Mother's Day Fashion

Happy Mother’s Day! I hope yours started with a late morning lie in and breakfast in bed! Mine began with a 2:07am wake-up call and an all-lights-on search for fever reducing medicine. I fell back asleep in Manika’s bed with a plastic teddy bear nose digging into the back of my head. Two hours later, Manika declared herself “done sleeping.” No amount of understanding from my husband, or tears, or talking to my mother could raise me out of my foul sleep-deprived mood after that. In fact, it was the lowest I’d felt about being a mother in a long time.

Why so long? Because the past few months of effort finally tipped my life balance from stay-at-home mom frantically chasing after work, to working-mom chasing after time to stay at home (and blog). I haven’t had time to think or be too up or down. As the demands of my life twisted and turned me back and forth between suit-wearing consultant, writing teacher, new bilingual-cookbook promoter, children’s book reader and playground mom, my identity flapped in the wind too. I didn’t stop to digest it all though until I noticed spring was almost gone and I was about to enter summer with some serious holes in my wardrobe.

I went to the Gap. I love the Gap. Since I left the US, Gap Inc has become my anchor, my beacon of Western life and convenience still glistening off in the distant sky. Each time someone comes from America, their suitcase inevitably contains Gap kids clothes for the kids, or a Banana Republic shirt for me. Each time I go home, I pre-shop for hours on all of Gap’s many websites. Now that there is a newly opened outpost here in China, I sometimes fight the blues by popping in to test run a few clothes and balk at the 40% tariff-taxed prices while listening to some good old American-mixed Musak,

So the disappoint was profound on that Tuesday. I went in search of retail peace, but could not find anything I liked. Mind you, it wasn’t because there was nothing likeable in the two-story store, but that I found myself wandering the shelves having no idea what I was in the mood to try on. Some button down shirts and a new trench for the working girl? A don’t-dare-bend-over-to-retrieve-a-sippy-cup sexy mini? A practical pair of nautical inspired shorts? Some baggy t-shirts? A fitted tank top? I found myself completely paralyzed by both the physical and existential crisis. Who was I now? I feel sexier and more in control now than I have during my past three years of motherhood. But I also spend much of my time running around between meetings and playgroups. My wardrobe stopped growing after Manika’s birth in 2007. How to fill the gaps in time, styles, myself?

I pushed Avik onto Uniqlo hoping for some more Asian-cute inspiration. One pair of denim capris later, bought ambitiously tight rather than practically baggy, I was starting to despair. Avik insisted on a steady stream of raisins to keep from fighting for independence from the McLaren, which was definitely killing the mood. I started to walk faster, and then began a sprint through the next five stores down Shanghai’s equivalent of 5th Avenue. It didn’t help that all of China is half my size and boob-less. What I did like didn’t fit right. After Zara’s, I decided to take a break and head off to feed the now truly pissed off kid. He inhaled a bucket of pasta and then set off on foot to flirt with the staff in the next few shops I dared visit. No one paid any attention to me and the day was declared done when he began to stink up Theory with his poop-filled diaper. Despite their admiration of his cuteness, the ladies didn’t look amicable to me using their dressing rooms to change him.

“So let me get this straight, you’re upset because you didn’t spend money today,” my husband said when I called him.

“No, I’m upset because I did not find the perfect five items to inspire and uplift my depressing wardrobe. You work in fashion, you should understand.”

“I do business analysis. It’ s a little different.”

That night, I decided I had to step my up game. My husband came home to find me tossing out three fourths of my closet.

“Um, what are you doing?”

“I hate everything in here. My clothes are either dowdy, old, meant for teenagers or make me feel fat and sloppy.”

“And you’ll wear in their place?”

“That’s the point. If I have nothing to wear, I’ll be forced to branch out.”

“Didn’t we sort of discuss a budget for this?”

“Yeah, about that, I think this is going to take a little more money than I thought.”

The rest of the week, I internet shopped. I spent hours scrolling through websites, imagining myself wiping a nose in that t-shirt, running off to teach a student in those sandals, going off to date night in that black dress with my husband. My mind began to stress around the edges. What did I really need? Washable practical cotton. What did I really want? A new Armani suit and a pair of platform pink platform heels? Could justify I buying them both? Could I work them both in my life? The clothes began arriving at my mother’s house. Packages started coming to Asia. And yet, I still wasn’t sure. Did that gingham blue shirt look too picnic-y or stylishly casual? Did that navy blue tank dress scream MILF or a mom who has given up on anything other than dark color blocks?

Then Mother’s day arrived and I had nothing to wear to lunch. In an attempt to cheer me up, my husband suggested we all go out but my empty closet filled me with dread. It was my special day and I did not want to wear what a 90-degree sunny day with two sick kids calls for – cotton shorts and a t-shirt. But I also had to realistically plan to be puked on.

I chose a white and blue color striped mini-dress. That was for me. I put a pair of more conservative dark blue Capri leggings underneath it. That was for the kids. I put on red lipstick – for me. I pulled my hair halfway back – them. Finally, the tiebreaker was in the shoes. Orange platform heels. They were old, bought before the kids were born, not meant for walking but painfully stylish. I slid on my Marc Jacobs sunglasses and for a few moments, I thought I’d won.

Then I caught a glance of myself in the restaurant door and I began to realize I looked completely ridiculous – not clothes-wise so much as by the expression on my face. I was trying so hard to look like those kids behind me coughing and screaming were not mine, that with the heels and sunglasses, I had finally managed to rise above it all. I felt like a liar and a joke. All through lunch, I kept catching myself in other reflective surfaces and feeling incredibly uncomfortable with what I saw. I didn’t see me. I saw someone awkwardly trying to be an older version of me, while living in a totally different life.

