Outlets

It’s Sunday, Dec. 5 in China. We’re on the Kowloon-Canton Railroad to Guangzhou. Twenty-four hours from now, we’ll be a family of five. Last night, weary from the traveling (Jiejie seems never to sleep on trains) I had an attack of doubts about our ability to be parents to three children. We are, after all, spread pretty thinly now. We rarely attend school events or are able to volunteer, and the need for commitment will only grow as the kids get older. We don’t spend enough one-on-one time with each child, or enough homework time, or any other kinds of time, as much as we want to. These thoughts arose as I sat with Jiejie and Meimei in the food court of an amusing commercial venture in Hong Kong, an outlet mall, selling foreign brands of items made in China at faux discount prices. But it was close to the hotel, and we were tired and hungry. While Daddy and Yuanfang went to the bowels of the parking garage in search of a foreign currency exchange, Meimei slept in her stroller and Jiejie started slumping into sleep in my arms. Her eyes flew open. “Where’s Daddy?!” I told her. “Take me to Daddy!” I explained that we would have to be patient and wait. The tears crept down her face, then her voice rose and she began to kick the stroller and scream for Daddy. She shook off my hand when I tried to hold hers or stroke her hair. “Don’t want you!”

Every Chinese mother in the place seemed to have her eyes on me. One little girl brought over first an offering of part of her sandwich and after that an orange balloon doggie. Meimei was not consoled. Finally the little girl’s mother came over, a sweet if a bit meddlesome woman who, to me, seemed like all those well-intentioned mamas we encountered in China when we traveled to get Jiejie, who was tearful and sick with bronchitis and gifted with powerful lungs.  I just knew that all these women considered me ill equipped to be the mother to this precious girl. If I could not comfort her, how could I possibly be all the other things she would need a mother to be? Seeing the woman in Hong Kong crouch by Meimei’s stroller, offering her peanuts, talking to her softly, I was transported back to that first, numb week as a parent. And now, we are about to leap onto the moving roller coaster one more time.