Night

I enjoyed a couple of hours to myself tonight, after Alex and Cate were both asleep. Steve wanted me to get out and experience this place in the evening, when darkness had made a beautiful place magical. I sat along the Pearl River, under a tree dripping with moss. Red lanterns swayed in the breeze, the water alive as tour boats drifted slowly up and down and the vivid shoreline of Guangzhou glowed a neon spectrum of color, Chinese opera music floated from somewhere all around. I sat and drank lemon tea, strong and bitter and hot as couples sat drinking beer, expats smoked and examined pieces of jade with a magnifying glass, the happy bliss of not understanding the conversation around me, except for the lilt of a British accent, overhead when the breeze changed directions or the music paused. I sat and took a breath. I smelled the musty haze, the river, the faint scent of flowers and seafood. I exhaled the relief that all the documents I have needed and collected and agonized over are now out of my hands, the joy that my new daughter, the one I have waited so long for, was sleeping, not far from her brother, the one I had also waited so long for. The happiness that Steve and I have done this together, that we have built this family and that we will raise it together and that this trip has only strengthened our bond. In my next breath, I tried again to absorb all of this, all of this beauty, all of the stress, all that has come to pass so I can tell the story again and again to my children. The story of how we became a family in a land so far away. I tried to absorb it all so one day I can tell my daughter how it was when she was born to us, to our family. And then I came back, to the darkened hotel room, aglow only with the lights of the river outside, where my family lies sleep.

That same spot by the river will always have magic in my memory. It is where we have first seem Cate run and laugh with such joy. It is a spot where Alex was able to explore and just be a kid in a trip filled with times when being a kid isn't that easy at all. It is the spot where Alex and his new friend, Hazel, ran today, collecting giant poppy colored blossoms as they fell from the trees, high above our heads like so many fat raindrops, and together created a collage of color on the stones between their two mothers. It is the spot, where a kind Chinese man encouraged Alex to try a game like hacky-sack, kicking a weighted feather from foot to foot, and we all stopped and gave it a try and shared a laugh with the man, his wife and his son. It is a spot that has brought us much happiness.

Tonight, we found a Thai restuarant for dinner. The food was fine, nothing remarkable, but what fun we had reading the menu.... deep fried goose intestines, tripe, fish head soup, swallow's nest soup... we have seen salty duck chins, soft salted chicken bones, fresh mud eel... I cannot even remeber them all, but I think it will take several trips to China before we become that adventurous in our eating. I ordered something like pad thai, tasty and filled with squid tenticles and heads. I asked Alex if he would like some noodles. He said, "No thanks, but I do want to try the body parts."

Don't be surprised to find him living in Hong Kong someday.