A few hours later, Suresh and I were taking the kids to the hospital. The coughs and fevers were refusing to abate and we desperately needed to stock up on antibiotics. The time between lunch and the stroller re-load was so frenzied, I just retied my hair back in a ponytail, washed my face, tossed on my flat loafers and ran, forgetting all about my earlier concerns with my appearance. When I did see myself again, it was in the reflection of the hospital doors. Manika was hugging her Dad. I was carrying Avik and I could see pouches of my flabby post-baby belly being pushed out by his thigh resting on it. I didn’t care. I felt purposeful, completely unselfconscious, and beautiful in my own natural way. I felt fully alive in myself.

Of course, that didn’t dead stop the longing for more fashionable times. When I got home, I still glanced at some runway styles after the kids went to sleep. I started to think again about the new swimsuit I wanted to get. But the torment of it all was gone. I could see clearly that I am no longer the twenty-something mini-skirt wearer hoping to get a man to notice me, or the thirty-something career girl dressing to get the world to take me seriously. I am also no longer the baggy-clothes baby-weight carrying stay-at-home mom trying to hide her own insecurities and fears about herself and talents on the playground.

I guess I’m sort of a tight jeans, forgiving looser top, stylish flats, lip-gloss wearing kind of girl. Most importantly, I think I’m okay with that.

So can any of you mom’s out there give me some suggestions on where to go shopping now?

Tea and chocolate

These past two months have really thrown me off my internal keel.  It started with a series of impossible (mostly self-imposed) deadlines before Christmas – finish the next children’s book, write 200 pages of my novel, work on a short story, structure the “Cooking with Mika cookbook, and finish my website – made even more impossible by the early holiday closure of Manika’s school due to two cases of hand food and mouth disease.  Pressure started.  Christmas gifts nearly fell to the wayside in the process (see last posting!)


Then I had three weeks of guests (my whole family!) over Christmas, which was totally great but really crunched my ability to get anything else done.  Just when they left, Manika entered this cranky wintery cycle – sort of tired one day, sort of not well another.  She began bouncing in and out of moods (and even missed two days of school) causing lots of night wakings, neediness and general “I want mommy’s” that couldn’t have arrived at a more inconvenient time. 


I really began to wonder why I had children, and then I began to wonder why I was wondering that, and that of course led me to feeling like a horrible mother. 


So, like any good guilt-ridden mother, I sped up and tried to do more.  I booked play dates on top of yoga classes, hauled Manika off with me to an afternoon of test cooking recipes, scheduled time to specifically play with Avik.  I eventually booked myself out solid every day, weekends included, up until the start of Chinese New Year (today).


The result was sheer hyper-productivity in a way that I haven’t experienced since my investment banking days, when sun up and sun down seemed to be two fingers touching in the sky.  In some ways, it was incredibly rewarding.  My illustrator and I will be featured in the Shanghai Literary Festival this year (a big deal out here!), we’ve got some really big book readings coming up, our next titles are humming along and the biggest English bookstore in Shanghai has “Mika the Picky Eater” front and center.  It’s amazing.


But the byproduct (and there always is one, particularly of an overheated engine) has been too much hot steam.  I decided to exercise more to balance myself out.  No luck.  I built sleep back into my schedule.  Didn’t happen.  I tried to cram less into a day, focus more on the kids.  That never works for me.  I tried to find a new tv serial to distract me at night (used to be Mad Men – oh where or where are they?) but to no avail.


And so the imbalance continued, causing me to become a rather cranky unhappy person all over again, this time because I have too much work.  Same refrain, different song title.  I think I will never ever be happy. 


I began to bounce around more dramatically than Manika, mostly to my husband. 


One crunched morning to Suresh:  “This is crazy.  I should just stay home with the kids.  What the hell am I doing?  And I’m sure you would like that better too, your barefoot pajama-clad wife packing lunches for you again.”


Suresh, looking down at his feet while heading towards the bathroom: “Whatever makes you happy honey.”


One afternoon (same week) with a sick Manika:  “If I don’t get out of here and do something, like RUN A COMPANY, I am going to go crazy. 


Suresh: “Whatever makes you happy honey.”


One weekend day (with sick Manika sleeping in the stroller while I test cooked tahini noodles): “This is awesome!  Look at all the strands of my life coming together!  Cooking, writing, family!”


Suresh: “I’m very glad you’re happy.”


One morning after sleeping with Manika all night, listening to her cough: “I am the most selfish mother in the world because I really want to just leave her at a doctor’s office and pick her up when she’s better.  Social services needs to call me up.”


Suresh: “You’re a very good mother.  You’re just frustrated now.  Wait it out, and take an hour to do something that makes you happy.”


Smart man, right? 


It started to make me crazy – his immoveable responses to my pinball psyche.  In yoga, I chastised myself for not having a “present mind” by stretching farther than my muscles deemed necessary.  Two days later, I threw out my back. 


At home, I cleaned obsessively, tearing out all of my now apparently toxic kids floor tiles and running all around Shanghai to find the only formamide-free replacements – imported Playspot.  I checked all other toys and foods for toxicity while I was at it, and spent two days in a cold sweat dwelling on how I was basically feeding my kids cancer. 


I made enormously long and incongruous checklists: buy milk, show ayi a baby cpr video, call Mr. Chen on next book shipment, order a chicken, pay mortgage, finish due diligence report, yoga.  I checked through them, ignoring breakfast, ignoring lunch, giving myself an equally enormously long headache. 


Then last night, I finally crashed, angry with myself for not being smart enough to break a life long pattern – burnout, followed by inactivity, followed by general bumminess at said inactivity, followed by hyperactive burnout to make up for down period.  I closed my eyes in a big sigh of depression and sent a text message to Suresh: “I’m exhausted.”


Well, you’d think I’d launched an SOS in white lights from the top of the building because that guy sprung into action as if he’d been waiting for this moment all month.  12pm, he took care of Manika’s fever medicine without waking me up.  6am, he was up with Avik.  7am, he let in the yogurt delivery guy and when I finally emerged from bed at 7:15am, he was waiting for me with a chocolate truffle and a cup of tea.  If Manika didn’t need her nose wiped every two minutes, she and Avik would’ve gotten a “Blues Clues” and my husband would’ve been very late for work!


