China Journals, ep 3

 5.21.05

Yujun gets a relatively good night’s sleep, only a couple of hours of stress attacks. He wakes up grumpy and we go down to the vast restaurant buffet. He tries straight bran cereal and likes it, which is good because he hasn’t pooped since we got him. They told us to expect it but it’s a little disconcerting – or would be if we weren’t having the same experience ourselves. We’d been warned about diarrhea but we are having quite the opposite problem.

The bus heads out to the Panda Preserve Breeding Center, weaving through potholes the size of Volkswagens. This is the kind of tourist crap I hate but spending the entire day in our hotel room gets too claustrophobic.

The preserve actually turns out to be a very nice walk through the forest. Pandas are the luckiest animals alive. Between naps, they sit around all day and eat food brought to them in piles, lovingly cared for by an institute whose sole purpose is to get them to have sex with each other.

Yujun is fussy on my back in the carrier. We think about and discuss the myriad possible causes of his discomfort – constipation, hunger, thirst, teething, loss of foster mom, stomach irritation, etc. etc. We’re becoming the kind of neurotically over-doting parents we promised not to be. I get annoyed at Karen for leaping to conclusions when he cries – he needs this, he doesn’t need that, such and such is bothering him.  Then, in the next moment, I find myself doing the exact same thing.

At lunch with the other families around a big round table, Yujun is even acting like a spoiled little kid, pushing food away, yelling aggressively. Part of me is Archie Bunker in his undershirt, wanting to yell “shut up, brat!” The other part is like, “give the kid a break, he’s only been with you for four days...” He gobbles up the tofu soup and when he’s done, I take him over his not-so-subtle protest.

He starts to cry as soon as I carry him from the room. I jiggle him in his carrier more than necessary in adjusting his position to my shoulder and the movement silences him. I take big steps, dancing and swaying and he is immediately soothed. I remember that part of me knows what I’m doing. If I can just stop my mind and let instinct do the parenting, we’ll be ok. Babies need movement. They don’t need toys or nice clothes or parents who bend over backwards to change unpleasant circumstances. But along with sleep, food and love, they need movement.

We walk around the gardens of the restaurant and after a while he goes to sleep on my shoulder. I hum and sway, giving him some lilt to sleep by. A cleaning lady smiles and coos at his adorableness. The Chinese are never shy about telling you that you’re doing something wrong in your parenting, even when they don’t speak a word of English. They especially love to admonish western parents that we don’t have enough clothes on our babies, and are referred to by the adoption agency as “the clothing police.” This woman has her own complaint, signaling with persistence that Yujun should be sleeping in more of a cradle position.

The problem is, I don’t really know how to do the cradle position. Arms and legs tend to splay and the baby wakes up. Plus, I feel like my arms are so skinny there’s nothing to rest his head on. It always goes flying and I worry about whiplash. But I try. This four and a half foot tall grandma, who seems disturbed by my lack of skill, demands it.

I try to move him down to a horizontal position, slow and soft. Then, arms, legs and head go everywhere and he wakes up crying. Damn. I put him back on my shoulder and with a few rock & rolls he’s out again. I shrug at the woman, whose kind face definitely masks her intention to call the party headquarters and have my parenting license revoked. 

That night at the hotel, Yujun has been fussing and crying and screaming for hours. Karen and I are wasted.I find some errand to run and when I get back they are still at it. The room looks like a bomb went off, toys and food and dirty clothes everywhere.

Our plan had been that I would go to the Sichuan Opera tonight while they had a quiet night in. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that quiet. At some point, unable to take it anymore, I grab him roughly and start pacing the room, trying to implement the movement method I had success with earlier. Karen looks at me like I’m crazy as Yujun goes from a whine to a full on murderous scream. “Sorry,” I say, putting him back down in her arms.

Both of us just want the situation to be anything other than what it is. She announces she’s going to take him for a walk, leaves him on the bed and starts putting on clothes. Yujun starts crying immediately, then screaming.

She’s busy getting the sling on and in less than a minute of us ignoring him he quiets down, more whining than crying, getting interested in the plastic animals at his feet. Soon he’s playing quietly.

Then Karen makes a soothing sound from the closet. He looks up at her and cries. She makes another cooing sound and he cries louder. She does it again, more persistently trying to soothe him, and he’s back screaming.

She puts him into the sling and heads out without a goodbye. I sit there, feeling helpless and sick. But something strikes me about the scene with Yujun on the bed and the contrast between her intention to soothe him and his response. Through the emotional haze I think about it for a long time.

I go for a walk and when I get back he’s awake on the bed, irritated but playing. Karen is in tears, beyond wasted. The walk helped at first but he started crying again halfway through. She got back, went down to the restaurant, and sat in desperation when Yujun wouldn’t eat the fancy hotel food.

