Boring but true...in spite of all the midges, huge grasshoppers, golden orb spiders, possums, dying beetles beating their upturned legs against the sky, blue-tongued lizards and other sundry 2+ foot long lizards everywhere...these bits of Australiana all but go unnoticed by me now. And that's just the wildlife in the city. I say “I reckon” all the time and I’ve taken to wearing shorts in public. I drink ginger beer and I eat Weetbix and Tim Tams (still can’t get onboard with Vegemite though). I can drive on the left like nobody’s business (Aussies regularly cross the lines anyway, I’m just fitting in). We haven’t journeyed into the outback so I can’t report on the bush or the red centre or Aboriginal rock art as I haven’t seen any. Brisbane is a modern city (or big town as the locals like to call it) and my time is spent on universal pursuits such as...where can I find good daycare to appease my guilt-wracked post-feminist mind?
The Bun goes to a daycare centre two days per week. When I picked him up the first two times, I found him clutching his Elmo doll with tears silently streaming down his little face. If that doesn’t make me feel negligent...
So in typical fashion, I launch an all-out assault gathering info on alternatives (this is the second all-out info gathering assault, the first happening when we first arrived and I surveyed the daycare options and waitlisted at five centres). I wind up with two interviews from the local family daycare coordination facility and meet: a) a very nice, very intense Sicilian Australian woman with children in their 20’s and a small coterie of toddler boys in her care, and b) the most lovely, beatific tiny Indian woman who has a 10 year old son with a severe disability called fucosidosis and is so complementary to me for my “broad-mindedness” that it’s embarrassing. She calls me three times the next day, hoping I will place Kai with her. I am wracked with more guilt as I wonder why her life is so challenging...a single mother living on what I think must be some kind of public assistance and a son with a disability so rare fewer than 100 cases have been written up in medical literature.
Ironically, that morning, I had dropped Kai off at the centre and there was a teacher in his room who I hadn’t previously met. I thought she was another parent. She hailed me from across the room and I thought “friendly, must be because she’s my people.” But she was the teacher and not only is she Chinese, she’s from Luoyang (the ancient capital of China!) and she speaks Mandarin. Proper Mandarin, from the north only without the Beijing rolled R which, truth be told, kind of drives me crazy. She was like some shimmery vision, a sign of...something.
The next week, I’m sitting on the deck of my friend, Sandra’s beautifully renovated home (she’s an interior designer, her husband’s an architect so it’s spectacular) and she’s telling me “I reckon people have their priorities backwards” regarding early daycare and American women going back to work in their baby’s first year. She’s got two boys, one three years old and another 11 months. As I’m looking out over her perfect backyard with a sandpit, tree-swing and banana palms and thinking about her parents and in-laws all around the corner...I don’t know what to think. All I know is ever since having The Bun, I long for family in the most visceral way. I long for dream family, maybe not the one that I actually have...the family that I came into (although I’d pick my mom and my brother all over again or at least pluck them into my bucolic reality). Is longing the root of suffering?
Regarding luck...a) I’ve read recently that optimistic people define themselves as lucky, even if their path hasn't always been smooth (thank you psychological research), and b) I’ve also recently read that perhaps what most of us define as luck is actually having been “unmarred by fate” (thank you Peggy Orenstein). I’ve always thought of myself as lucky, childhood notwithstanding. Gratitude is what I feel lately, more grateful than lucky. Despite the longing.
My baby’s name...ji xiang: peace and prosperity and happiness and all good things in the new year.