But as it was, I was left to be stunned by the fact that my husband, words unspoken, sight unseen (I went to sleep before he even got home) knew me enough to jump into my washing cycle right when I was heading for spin.  It was humbling to say the least. 


It also made me realize that things in my family were finally changing.  Four months ago, this entrance into the morning wouldn’t have been necessary because four months ago, I was waking up at 5am to pack my husband’s lunch and bake carrot apple breakfast muffins.  My hyperactivity was geared towards the ubiquitous them, everyone outside my own being. 


Now, because I am building a life for myself, everyone has had to step back.  Manika eats breakfast out of a box or not at all if she’s too fussy, Suresh buys his lunch, Avik gets a little extra time in the playtime some mornings.  Shockingly, I saw this morning that everyone is actually, in some ways, growing faster without me.  Suresh has learned how much Tylenol to give Manika when she’s fevery, Manika has actually learned to occupy herself for ten to twenty minutes, and Avik can pick up strawberries with his own two fingers.


Amazing.  I should’ve done all this so much sooner apparently. 


Suddenly, I didn’t feel off balance anymore, and I realized that what was really throwing me off was guilt, this constant sensation that everyone was suffering due to my lack of attention.  But that isn’t the case now, I see.


Knowing this fully renewed my energy and concentration, I went to the gym and exercised with a single-minded focus that I haven’t felt since this craziness started.  When I came home, I made phone calls, answered emails, read a business plan, checked on my son and, did almost everything I’d been doing all the other days.  


The only difference: for the first time in months, I could give myself permission to actually enjoy it.  I felt generally at peace, and safe in the new knowledge that people can adapt, especially those that love you, to make space for you to be.  

The Santa Lie

It occurred to me this Christmas morning in China - as I watched Manika inspect the cookie crumbed plate and empty cup of milk she left out for Santa - that it seems fundamentally wrong to celebrate the birth of a diety by lying straight up to the innocent. Is it just cultural hypocrisy or is the lie forgiven because we are giving the gift of magic?

The question entered my head pretty late into the holiday season – Wednesday night to be exact – primarily because in China, there is no conflict. The holiday has been adopted in its basest form (as has Halloween and Valentines’ Day)– an opportunity for consumerism. In Carrefour (China’s Walmart) Christmas lights weren’t even put out for sale until the week before. The magical sentiment that we’re so accustomed to feeling in the West (right after Halloween) hasn’t been imported at all. It is all no-nonsense practicality. Glitzy trees. Imported Christmas music. Starbucks holiday lattes. A slight increase in domestic sales of kids’ things.

I’d like to be able to introduce what happened next with an “as a result” except that would sort of be stretching the truth. China made it easy to put this debate out of my mind, but I can’t say it was the main cause of my avoidance. So I’ll just say, subsequently, I started to wrap gifts on Wednesday night and realized that my discomfort with the lie had led “Santa” to buy poor Manika nothing.

Yep, nothing.

I stared at the gifts for friends’ kids, the sad small gifts from “Mom and Dad” to Manika. But there was no big box, no magical surprise, no jaw dropping toy to unwrap. And so I had to finally make a decision. To participate or reject?

I put in a panicked call to my friend just to get some assurance that I wasn’t a terrible mom. She’s American. I was. Then the image of Manika waking up on Christmas morning, opening up a box of books – I bought her books – entered my head. I imagined the eyebrow furrow, the sad explanations to her teacher “I don’t know why? Santa brought me nothing.” I couldn’t take it.

The next morning, I arranged a discrete play date with the same above mentioned friend’s daughter so that we could make a Toys R Us run while my husband watched the kids. Once I crossed into the hallowed plastic kingdom of toys, I kicked into American Christmas shopper autopilot. My mind zeroed in on the girl’s section, self edited out the too young and too old and too silly gifts. I dumped huge boxes in my bag. Musical toy. Check. Painting toy. Check. Playdough toy. Check. Having no other Americans to help set the standards for me, I kept the number of gifts at the kids’ ages – Manika got 3 gifts, Avik got 1. Toys R Us wrapped everything for me so that in thirty minutes flat, my responsibility to Santa was gone.

But intead of feeling relief, I had that same mixed tightness in my stomach from the day before. That night, I simply had to ask my usually hyper-organized self, “What is going on?”

The question has even more context when dropped into the backlight of my past few weeks. I must say, they’ve been personally magical. They kicked off with a visit from dear old friends from England and then rose to good sales in my children’s book, the launching of three new projects, a number of successfully taught classes, a few freelance article assignments and a renting of a cool little writing space in Puxi. Much of this I owe purely to God’s grace, and much I owe to Him blessing my incessantly obsessively efforts. It has been a great month.

But instead of feeling euphorically buzzed by the whole thing, confident that the page in my life has turned, that I’m deep in a new phase, I find myself feeling tight and fearful. I mean, isn’t life supposed to be more downs then ups, more challenges than easy coasting? Isn’t it all supposed to be hard? What’s going on? Why’s it getting easier? Where’s the candid camera? The piece I’m missing? The sharp left turn idea obliterating my novel? The culture police clamping down on kids’ books on eating?

Upon reflection, I realized I drug that bahumbug into the Christmas buying season, so that my fear of magic in my own life manifested itself into a fear of inserting false beliefs in it into Manika’s life. The night of all this thinking, I chastised myself, reminded myself to believe that life was full of good things as well, that a string of good luck didn’t need to be horrifically truncated. But the realization did nothing. While I set the cookies and milk out with Manika on Christmas Eve, I still felt about as bad as I did sneaking out of the house at thirteen, lying to my parents. This morning, it took all my effort not to say, “Manika, did you like the presents I got you?”

