A different we

Clouds over Myanmar, ish, from the air.

In the air between Pune and Delhi I think about our communities. We are, in many ways, who we spend our years with. For much of our lives those are choices determined by our parents, by the town they settled in, by the people they sent us to school with. Later, they are our choices, of friend groups and then universities, of majors, of sports teams, and of commitment to each. I have few friends from my home town, none of whom still live there. My Vassar friends are still daily conversations, in the top ten of contacts in my chat apps. I am lucky to have found people in those years, when we were all young and curious. I am lucky to have stayed that way. Scrolling the top ten names in my recent chats shows friends from college, from Tokyo after, from Shanghai after that, from San Francisco, and from Hong Kong. As I’ve said before, there’s a person for each place I have managed to live. I was talking about myself, which is good because there are many people for each place, people who still shape my thinking, who I see and rely on, wherever we all may live today.

Now, of course, I think about our communities for us instead of for myself. I think about who we spend time with, who we rely on, and where that should take us, in this uncertain future. I think about what we are part of, what we bring, and what we gather. Raising a child may take a village, but what kind, and how close do they need to be? Building someone, building three people who are comfortable anywhere, as I have long set out to do, by the very statement demands a variety of encounters, demands a breadth of trust.

And so we wander. We spend a Saturday on the beach with parents of children we know, people who came into our lives in the past three years, who are wavering on the border between acquaintance and friend. Our mutual future is uncertain, will be determined by jobs, by school choices, by the children themselves. In writing that I chuckle at how low on the list our own opinions lie, though of course that’s not entirely honest. Our own preferences are merely the top of a complex filter set, and the biggest change is we are no longer responsible for the scope of possible, for the initial meetings.

We are responsible, though, because of our choices. Hong Kong is a wonderful home, is a place to be part of the world, to meet Brits and locals, French and mainlanders, people rare in our home towns, and even in San Francisco. Our jobs, which take us to Vietnam and Pune, to Dongguan and San Francisco, are the next level, providing the type of encounters we thrive on, true reminders of the scope of humanity. We meet factory owners whose children live in different countries, and factory owners who have taken over for their parents. We meet sales people and engineers who have moved far from their homes for work, like us global migrants in search of employment. On the reverse leg I talked to a man who lives in Delhi and works in Pune, the Monday to Friday apartment life that is familiar to me from many encounters in China, from my father in law. It is the sacrifice of those who are trying to balance their community with their opportunity.

I used to have the longest commute, or so I’d tell my friends. From my apartment in San Francisco to a factory in Dongguan was about 30 hours of travel, from midnight Saturday to around ten am Monday, including two border crossings, one flight, three trains, and an automobile. For most of it I was a quiet migrant, asleep in a tube thirty thousand feet up. Much of it was a series of solo moments, of emails and phone calls, of novels and magazines, of letters written in airports. Occasionally though I’d meet someone likewise en route, likewise repeating these journeys, and strike up relationships revisited years later, in other jobs. Some times I’d meet former colleagues this way, each of us out again in new rotations.

The Pune to Delhi flight is a new rotation for me, far from my familiar grounds, from the routines of my earlier years. I have yet to encounter someone with similar experience, though I encounter many with aspects of the same. I encounter those who have lived in New York, or Texas. Those who have done work in Hong Kong, or Shanghai. I encounter those in tech, or in manufacturing, in startups. Most frequently I encounter supply chain people, our titles belying how much of our jobs involves physically being the glue between nations, between companies, by strapping in and moving back and forth. The goods are mobile, the money as well, and it is just us, asleep in 2A, asleep in 43C, left to keep up and shepherd things along.

I think about how happy this makes me, makes us. How glad we are to meet so many people from so varied circles, fellow migrants in one sense or another. How lucky we are to be out in the world, part of a collective motion so much larger than ourselves. I think about how we are trying to impart an appreciation of this motion to our daughter, and wonder if it will work. And then she asks when she’ll next get to see some children we know in Tokyo, or in New York, or in LA, and I think we’ll be alright. We are building something new, out here in an odd orbit all our own.

The dream of the 90’s

light fading on Repulse Bay in Hong Kong

We are chasing a dream. Everyone, I think, is chasing a dream. “We are all in some way or another going to Reseda,” as the man says. The dream in most cases bears an eerie similarity to the world of our teenage years, of our youth. For me this explains the sudden feeling of familiarity when driving the New Jersey Turnpike with the windows down. My youth is there, on the roads of the eastern seaboard, scattered across highways and through small towns. It is hidden next to cornfields and beside lakes momentarily visible through the foliage. It is on the radio.

In Hong Kong we find out about upcoming concerts from posters glued to buildings. We discover events while out and about. We buy paint for our new apartment at a small shop a block from our old place, and then, dissatisfied with the advice, at a different small shop a half dozen blocks from the new one. Both are licensed distributors of major brands, both are run by families. Despite the dominance of chains, of Maxim’s cakes and Starbucks, of Pacific Coffee and Pret, Hong Kong is also home to thousands of small shops run by families, serving neighbors who walk in with questions. Serving me.

There are many ways to shape the world. We do so through our jobs, through our donations, through our words. We do so through the lives we choose, through the ways we live. We believe in loose ties, in social networks built on the unit of the neighborhood, and in the value of humans. And we live in Hong Kong, we shop in person, we spend most of our time walking this island, both so dense and so small. We see the same people every day, are known by most shop keepers and wait staff, at the 7-11 and the grocery store. We live in one of the biggest, densest cities in the world, and we are not alone. We are lucky and we are comfortable here, knowing the family that runs the fruit stand, the folk who run the car repair shop, and on and on. We know the SF delivery person turned hotel desk clerk not because he delivered to our house, but because we encountered him every day, walking around the neighborhood.

