So far from my home
Ah, Memorial Day Weekend. The second time around for us to miss the
Northwest Folklife Festival. Last year, I didn't notice it so much. This year, it's kind of sad to think about. I wonder if it's a short-timer thing. Maybe my subconscious is saying, "We're so close to going back to the States, if only they could have waited a month and a half." Or maybe it's just the inevitable turning of the thoughts toward our once and future home. Oh, well....
Shattered
How do I write this? How can I describe this loss? Is this something I even
want to write? After almost eighteen years of marriage, I'm.... well, let's just say it's gone. Shattered. Irreparably broken.
What? My marriage? Oh, no that's fine. Well, as well as can be expected under the circumstances. No, what I'm talking about is my wedding ring. My fifth wedding ring to be exact. You see, back in 1989 we were young, in love and went to some store or another to buy me a wedding ring. I think we went to Service Merchandise, or some such department store. We found a plain, gold wedding band for about $100. I think. My memory is quite unreliable, I'm afraid. I do know that it was gold, however, and I do remember that it was a bit loose. At the time I thought loose was good. I planned on wearing that thing for many years and I figured my fingers would get fatter. Buying for the future, I was.
Well, the future didn't quite worked out the way I planned. Loose meant that the ring had a tendency to slip off. Most of the time I caught it, but there were a few times I didn't. Like the time I was swimming in the hotel pool in St. Louis, and had to dive to the bottom to retrieve it. Or the winter day I was taking out the garbage to the dumpster behind our apartment in Chicago. I had to run up down the stairs with a teapot full of hot water to melt the snow so I could find my band of gold. And then there was the day we were snowshoeing up at Mt. Rainier and I swung my arm a bit too briskly. The ring flew off my hand and landed in the snow. 27 feet of snow. No teapot was going to save the day that time. We filed a lost and found claim with the park rangers, but we also stopped at a store on the way home and bought a replacement ring.
My second ring was silver, with a cross engraved in it. I think I had the idea of some sort of Celtic design in mind, but this was more simple and cheaper. Maybe we spent $50 for it? Anyway, having learned my lesson, I made sure it had a nice snug fit. I was quite happy with the design, but I soon discovered that for some reason it would irritate the skin on my finger, especially if I got my hands wet. So I got into the habit of removing the ring anytime I got my hand wet. It was a dangerous habit, but I only had one close call with losing it in all the years I owned it. (I had been changing a diaper--a definite wet hands situation--and left the ring sitting on a shelf in a public restroom. That ring did make it to the lost and found and I retrieved it the next day.)
But despite many years of hanging onto the ring, I did manage to lose that one as well. One day we were heading to Chicago and as we headed towards airport security I frantically divested myself of anything that might remotely trigger the metal detector. (This was pre 9-11 when passing through security could be quick.) I stuffed all my loose possessions into the exterior pockets of the diaper bag and somewhere in the process the ring must have tumbled out. All I know is that when I recombobulated myself, I was ringless. As penance, I spent the whole vacation ringless. Afterward, however, Yau Neih had pity on me and gave me my third wedding ring. This one was my favorite. She crocheted it herself out of string. I proudly wore it, though still removing it to wash my hands and such. It wore out after many months, but Yau Neih could crochet a new one to replace it.
Of course, that was boring for her, so after about a year of having a string ring, she bought me another silver ring for Christmas. I had been hoping for a CD, but that's not important here. It was a thin band, with the word "love" engraved upon it. I wistfully put my string ring aside and began to wear my fourth ring. This also survived for a while, much like my second. It's loss, however, was quite undramatic. One day, around the beginning of this year, I had slipped it off for some reason or another and had put it in my pocket. Somehow, somewhere it must have slipped out. I sadly confessed my loss. Yau Neih, at this point, took it very well. Obviously my inability to hang onto wedding rings is just one of those irritating, unchangeable habits that spouses learn to deal with.
So anyway, we come to my current ring... well, formerly current, I guess. Back on our Dali trip we were turning the park at Butterfly Spring. We were wandering through a gift shop and saw a bunch of jade thingies on sale, including a little bin of rings. I was taken up with the idea of getting a jade ring and Yau Neih agreed. Especially since the rings were only 10
kuai each. So we bought one--a kind of a brown, green and white mixture. (I'm sure the original stone had beautiful bands of color, but when you cut it down to ring size, you kind of lose the magic.) It fit well and I quite liked it. Though I guess my fingers were kind of fat that day, because in the weeks since I've had moments when the ring would threaten to slip off. Another plus was that it didn't irritate my skin. So I took Yau Neih's suggestion that I take to wearing the ring all of the time. I think her rationale was that if I always wore the ring, I'd be less likely to misplace it. Sound reasoning. But when I followed her advice, I lacked one vital bit of information.
On Sunday night, after tearing myself away from a very addicting book, I headed to the shower. I was washing my hair, scrubbing away, when I felt the ring slip off of my finger. I could feel it bounce off my shoulder and heard a little
ding! as it hit the floor. Concerned that it might be swept down the drain, I immediately cut the water and wiped the soapy water from my eyes. There I saw my current wedding ring had been transformed into my current wedding curved fragments. Nobody told me that jade would break if you dropped it from a sufficient height. I sadly gathered up the three pieces and wondered if it would be worth trying to repair.