Church did not help. Manika was front and center in song singing, smiling away at Joy to the World. I kept looking in her face for some way to reason my deception away, kept waiting for her own extreme personal happiness to inspire me to lie again through ages four through eight (when and how do you tell them the truth?). I kept looking for some sign that the lie was worth it, that the whole experience changed her in some way for the better. Unfortunately, there was nothing. She seemed about as happy about getting a lollipop at the service as she did the drumset, playdough ice cream maker, and imported German finger painting set. I was deflated, and that made me almost certain that it was the beginning of the end for which I’d been so carefully looking. It was the first down moment in a string of up ones.

And then I sat down to write. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about, but I just knew I wanted to, that this debate was raging in my head, that it needed to find a way to be settled. As I started, the words just came and that’s how it’s been for me over these past few weeks. The ideas, the chances, the opportunities just keep coming towards me. After years and years of drought and struggle in New York to find a path as a writer, the sheer abundance is so unnerving, so out of balance with what I’m used to that I find myself feeling wholly undeserving. I realize I’ve completely lost my belief in possibility, in life’s chance to actual give you more than what you wanted. I keep thinking this isn’t all for me.

I can see now where Santa’s power lies. Embedded in that Christmas morning surprise, of receiving so many gifts from a benevolent spirit in the sky, kids’ get a taste of sheer generosity, abundance, wishes being granted, getting something without earning it. I think now, quite simply, that it’s a good thing to experience once in a while. In fact, it’s healthy to get more than your imagination pictured, to be pleasantly surprised. After all, isn’t that what Jesus did tenfold from Santa? Didn’t he come and give humanity so much more than it bargained for, so much more than it even knew it ever needed?

I can’t say I still condone the lying, but I can now make a comfortable enough argument for Santa’s importance to repeat the tale again next year. I must also say, for the first time in years, I take comfort in the spirit that moved me to shower Manika with new things, buy my husband an Ipod Touch, splurge on theater tickets for my parents, give my Chinese ayi a generous raise. If I can find it within myself to give selflessly at least once a year (and I am clearly uncomfortable with excessive goodness) how much more does God have in Himself year round, especially since he has none of my baggage and hang-ups. If Santa reminds the world that all this kindness and generosity exists, then what harm is there really in perpetuating the tale?

I guess I’ll really know when Manika finds out the truth. In the meantime, I’ll take the reminder that life can actually look up, and up, and then up even more.

Merry Christmas!

Throwing stones!

I have found myself hurtling through November at warp speed, not so much in the form of running from place to place (although there is a lot of that) as in the form of running from role to role. I’ve suddenly found myself split between novel writer, marketer for my new bilingual children’s book “Mika the Picky Eater”, writing teacher, magazine freelancer, mother interviewing primary schools for Manika, mother trying to solve respiratory problems for poor little Avik, wife trying to support Suresh’s ever more demanding work schedule, and then all the other roles in between – friend, employer, cook, home finance manager. Oh and did I mention, sometimes I just try to be myself, no strings attached.


Make no mistake – I haven’t forgotten my soppy complaining in previous posts. I’m so happy with the busy-ness of it all. It appears that by putting myself out there as “writer” I have actually suddenly become one in Shanghai!


But I am overwhelmed by the speed in which my days have changed. My mental image of myself has not yet caught up. I still see myself as a little of a former banker and consultant, a lot of a mother and housewife, a lot as an “aspiring writer”, and not very much as an actual writer with students, and deadlines and events to attend. It is all happening so fast.


Enter insecurity - otherwise known in my world as the fault line where the future and fear line up to cause an earthquake, usually manifested in my world in the form of awkward, spontaneously stupid, self-centered blurts that mercilessly fly out of my mouth.


The first came out at Suresh’s company’s new office opening family party. Now, to appreciate what happened, you have to understand that Zegna is to men’s fashion what Vera Wang is to wedding dresses. The best of the best. Attendance, as the wife of the newest addition to Zegna’s Executive Team (yep, Suresh got promoted – go him!) required waxing, buffing, a short black dress, and some hair curling. I was proud of him, so I went in the mood to be noticed, to by my husband’s proud arm candy, to “represent.”


Well, I could’ve worn jeans for all the play my efforts got me. It was no fault of the sweet people at the company. It’s just I was what I sort of set out to be – a “tai tai” Executive’s wife except that as soon as I arrived, I realized that I fit in that role about as well as a frog fits in a men’s suit. I just wanted to jump out, declare myself a separate entity from the “recently promoted Suresh Dalai,” find some way to get someone to ask me about myself.


Instead, I stood in a corner next to my husband but still alone, sipping (okay, maybe drinking, quickly) champagne and staring at the live Jazz musicians (who, mercifully, kept smiling at me.) I glanced at the male models occasionally strutting around, feigned super busyness on my Iphone a few times, and ate two plates of food. I overheard conversations about Spring ’11, and watched men touch each other’s coat lapels in passing to determine the quality of their fabric. But in general, I stood unnoticed and long enough that I started to daydream about one of those models really being a closet New York cat caller, you know the ones who yell out while walking by, “Hey baby, you lookin’ hot,” in a way that makes you feel like you really are.


Instead, one of Suresh’s colleagues came over and said to me, “I hear you’re an aspiring writer.” Ah, if only he had said it at the beginning of the party, before I’d started to tremor with insignificance, and the semi-drunken worry that I would be forever known as “Suresh’s wife”.


“No, actually I am a writer. My first children’s book got published this week, and by the way, I used to be a banker at Goldman Sachs.” Read subtext (in my New York state of mind slang): “Aspiring what? And yo, I used to make some dough, you know. I ain’t stupid.” The guy walked away.


