Taipei: City of Cousinly Love

Cousins: See the family resemblance?

Sasha slept through the night last night. Now, normally, this would not be a big deal, but the thing is, we’ve been here in Taipei most of the last week, and jetlag… Well, jetlag is bad enough when you know what it is and can try to adjust. But when you’re a 3-year-old and have no conception of the Earth, its rotation, time zones, and sleeping patterns, it can be a real bitch.

Actually, Sasha’s adjusted surprisingly well. Last year, when we made this same trip to visit Jean’s family, it was a total fucking nightmare. Sasha was just off-schedule the entire time, and made the rest of us miserable. (I know, I promised to write a full account of the trip last year, but I never did. Oh well.) This year, she’s mostly been tired in general, taking extra-long naps in the afternoon, and waking up for an hour or so at 2 or 4 a.m., hungry and desperate for attention. That we can deal with.

Especially because Sasha has a new friend—her 4-year-old cousin, Jen-jen. Or, as Sasha usually refers to her, jie-jie, “big sister” in Mandarin. To watch them play together is incredible: they tear around the living room, copying each other’s every move. They’ll hide from monsters together on the couch, and take baths together, and wave magic wands, and watch “Dora” and “Diego.”

Things aren’t always perfect, of course. When both kids put on identical hairbands, Jen-jen called it a “halo,” while Sasha insisted on calling it a “hat”—which infuriated her cousin so much that Jen-jen ran upstairs in anger. Sasha, meanwhile, has begun copying some of Jen-jen’s less-stellar habits, like “flashing” us—lifting up her skirt to show off her undies. Not great, kid!

Oh, and did I mention Sasha’s doing all this in Mandarin? This bilingual thing is really working out!

Watching them, I do get a little misty-eyed, perhaps because I never really had any cousins I knew well. No first cousins at all, and the second (or once-removed or whatever) lived far enough away that I rarely saw them and we never grew close. When Sasha and Jen-jen run around together, I wonder: Is this what having a cousin is like—a kind of fake sibling who can be your good friend, but still with enough distance that you’re not competing for parental attention/affection? Or am I just thinking this because of my rather fraught relationship with my own brother?

Either way, I see these closer family connections as a net plus, especially because the relationship with Jen-jen has Sasha excited about becoming a jie-jie herself: Yes, like my esteemed colleague Theodore, we are also having another kid, due in September. Already, Sasha is going around telling anyone who will listen that Mommy has a baby in her 肚子 (belly), and that she’s going to be a jie-jie and get really, really big. For my part, I’ve been trying to get Sasha’s assurances that she’s going to help change diapers and share her toys.

Uh-huh, Sasha says.

One last note that may be of interest to those of you with mixed kids: Sasha gets her picture taken here a lot—by strangers. They see her, and no matter how she’s dressed or what kind of mood she’s in, they want to capture her. I guess mixed kids are still kind of newfangled here. Either that or, as I’ve long know, she really is the cutest child in the whole entire world.

The Destruction, AKA, My Third Child

I’ve spent this week at home, knitting my bones and brain. I am starting to feel relatively like myself, at least a very tired version of said jackass. To those who responded to the earlier post, my father thanks you. He also suggested we hire him full time. Fortunately, as an editor as well as a writer, I have become adept at telling people no. Keep your day job, dad. (I’m such a stinker.)

Which leaves me only with my current news: in the race to be the dominant father here at DadWagon, it looks like I can expect to win. I’m having another one, ladies and germs, a baby, that is, a girl to specific, to be delivered by my lovely and (clearly) fertile wife.

What does this mean, other than the fact that I have consigned myself to a life of grinding poverty? It means three kids, which is, to put it mildly, a butt load more than I ever planned on having. It means a lot more than that, I expect, but panicked pleasure and depression is all I have on offer presently.

More to follow, assuming no more motorized vehicles attempt to strike me dead.

Near Death: The biking experience

Libel!

A word to the regular Dadwagon readers: I almost died a week ago. Here’s how: As is typical for me, I was riding my bike to work one Monday morning, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Less typically, I was struck by a taxicab (I think; I have no memory of the accident whatsoever). Broke my arm, much of my face, earned myself a severe, memory-obliterating concussion. Fun!

Now I’m home, after several days in the hospital, resting, trying to get my body and mind back together. I’ll say a few things:

First, I was going into surgery on my arm, and what I wanted to know was who was going to pick my son up from school. That’s what you do. You think of your children. I’m very lucky to have children. They are what you think of before you die. Cliche and boring (except for me) but true. I love my wife, who is caring for me. I don’t deserve her. I’m lucky to be here. I feel great gratitude at my continued existence, which spared my wife and children a large measure of pain.