One of the young waitresses brought him some congee, boiled rice gruel, and he started gobbling it up, one bowl and then a second. This made sense, as congee is probably what he had at home with Li Bijun, not western-style buffet food.

Karen started crying with relief and exhaustion. First one waitress then another came over to her in the empty restaurant pat and try to comfort her. Then the manager came out, saying, “please, please relax, please be happy. Crying is not good for health.” This helped immensely, of course.

Up in the hotel I hold her and apologize and tell her again how great she’s doing in this impossible situation.

Yujun is quiet now, watching us, playing, then watching us some more. I take this opportunity to ask if we can try an experiment, and she agrees. “Don’t look at him or speak to him or make sounds in his direction. Just let him play while we have our conversation.”

We talk and place our full attention on each other and what we are doing. “I think all the fuss we’ve been making over him has actually been provoking him,” I say. “When we make soothing sounds, maybe we’re re-stimulating the wound. And if I made cooing sounds at you when you were crying instead of just listening, it would feel bad, as if I wanted you to just shut up.”

She agrees with what I’m saying and reflects it back to me, clarifying it. We keep talking, sitting on the bed in close proximity but not looking or reaching out to him.

A dramatic shift occurs. Yujun starts playing with, of all things, his new little Panda bear. He smiles. He looks up at us and laughs. Gradually, one at a time, we engage him for short periods but stay focused on each other, stealing glances at him when we can’t ignore his unbearable cuteness. Yujun is super happy, unlike we have ever seen him, playing and vocalizing and not appearing worried at all. It’s a torturous ecstasy. I am spying on him when he looks right at me and smiles from ear to ear. My stomach feels like I’ve hit a dip in the road at fifty miles an hour. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I whisper.

He is so sweet and funny. He claps. We can’t help it – we clap too. He claps back and laughs hysterically. Then he moves on to something else, and we move our attention back to each other.

We stay up and play until 11. Karen and I practice giving him attention without making it all about him in the moment, giving him enough space to stretch and live without the full force of an adult personality being directed at him like a fire hose. He relaxes and plays, approaching each of us for hugs and then going back to his work. I reach a new pinnacle in my own happiness and hope that this poor heart doesn’t shatter in my chest.

5.22.05

Today is different. Magic. We are different and Yujun is different. He cries upon waking up but Karen just does what she needs to do, gets him some milk before getting him dressed. 

We are not ignoring him; he is in our attention all the time. But our attention isn’t ON him. We go downstairs for breakfast and he eats quietly. Karen is perfectly matter of fact with him, a total natural. Then, for the first time in four days, he gets down on his own and walks a little. He approaches another table and engages the little girl, something he hasn’t done at all. Then he comes back to us, happy. It’s amazing. 

He doesn’t fuss. And when he does we don’t let it impact our behavior. If he needs us we are here – we let go and trust that he will let us know.

We visit a Chan (Zen) temple and the Chinese flock around him. He’s a dream, laughing and smiling, rejecting them if they get too close but otherwise friendly with his big Buddha eyes.

On the way back our bus makes a U-turn right in the middle of a crowded, six-lane downtown street. The bicycles and pedicabs and mopeds swarm around us, not slowing down a bit. Another bus takes the opportunity and passes us on the right, swerving through the bicycle lane. Incredibly, no one dies.

We take him back to the hotel and he cries but somehow it’s ok now. Karen finds some food he wants to eat and he finally winds himself down for a nap. We will worry about diet and schedules when we get home. Now we’re just getting to know each other, making our mistakes and letting each other into our lives.

I make up dumb baby songs on the guitar I’ve rented. He stares at me and the guitar for a long time, then explodes into a smile.

He makes this sound, like a long swallowed “ohhhhhhhhhooooooohhh.” As he does it he shakes his head in a completely alien fashion. It is the weirdest, funniest thing alive. I want to grab him and squeeze him to death, but that would be wrong.

I say to Karen that I feel bad for the other parents, that it must be hard to bond with their children since they’re not as adorable or charming or clever as Yujun. Not having him as their baby must be really demoralizing. She just gives me the “bad husband” look.

After dinner in our room, I wash off my chopsticks and give them to him. He sits on the bed, working them over in his right hand. We realize that he’s trying to position them for proper use. Karen and I look at each other, declare him to be a child chopstick prodigy, and vow never to use forks again. Like our vows to learn Mandarin, this one will probably fall by the wayside.

We love him more than we can bear, but the bowls still have to be washed out, teeth have to be brushed, clothes folded. All these everyday things hit me like a truck – they are so different now that he is here. I taste a little of what it means that my life isn’t about me anymore. Of course, it never was. My life belongs to this world. Yujun is just helping me realize the error I’ve been making, reminding me of how it works in reality.