Blurt two, more like a general grouping of them. The launch of my children’s book has turned all of my friendships here on top of their heads. The book is less than $15, a true labor of love, and if I can say totally unobjectively – beautiful. We’ve already sold 50+ copies to strangers in a week and a half, and have gotten rave reviews. But for some reason, many of my friends here have chosen not to buy one. One even went so far to say she didn’t want one, which hurt my feelings immensely. Most others have just said nothing.


It is making me mean. To the one “friend” who said she didn’t want to buy one because her son is not a picky eater (so what?) but asked how the book is doing, I responded: “Well.” That ended that one.


To another who hadn’t bought a book yet, but kept saying she intended too, I simply wrote back, “No worries. Well, I think I’m going to have a very busy December, so see you next year.” Subtext, never again, unless you buy a book. She bought one.


To yet another non-buying friend, I simply said to her inquiry about how it’s going, ”Great, except my friends have sadly been really unsupportive.” She didn’t get the hint.


To the rest, I’ve suffered their silence. Individually, these have hurt in varying degrees. depending on the amount I feel I’ve invested in these friendships. But together, they have become a bit defeaning, and have made me want to change friends, my address, my house, my life. It is causing a bit of an emotional conflagration in my life, and in the end, I think the landscape will be burned to a crisp, waiting for new offshoots to grow. Very unsettling.


To the people who have been supportive, I feel myself panting behind them like a grateful little puppy. “Sure, I’ll watch your kids for four hours. I’d love to make you a hundred Christmas cookies. Yes, I’ll help you cook for thirty people for Thanksgiving.” My gratitude is sincere, but I just can’t tone it down enough for non-awkward levels of expression.


Blurt three. So in the midst of all of this, my retail rock star husband (seriously, no sarcasm intended) got invited to New York to give a talk, and then Milan to visit Zegna’s fabled clothing producing empire, leaving me alone with two kids, a jittery sense of being, and a stressed calendar.


I should’ve known it was only a matter of time before the insecurity manifested itself in an actual bodyquake. It has happened to me before at other critical junctures in my life. But with two kids under four, one of them being my relentless daughter, who has time to connect any of life’s dots. Or in my case, who has time to drink water?


So Day 5 (Friday) of Suresh eight day trip, the abdominal pain started. Saturday it got worse but I hosted a movie night party for Manika so there was no time to really notice. Sunday I wanted to see a doctor but had no one to watch the kids. Monday I could barely stand up but Manika wanted to go outside. So I pushed and pushed. I waited until Suresh got home, showered, waved him goodbye as he went to the office. But by 4pm, I simply had to go the hospital. I left my kids with my helper.


I started to cry in the cab all by myself. By the time I got there, the nurse had to come out and get me. Half an hour later, I was in pain spasms. Suresh was lost somewhere between work and trying to figure out how to help with the kids. Everyone else was in America, and in my current state of mind about my friends, I thought to call no one. I just cried, and cried. Then, as the spasms turned to chills and I started to really shake, I panicked. I grabbed the doctor by the wrist, and yelled to her, “Am I going to die? Because I hate my kids but whose going to take care of them?” The doctor (who delivered one of my children) stuck a needle in my bum, and mercifully knocked me out.


When I came to, she was laughing, I was laughing. The kidney stone had passed and it was if the whole thing never happened except that she kept reminding me that I thought I was going to die, and I kept remembering that my last words on earth could’ve been those above and Dear God, I certainly didn’t mean them the way they came out and that wasn’t really what I had in mind.


The next morning I sat down on my meditation mat and examined. I examined the pressures I’d recently been putting on myself to be the cheerleader wife, to make three organic healthy pureed baby food meals for my son each day, to never ever lose my temper on my daughter again, to be a life-changing teacher to my students, to market my children’s book to every book shelf in Shanghai, to finish my novel yesterday, and to always sounds smart and beautiful and accomplished. I was being near abusively demanding on myself, which was why I was feeling the same towards others. And instead of receiving the rewards of love, creativity and choice, I was secretly seething at my inability to mentally, physically and emotionally keep up. I was also seething at those who I felt were also holding me back.


So over the days that followed, I breathed. Once again (as in other posts), I hugged my cuddly son. I played in this weird “balloon room” space and let Manika bump them off my head. I talked to my husband instead of worrying about making his lunch, or whether his dry cleaning was finished or the house was perfect (my lack of worry showed, but oh well). I used the mental space to sit back and absorb the new experiences I’ve been having, and appreciate the promise of so many more in the horizon.


I finally “caught up” by stepping over insecurity and moving myself to new solid ground.


More importantly, I asked myself when will I really learn? When will I stop myself from going around in these circles, these ups and downs? When will I learn to just stay at this place, all the time? Of course, I can’t really know, but asking the question made “living in peace and acceptance” the goal above everything else.


The journey continues, but at least since then, my mouth has pretty much behaved itself.

Vacation?

Recently, I made a family trip to Malaysia. Even before I left, I joked with my friends, “The word vacation is too aggressive. This is a family trip.” I believed I was going in with both eyes open, ready to fully manage the occasion.

Except I didn’t anticipate pneumonia. I thought I’d covered everything – swimsuits, plastic pails, yellow shovels, and baby food. I’d apparently forgotten my portable nebulizer and antibiotic stash. Poor Avik, from the minute the plane landed in Malaysia, he was miserable. We kept hoping the sea air would cure him, but the infection stayed. On day three, I headed off to the Langkawi emergency room.

As I made repeated trips to the cashier to pay for tests and back to the gloomy ER, I found the sunny attitude I’d been cultivating so carefully over the past few months failing miserably. It was as if my psyche started to catch an infection too. I grumbled under my breath at the system’s slowness, at my hunger, at the fact that people kept staring at me. All the while, I knew that I was helping nothing. I was just dragging down an already stressful situation and even ducking a chance to see into the eyes of other fellow patients and find camaraderie and kindness. But frankly, I did not care. I wanted my bed. I wanted Avik to breathe clear. I wanted to wake up to room service, a cocktail, and a book on my Ipad.