Mostly, though, I’m tired. Too tired to write. My head hurts and I still can’t remember everything and thinking is an exercise and a chore. I need more sleep and time. So, instead what I will do is publish this, which my father, Steven Ross, wrote while I was in the hospital. I haven’t read it through–my attention span is short right now and it was pretty disturbing for me. But he’s a good writer, and someone has to say something. Nature of the blog biz, or so Nathan says.

Shock and Awwww

It’s pretty dramatic to tell people, “My son was hit by a car”. The fact that it is a true statement doesn’t make it seem any less than that you’re trying to milk the sympathies of whomever you say it to. Now, the son in question looks as though he will escape the incident without lasting effects. I don’t want to write about him – he can do that perfectly well himself – but about me, about how a parent of a grown child feels in times of crisis. It is not only the young who can ride the Dad Wagon.

My first reaction on learning that Ted had been hit was denial. Of course, my daughter-in-law downplayed the damage in her phone call to me, but I should have jumped up immediately and run to the hospital. I didn’t. I stayed at work for a little more than an hour, had my lunch, and then left. Looking back on my reaction, I realize that I was simply putting aside feelings that I couldn’t quite handle yet and organizing my emotions. I can’t tell what I would have done if the news had been more dire and I hope I never have to find out, but remembering how I was when my dad died suddenly (my God, 40 years ago!) I think I would have just fallen to pieces.

When I finally did see my boy – yes, my boy – in the emergency room, I was so shocked by his scrapes, sutures and lack of comprehension that I did what I’ve found I do with grief: I focused on all the peripheral matters in order not to give full rein to my feelings just yet. So I focused on the lawyers that would be needed, insurance, my grandkids’ reactions and the police investigation of the incident, if there was one. I used my BlackBerry to send updates to my other son, my ex-wife and my brothers; it gave me something to do other than thinking.

I told myself that I was helping Tomoko, my daughter-in-law, by taking some of the burdens off her shoulders. She’s strong enough not to have needed my help but grant me some credit for thoughtfulness. I’m not sure I get much credit for gabbing away the afternoon and evening in various waiting rooms. Whatever came to my mind I said, again telling myself it was all for Tomoko’s sake but it was really for myself. I think my wife, Lucie, saw through me but was kind enough to let me rattle on.

Here is what I was really thinking: He’s going to die. Even though it was clear from the outset that he wasn’t going to, racial heritage takes over quickly.

All his organs were where they ought to be and the breaks and scrapes were in places that could be fixed, so I worried about other things. As we read in the sports pages these days, concussions are not good things to have and Ted had had a humdinger, emphasis on the ding. So he was incoherent, forgetting what had happened a few minutes before and oblivious to what had landed him in a hospital bed. I feared more than anything that my brilliant, witty son wouldn’t be himself anymore and I worried how I would ever be able to deal with that. I’m not as egotistical as I may make myself sound; I was deeply concerned for his welfare and that of his family. But the emotional impact comes from how you feel not how you think.

I realize now, nearly a week later, that clichés exist because there is a kernel of truth to them. You never do stop being a parent; no matter how old they get, you still worry. You really should tell your kids you love them more often. (At least I did remember to do that while Ted was lying in the emergency room, although I don’t know whether my words got through.) Blood is thicker than water and a lot stickier at that. Never run with scissors or ride without a helmet. Look on the bright side of life. The child is father to the man.

Ted, I love you.

Introducing: The Most Disgusting Baby Accessory of the Day

Here at DadWagon, we get a lot of press releases. Most of them get instantly deleted. Others get deleted after a minute’s consideration. Still others are simply overlooked and fester unread in our inbox.

But every once in a while, one of them gets through. Yesterday, a message came in from the makers of NoseFrida—you know, the infamous snotsucker everyone uses to clean out the nasal passages of their infants. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s basically a flexible straw with a receptacle; you stick it up the kid’s nose and suck. Yum.) We had one when Sasha was little; we might’ve even had two. Well, the Swedes behind FridaBaby.com have a new product, one whose description… Well, here it is:

The Windi, another inventive product from FridaBaby, is a single-use rectal catheter that offers instant relief to babies with colic and other gas-related issues by safely facilitating the release of excess gas.

In other words, if you liked huffing baby boogers, you’re gonna love force-farting! Geez. I can almost imagine lining up a dozen constipated newborns and using the Windi to play them like a pipe organ. Thing is, the stupid contraption probably works, and we’ll all find ourselves rectally catheterizing our kids as calmly and blasély (word?) as we now orally vacuum up their mucus. Congratulations, publicist! You’ve succeeded in horrifying DadWagon’s fast-dwindling readership. Be sure to keep us on your list.

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