, seriously, the weather is crap, we’re a long way from home (our pretend home, that is, nevermind the one half-way around the world), and I’m making him participate in physical activity. 

And he’s happy.

So so am I.

 

Which, of course, is when Jamie throws up.

Well, not right then, actually, but very soon after.  After we’d walked a bit further, after we’d taken roughly 7 million and six pictures of the paddies, and after, luckily, I’d taken him down from my shoulders where he’d been fussing, and put him on the path, looking into his eyes as I inquired, “Jamie, are you feeling alright?”

At which point, he opened his mouth, leaned forward, and vomited.  Twice. 

“So,” I said, “the answer’s no, right?”

Luckily for us—if the word “luckily” can ever be used in the same context as “vomit”—it appeared to be the sort of upset stomach that, once emptied, went away.   Within five minutes he was skipping along the trail, yelling at his sister for racing ahead.  Almost like his brilliant parents were so busy stuffing their bellies with good food they failed to notice that he was stuffing his own golf-ball sized belly with a basketball’s worth of popcorn and peanuts. 

 

Which leaves only the women and the hair to explain.

If you do a Google search for “Zhuang women hair,” then hit “Image,” at least one of the pictures you’ll get is of a number of women in brightly colored dresses standing calf-deep in water, washing very very very long hair.

Very long. 

Say, 10 feet.

I’ve searched and searched and haven’t yet been able to find an explanation for it, but apparently Zhuang women don’t actually cut their hair.  This seems peculiar to me, since a lot of the younger women we saw in Ping’an lacked the Crystal Gayle on Rogaine look.  Most of the older ones, though, wore their hair in a peculiar bun at the top of their foreheads.  Some of them wore double-peaked turbans as well, but even with these hats, that single, knotted lock was always visible. 

All of which is well and good.  Except that, in Ping’an at least, apparently it’s something of a cottage industry for these otherwise dignified, self-respecting grandmothers, great aunts, and great-great grandmother’s of great-aunts, to undo their knots for tourists willing to part with a small sum of money.  I know this because, as we trekked our way through the beautiful, misty, terraced mountains of Guangxi, old lady after old lady approached us and offered to let us take a picture of her hair.

Which, if you ask me, is just so wrong in so many ways. 

Never mind that these women clearly haven’t seen The Ring.  Leave aside, for a moment, the whole question of dignity.  And ignore, if you can, the whole matter of hair prostitution—or at least hair pole dancing. 

No, these things aside, what’s truly disturbing about a woman in, say, her eighties, coming up to you and offering to let down her hair is simply this:

It’s gross.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I see hair that long, it’s all I can do not to picture what the rubber hair-catcher thingy in the shower must look like every morning after grandma gives her eight feet of hair a good scrubbing. 

And when I can’t avoid these images, I get this itchky feeling at the back of my throat, like I’m a cat about to urk up a hairball.

I’m not sure why this is.  I’m not sure why simply seeing someone’s obnoxiously long hair makes me, very literally, gag.  But it does. 

So when these kindly old women with their brightly colored woolen jackets and peculiar, newspaper boat hats come up to me on the winding trails over the rice terraces and ask me, in that husky voice used by hair strippers everywhere, if I’d like to see them let their hair down, I do what any full-blooded American boy in his forties would do:

Scream like a little kid and run in the opposite direction.

 

All of which has very little to do with my freezing face, the scent of urine-soaked cotton on my fingers, and that orange-black, night-darkened room in the basement of our guest-house.  But nonetheless, it’s the image that comes into my head as I crawl back into bed next to Ellen and Jamie and pull my 16 blankets back over my head:  11 separate old ladies approaching me on the trail, waiting until Ellen’s a safe distance away, and then offering to unknot their locks.  This leads me to think again about that Japanese film, Ringu, and the creepy-assed, long-haired girl who crawls out of the television dripping pond water everywhere before killing folks with her chapped lips, mossy teeth, and chronic halitosis.   Which, of course, leads me to think about every scary movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and the next thing you know, I’m pretty sure I’ll never sleep again. 

But then I roll over and curl up against Ellen, avoiding the ice-cube toes of Satan (more on this in another post).  Sliding my arm under her pillow, I reach all the way over to where Jamie is sleeping, quarantined from the other kids on the off-chance his retching wasn’t a one-off.  His hand is under the pillow too, and it’s warm and soft and I hold it in mine.

 

That night, after we’ve finished shoveling our dinner of curried vegetables down before they froze into multi-colored ice-cubes, the five of us race down the stairs to our room, crank up the “furnace” and crawl under the covers of the big bed.  Ellen thumbs through the day’s pictures, deleting repeats and images that show my jaw oddly elongated, as though imitating Jay Leno in a fun-house mirror, Jamie sitting on her lap, watching.  Will curls up in his down vest, buttoning it over his head to keep his ears warm.  Lucy lays next to me, asking bizarre “What-if” questions:  “Dad?  What if we were walking through the woods, and we saw a house, and grandma lived there, and she had peanut butter, and didn’t have any soap or Cornflakes, and there was a goldfish playing the clarinet?  Wouldn’t that be weird?”

Yes, Lucy. Yes.   That would be weird. 

We have every reason in the world to be miserable:  we’re 8,000 miles from our home in Virginia, and twice that distance from our friends there; we’re in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language or understand most of the customs, and where the food and water can make us sick at any moment; the weather has sucked for the last 10 weeks; it’s cold as the proverbial witch’s whatever, not just outside, but inside; and two-fifths of our family have bladders the size of shriveled raisins.

We have every reason in the world to be miserable.  

Every reason.