The next two days were rough. Avik couldn’t sleep so at night, Suresh and I took turns holding him. When we happened to be beneath the white sheets of the king sized bed together, even our feet couldn’t touch. Manika slept horizontally (head in my face, feet in his) between us. She apparently liked the feel of nestling close to the bed board. Each attempt to move her caused her to yelp, which woke up Avik.

“Who are you and why are you in my bed, stranger?” I sarcastically joked to my husband.

By day three, Avik was getting better and the kids started to get into the vacation groove. A green cocktail or two actually got consumed poolside. On the last day, we collected sea shells, ate dinner at a Thai restaurant that sat at the end of a very long plank, right in the middle of the ocean. The word vacation ventured to the edges of my and my husband’s lips.

Then we checked out and went to Kuala Lumpur – another Asian city with traffic, cabs with boots too small for my double stroller, dizzying megamalls, hotel pools too tiny to spend all day in, and history too inaccessible to children. I found myself on October 8 (Manika’s birthday) in MegaPlayland watching her bounce in some big red bouncy castle.

“I can’t believe I’m f*&*%!# spending my f*&$#@&! vacation, vacation!, in the land of plastic jungle gyms and inflatable trampolines,” I muttered under my breath. “What the $%$^! I have to get out of here.”

“Manika, let’s go,” I said.

“No!!!!”

“If I don’t do something for myself now, and I mean NOW, I am just going to…. 

Well, let’s go!”

It all went downhill from there. I spent money, I whined, I tried not to snip at my husband (who was a victim too) but couldn’t help it. I constantly exhaled heavily to express my annoyance, I stared out into the city not registering anything but my own misery and my need for silence, SILENCE, and solitude.

When we finally got back to Shanghai, my bad attitude persisted.

Manika and I playing Mickey Mouse Uno: “No Manika, you can’t have all the wildcards. It just isn’t right. You have to share.”

“But I want them.”

“Well, I want a week at the Four Seasons, by myself. We can’t always have what we want. You. Have. To. Share.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to share with me.”

“No.”

“Well, then I don’t want to play with you.”

To Avik screaming for breakfast at 7:00am: “Go ahead Avik, scream. See if it makes me move faster.”

To my husband in response to a request to make him some tea: “Are your arms and legs broken?”

I was like a spinning top, except with cactus-like spikes lining the surface.

I tried meditating but my mind was not into it. There was nothing to meditate on, nothing to meditate towards. What good was an empty mind when everyone kept needing into it? I tried sleeping, but that seemed a bottomless pit. I just couldn’t get enough. I tried a massage, time to myself, but that just made me want to cry. An hour oil massage? Paltry. An hour at a coffee shop? Insignificant! I wanted a week, no a month, no a YEAR!

Finally, I just let go. I had to. I internally imploded and then collapsed. My body refused to run, walk, move from the couch unless necessary. I just let myself be negative. I stopped trying to dig myself out of it, think positive, or control my frustration. I let myself be myself, my whole self. I drank vodka martinis at 4pm. I watched Mad Men episodes until too late an hour. I wrote lots of fevered escapist writing during which I refused to talk to or see anybody. I gave up seeking lessons from my kids, trying to be a good mom, worrying about them or my husband, and I just got selfish. I complained, I whined more, I told my friends I was irritated, I yelled at my husband for not being home more, I told my kids exactly how I was feeling.

“I hate that you wake up at night,” to Manika.

“You want some cheese with that whine there buddy,” to Avik.

“I don’t care what you wear to work,” to my husband.

I was just negative.

And then a magical thing happened. Twenty-four hours into my surrender, I started to feel better. A few things happened that, at the time seemed unimportant, but rolled up together. Manika picked up the “I love you’s” as if instinctually she knew I needed them. In the middle of an argument between me and my husband, she interrupted us and said, “Oh, just say you’re sorry and kiss please.” Then we were out to brunch with friends, and she figured out a system for sharing her IPhone game all by herself. She organized three toddlers to take turns. I was so proud. She was so assertive and self-reliant. She took such good care of herself. The next morning my husband hugged me and that sort of sealed it. I was back up. It was almost instinctual, as if my soul was saying, “Okay, we’re good now. Go back to your regularly scheduled program of balance and sanity again.”

It made me think that all this bombardment of “be positive” messages is being overdone in our society. Oprah, Nick Jr.’ Kailan, Disney’s Special Agent Oso – they all make it sound as if you’ve got a problem, got a drag on your energy, just think “happy thoughts.” But in fact, what I needed was not to pull myself up by my bootstraps, but for me to let my family pull me up the way I do for them so often. As a result of my surrender, I got to be surprised by their ability to do it, even little Avik who seemed to smile in the middle of my crankiest moments. I was particularly moved by how hard Manika really tried to “work with me.”

“Are you done writing?” she asked me on Friday.

“No honey.”

“Okay, I’ll play with the Ipad.”

“Are you done now,” she asked me five minutes later.

“Not yet honey.”

“Okay, I’ll come back.” She waited by the bed. “Are you done now?”

“It’s only been another three minutes.”

“When will you be finished?”

“Okay, I guess I can be finished now.”

Not exactly when I wanted to stop, but I realized that she was at least trying. My husband realized that hugs made me better; yelling at me to cheer up didn’t. It was as if by me expressing myself, everyone came to realize that even mommy has limits, bad days and temper tantrums. I think I became more human to my family, they became more human to me and I remembered that I was only human myself.

It was an unexpected result of two weeks together, but looking back now, I’m positive the intense proximity recombined the four of us with a different dynamic, something better, more together. The word vacation remains an overly optimistic description, but perhaps “family bonding” was more appropriate, or “an opportunity for my family to form relationships rather than operating in the day-to-day working-towards-getting-the-kids-to-grow-up mechanics.” Or stated more simply, the trip was “a reminder that no one can find happiness all the time and without a little help.”