The 90’s, in some way, are alive in our dream of them. We purchase music from bands, we pick up our take away from the Indian place, from the dumpling shop, from the sushi shop. We consume, to be sure, and our relationships are built on that. They are built on knowing, on participating, in the world. Our goal, in progress for so long, is to be comfortable everywhere, to be at home everywhere. It remains a work in progress. We are most at home here, in the 90’s, where the internet is a tool, but not the only one. Where word of mouth matters, and foot traffic. Where people are out, likewise discovering their desires by walking.

Nostalgic, and simplified. The car-based reality of my youth intrudes but rarely, when on vacation to other countries. The Hong Kong version of the ’90’s is a New York version, is a Manhattan version, with trains and bands and enough money to make it work. It’s a place I’m happy to live. It’s a place I’m happy to create for ourselves, for as long as we can.

The good years

The momentary pink across the clouds as the sky fades to black

As the sun goes down and the water features are turned off I apply bug spray to myself and the youth. In a slow procession we move from one park to another; from the running water and streams we head to the castle, dirt, and playgrounds of Asukayama koen. Our group gathers bikes, changes wet clothes for dry, buys snacks, orders pizza, and settles onto a picnic table for the evening. It is a Sunday in July in the summer of twenty twenty five and I am sure these are the good years.

The children in our group of three families range from two to six. We the parents are in our late thirties, early forties. Our mid forties. Most of our parents are still alive. Some of our grandparents are still alive. We are all healthy, all still able to run and to carry. Well, save for my broken arm, though on this evening it doesn’t stop me from pushing swings, spinning carousels, carrying children, and eventually climbing the monkey bars with them, gingerly in the dark.

As a person I am not always good at appreciating things. I am always considering improvements, or other topics. One of the best parts of parenting is the constant requirement to be present, to sit and watch on the playground, to help draw silly animals. It’s not automatic. There are often other things I feel I should be doing. That feeling is not the truth, and learning the difference has not been easy. Is not easy.

Occasionally, though, the good is so strong and so blindingly temporary that I am aware. As Bourdain said, “I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realize”. I may not yet have learned, but I can be compelled. And so, on this July evening, as the light shifts and the forceful heat of a Tokyo summer day fades into the kind of beautiful dusk that feels automatic to the season but is in fact too rare, I look around. I watch the children, one biking and the rest running after. I watch the couples, new friends, telling each other stories of how they met. I watch other families in their own small gatherings, with their own children and friends. I watch the band, that plays for half an hour in public, an odd collection of all ages making music together. I watch the Shinkansen, the Kehin-Tohoku, the Toden-Arakawa, and the Shonan-Shinjuku lines from a pedestrian bridge as the children yell “train, train” and run from one side to another chasing the lights.

I am lucky, in these moments. The past few months have been hard, and injuries are never kind to the mind. Good then to have a few long summer evenings in the park with friends. Good to emerge dirty, exhausted, and satisfied.

On the tram home we say goodbye with the gladness of those grateful for the hours.

“That was the first time we got to let him run like that,” one of the parents will tell me later. “He was all scraped and dirty, and it felt good.”

“My daughter too,” I’ll say, and, “it really felt like summer.”

Milestones

In the course of a few weeks we pass a collection of significant dates. It’s a tell of the family which get marked publicly and which we simply mention to each other before bed. Some are full-on celebrations, balloons signs cake and parties. Some are family dates we remember with calls, with FaceTime and gratitude.

Some are the quieter memorials of a text or two to those who know, marked with no conversation.

These moments, each of them important each of them a humbling note of what it means to still be alive, are our lives. They are the summer of twenty twenty five. And yet in some way they are new, too.

Three years old is a step above two, as far as language and dexterity go. Surely each year will feel this way, at least until 30. It’s a fact that doesn’t take away from the sense of importance.

Likewise our parents aging no longer seems like a given, instead requiring some gratitude. These are the shifts of middle age.

And then too there are the milestones of injury and recovery, which have silenced this site the past few weeks. We heal, we breathe, and we inch back towards the people we aim to be. Mostly we are grateful for the support, and even more so that it has been so long since we needed as much.

Whenever the weather

a sliver of Victoria Park and the sun on our rooftop

The family sleeps, finally, and I sit outside. It’s been a long week. They’re all long weeks, in some ways. We work till midnight and again at 8 am. Clara plays hard until she comes down with the fever that Kristel had earlier in the week, so we go from no child care to caring for a sick child. Sleep suffers further. Tara travels to China and back one afternoon. We buy legos.

In between we try to run in the park, or along the harbor, or by the library. Tara takes C to find new books, our first HK library borrows. We host C’s friends on Sunday, and have the type of long evening with friends that has been rare. Lingering outside as it gets dark, feeding people dinner, cleaning up piecemeal as people move inside. Children’s parties usually end by 6, and the entire evening feels like a reminder of something I’ve never experienced.

I’m reminded of fireflies, and of old colleagues turned humans I miss.

In the mornings, while Panadol is still bringing comfortable sleep to some, I pet the cat, stretch, and sit outside to write. These quiet hours are good for me, despite the tiredness. They’re when I keep in touch with people, and myself. The best things to do are the things that don’t feel like work, and writing and reaching out have never felt like that way.

May they never do.