Now is here

Earlier this year, I began “professionally dating,” a good friend of mine in Shanghai to see if we’re business partnership material. We’ve been romantically envisioning our riches, loosely planning, and justifying long lunches with loads of “we can do this,” and “wouldn’t that be great.” The potential was fantastic, the true commitment distant, and it was that it was all about the business of books. She had a dream to open a publishing company; I had a habit of supporting entrepreneurs. Even though I was taking a backseat to her dream, I finally felt my two worlds – business and writing – were coming together, and in the center of it all was my closest friend. It was almost perfect.

Fast-forward to last week, and for reasons too numerous and irrelevant to list here, we took a step back, and I found myself reeling from the breakup. I felt a sincere sense of loss. In my entire career, I’ve never not had a partner, a business confident, a supporter, a mentor, a structure, a friend. I’ve also never had to set up my own business model. I’ve made a living supporting other people’s ventures, consulting to other people’s businesses. Suddenly I found myself with a slew of new ideas and the realization that there was no one but me to make them a reality.

I was afraid. I was confused, and lost. I began trying, yet again, to put together something that reflected something about myself. I felt somewhat productive but more than anything, I felt alone and too sad to make much progress.

Then Manika stopped sleeping again. I swear, that girl has an internal timer. Mommy stressed = Manika not sleeping. My husband says it’s just a byproduct of a close mother – daughter relationship. I think it’s just some karmic retribution. She started waking up in the middle of the night screaming (and I mean SCREAMING), claiming that we set her clock wrong, and that 3am was really the start of her morning.

I tried to follow logic she understood. We wrote rules on the bed. 1. No screaming. 2. No getting out of bed until bunny clock is awake. I tried punishment. I tried screaming myself. I tried doing nothing and letting her play until she fell asleep on her floor mat. I even tried letting her sleep in my bed, but that was a disaster.

Then one day she said, “I want a job like you,” and a light went off in my head.

“I have a job for you.”

“What do you have for me?”

“You sleep at night, I’ll give you one coin each day.”

“How ‘bout you just give me a coin.”

“Nope, you wanted a job, this is your job.”

“But I don’t like sleeping, except on Tuesday and Friday.”

“Well today is Tuesday.”

“I meant next Tuesday.”

“Follow the rules, and you get a coin.”

The first night, the concept was exciting but the execution bumpy. “But I don’t like sleeping,” Manika repeated. “Sleeping is no fun.”

“Most work is no fun. Welcome to real life.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said.

“Then I won’t pay you.”

“No mommy, I want my coin.”

“Then do your job.”

Eyes rolled. Sighs escaped. “Fine,” she said, clutching her bunny purse to her while she slept.

The second night, she disregarded the connection altogether. She screamed three times. She lost a coin.

The third night, she got the hang of it. I didn’t hear from her at all and in the morning, she proudly got up and counted her money in her bed.

Today she had enough for her own first muffin. I’ve never seen a kid stuff cake into her mouth with such relish.

The whole thing made me think about why I want to work so badly. Is it really the money? Well, yes and no. Money makes grownups feel more secure, and it helps all ages buy things. But what made Manika love her muffin so much was that she bought it herself. It was the sense of accomplishment, a sense of having a goal and achieving it, a sense of rewarding oneself for hard effort. There was a direct line between value added (me sleeping) and reward.

I want that. For too long, my line has gone around my clients’ wishes, over corporate structures, around the bend of other people’s company visions, beneath my husband and children. I have longed for that straight line, but it has either seemed too simple to be possible, or not the right time, or too hard to find.

But I see things are shifting. I turned thirty-four on Friday, and as I got dressed in the mirror, I saw I was no longer a twenty-four year old banking analyst just trying to get some skills, or a twenty-eight year old consultant trying to find balance between art and business, or even a thirty-two year old new mom trying to get the hang of my new role. I was entering that mythic age that my mother always told me about – the age in which my best ideas of myself and my ability to realize them in my life had finally arrived. I suddenly felt I now have just enough of self-knowledge, money, experience, and inner balance, to take a risk, to set out and do something for myself, that just reflects myself.

As if in cosmic confirmation, an artist friend of mine designed my business cards for me. I asked her to do something simple and clean, and what she came back with was so perfect, it brought me to tears. I’ve never actually felt my identity on paper, but now I know what it looks like. It’s light green. It’s understated but clear. The title on the card: Writer – Editor. Just my name, no one else’s, no tagline, no corporate stamp. It felt like a promise of the Joel Olsteen type. Great things are ahead. The slate is ready and wiped. My own bunny purse is empty too, but it’s ready to be filled again.

“Was it great?” I said to Manika after she finished her muffin.

“Yeah, and tomorrow I get a new coin and can buy a lollipop! That’ll be even better!”

“Yes, it will,” I agreed with her.

As she smiled, I realized I even have a business partner albeit a bit moody, one sided, tyrannical, and childish one. She brings fearlessness to my fear, uncompromising certainty to my habits of accommodation, and fresh inspiration to my tired cynicism. Most importantly, she gives me a reason not to be lazy, not to be scared, not to fail. I want her to know that the direct line she so freshly experienced is possible at all stages of life. In fact, I want her (and me) to think and live like we should settle for nothing less.

In the meantime, there’s no worry of breaking up. She gets all my earnings and runs the board, a CEO, COO, and chairman on training wheels. I get to grow. It’s the perfect unexpected arrangement.

I’m excited and terrified at the same time.

The Typhoon Is Over

Ah, how sleep restores all serenity…. I can’t believe it has been over five months since my last post, nor can I believe how many times I’ve attempted to write on it (far outnumbers the passed month). But that is all in the past. My son crossed thirteen hours last night with one snack waking. He is the best little sleeper in town!

SO, with rest in my corner, I hereby mark the end to unfinished tasks, unmet goals, and unachieved milestones. I will not be swayed by the winds of exhaustion anymore. My breasts are no longer milk dispensers, my pants no longer bounce back open, and my nights are no longer walking laps between the fridge, the crib, and my bedroom. I have crossed the ponds to America and back, two kids in tow. I have shopped (oh how I shopped), I’ve defied the naysayers who said I could never bring it all back, I’ve protected my daughter from certain germ death in airplane toilets, I’ve face jet lag and won, and I have created a new space on my desk with flowers and my favorite coffee mug in front of which I plan to pay homage to my own brain for at least three hours each day while Manika is in school.

A lofty goal you think? I’ve got more! I’ve committed to a monthly massage, 4am yoga thrice weekly, a figure-sustaining run on the other mornings, packing my husband’s lunch, and teaching my three year old how to read. Oh, and did I mention my novel, and my plans to open a children’s book store, and that children’s book I’m still shopping… anyone interested? Okay, I’m dizzy now too. Perhaps I’m admittedly getting away from myself. But the point is, I’m ready to be busy… to look forward, and forward, and more forward! Enough with the past, and even the present is still moving a bit too slowly…

And then came the typhoon. Sometimes I feel like the D+ life student. A typhoon, God? Really? Was that necessary?

So there I was on a Tuesday night, basking in my freedom to get up and get a glass of water at night without having to check on or feed a child, already looking forward to my 4am yoga session, when I get a text message from my daughter’s school. School cancelled. Cancelled!? What? I check the time. 12:15am. It must be a joke. No one from a preschool texts at 12:15am? Then I read the rest: forecasted typhoon enroute.

Groan. I wake up my husband. “Do you know that school is cancelled tomorrow?”

“What?”

Forget the sheets of rain and destructive winds. “Cancelled! That means another day of –“ Gasp! “Momdom!” I could already feel the flowers on my desk drooping. Another day of dumping toddler potties, coloring, play dough, and ball pits. Wasn’t the entire summer enough? I begged the universe for mercy. “God, I hope our ayi can make it into work! That would be… unthinkably awful!”

The next morning, I called the school to confirm but was apparently hundredth in line behind a bunch of other similarly stunned parents. I rehearsed my speech while I waited. “But it’s sunny out? And Yahoo Weather says the typhoon is not going to touch down until after noon, and school is over at 1pm and who’s ever right about the weather anyway?” I never got to say it though; the line never ceased being busy. The Shanghai government stuck to their citywide decision. No school-going kids on the road.

So at 7:30am, I packed the kids up in the jogging stroller and endured the thousands of interruptions I dreaded. “Yes, Avik, here’s your bottle.” “Yes, Manika, we can stop at the playground.” The sunny skies laughed at me. The cloudless blue mocked me. They said, “You thought you were suddenly back in the driver’s seat? Sorry, you’re a mom. You’re, for the rest of your life, your children’s passenger.” Ugh. Swear word muttered under my breath. “No Manika, you cannot have my Iphone.” “Avik don’t you want to take a nap yet?” “No Manika, you cannot eat a bag full of cheddar Goldfish.”

So much for a relaxing run.

And then my brother called, my childless baby brother whose advice I often discount as outdated by five years of experience. “What is the big deal? It’s one day?” he said.

“But you don’t understand, all summer I’ve been making these plans to do stuff, to make something of myself, to crawl out from under the rock of caretaker, nose wiper, bum cleaner…”

“It’s one day.”

“You don’t have kids, what do you know?”

“But they’re so cute.”

“Bye, have a nice day.”

I seethed even more. I already knew that it’s only one day. I own a calendar. I know how the days work. But Wednesday is a me day. I silently screamed to the universe, to Ravi.

And then, in their silence, it dawned on me. In my quest to be present-seizing, making most of my time and energy, and creating new opportunities for happiness and greatness, I was doing none of those things. I was still stewing in past plans and expectations, and if I didn’t update quick, I stood the chance of ruining what was now proving to be a truly, almost laughingly, beautiful, sunny, typhoon-less day. My mood instantly changed. I smiled a bit, and started to think.

“Hey Manika? Want to have a typhoon party?”

Three hours later, my house was full. I had children, toys, wine bottles, pizza, and general chaos everywhere. The kids loved it! Us tai-tais got buzzed together. But my heart was back at piece. I had seized the present. I spent time with my friends. I played with my children. I had had fun, which was totally unexpected.

Of course, in the back of my mind, it still wasn’t the ideal afternoon. My computer looked longingly at me a couple of times. I glanced forlornly at the Apple TV, wishing I could see the latest Mad Men episode instead of wipe another chocolaty hand. But the lessons I’d learned (and blogged about) earlier this year proved persistent. I was pleased to find, five months later, that the bridge of “realizing and enjoying the present” that I’d built to connect the “before Avik” and “after Avik” me was not just some temporary rickety structure used to keep my sanity, but a true addition to my life path, a place I could circle back to any time I needed or wanted. By the time the rains and winds finally did come, the day was over and a pretty satisfying success.

I pointed this out to Manika in the evening, in a magnanimous effort to boost her spiritual growth: “See, we made lemonade out of lemons.”

To which she replied, (poor girl with my genes), “But I don’t like lemons or lemonade!”

“Okay, it’s just a figure of speech. I mean, we didn’t really drink lemonade, did we? “It’s just a saying.”

“What is a saying?”

“I just mean, we took you not-having-school and made it fun. You did have fun?”

“Yep. Let’s do it again tomorrow!”

Gasp. “No!” Deep breath. Don’t want to scar the child with memories of not being wanted. “Of course, it’s always great when you’re home, but you have to learn too. We all have to learn. That’s what life is all about. Learning. Understand?”

“Yep.” Pause. Rain pelted the windows outside. “Mommy, let’s play,” she said.

There seemed nothing better in the world to do. “Sure, why not?”