The next morning I broke (no pun intended) the news to Yau Neih. I also determined that any attempts to superglue the ring together would probably be futile. So now the question is what shall I get for my next ring? There are still many materials that I haven't tried--wood, copper, brass, plastic. I suppose I could just apply a line of super-glue around my ring finger and dip my hand into a pile of glitter. Nah, that would be too gaudy. Ah, well. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to send it my way. Even if I buy my sixth ring in the meantime, I can file ideas away for the seventh.
Return to sender
Yau Neih and were given a culture lesson yesterday--a course in addressing envelopes. Did you know that, in China, they write the main address in the upper left quadrant of the envelope and the return address in the lower right corner? We didn't, until yesterday. Actually, I had suspected as much, having seen an envelope with our colleges name and postal code preprinted in the lower right corner. But since China Post always accepts our letters to America, which are addressed in American fashion, I went ahead and addressed my letter to Maoming as I always have. "Maybe the preprinted envelopes were business reply envelopes," I rationalized.
I should have recalled that they don't do checks here. Bills are paid by walking down to whatever office is involved and giving the clerk cold, hard cash. When we took our letters--the first in-country letters we've tried to mail ourselves--down to the post office, they gave us a scolding. And two new envelopes. We got out of line and transferred the contents of our old envelopes to the new ones. 'Twas a pity, because instead of being addressed by Ga Dai's elegant hand, our letters now bore my crooked, chicken-scratch characters. We were a bit intimidated by the whole deal and didn't try to write the return address. That was a mistake, because when we tried to submit the letters again, we got another scolding. So we got out of line again and finished addressing our letters properly. At least I hope it was properly. The clerk accepted our envelopes on the third try, at any rate. And, hey, that was one better than our ticket purchase in Maoming.
(Oh, yeah, I didn't write about the ticket purchase in Maoming yet. I really should do that soon....)
Keep out
This is as close as we got. I mentioned before how we wanted
to visit the town and orphanage from where we got my younger daughter. Well, it didn't quite work out as planned. The rule is that all orphanage visits must be arranged through an agency called
Bridge of Love. We contacted them and got the whole paperwork thing going. But somewhere along the way we hit a snag. I won't go into details, but basically we heard less than two weeks before our trip that we'd have to travel to Guangzhou to pay a service fee. This was a step that would probably be no problem for a family visiting from the States, who'd most likely be traveling through the city anyway. But for us, traveling by train from Yunnan, it was quite a pain--one that would undoubtedly require an overnight stay in Guangzhou. We decided at that point, quite crankily, to forgo the orphanage visit. We shot off an e-mail saying that we couldn't afford this new development and cancelled our request. A few days later, I started having second thoughts, realizing that I should be willing to spend whatever time and money required for my daughter to get the visit that she needed. When Yau Neih and I discussed it with Siu Wan, however, it turns out that she didn't need the visit
that bad. She said that she was a bit disappointed, but that
we were more upset about this than she was. Smart kid. So we bailed on the orphanage visit, settling for a walk past the facility. (Okay, three walks past, actually. Two with the kid.) And if a few years down the road Siu Wan decides that she really needs to make that orphanage visit, well, we can start saving our shekels and try to make that happen.
Bleah
I suppose I should start posting about our trip over this past week's May holiday. But I need to find time to type. There have many tasks that have clamored for my attention this week. Alas, I fear such will be my life for the next seven weeks. (Seven weeks! Ah, the time is flying...) Emotionally, the biggest task is starting the job search. I was quite aware going in that I would need to find work fast once we returned. But knowing what's ahead and actually sitting down to write that resume are two different experiences. I really dislike the whole self promotion thing, so I end up writing resumes and cover letters with gritted teeth. Ofttimes I end up writing two or three parodies of the thing before I hammer out the final version. (Hmmm, maybe I should post them here.)(Hmmmm, maybe I should do nothing of the sort until I'm safely secure in a job.)
Anyway, I seem to be running out of steam on this blog. (I know, I have a great talent for stating the obvious.)(Either that or I have picked up the Chinese habit of stating the obvious as a greeting.) I suppose I could blame the fact that this China venture is winding down. Of necessity, my thoughts are turning homeward. What do we need to do when we get back to America? What preparations can we make while we're still here? Are there any loose ends in our life here that we need to tie up? (Besides giving away my Mandarin copy of
Batman Begins.)(Did I ever mention that? I bought a VCD of
Batman Begins only to discover that it had no English soundtrack or subtitles.)(I watched it anyway and knew enough of the Batman legend that I had little problems following the plot.) It's nothing new and exciting, nothing that invites deep or even humorous contemplation. Perhaps my blog addiction is going the way of my message board addiction? Or maybe two years is the time for a blog's mid-life crisis? So many questions, so few answers.
***
(P.S. I should mention here that I cleared up the PayPal thing. Now can I not only get another year as a Flickr pro but I can also go buy things on eBay... not that I really have a desire to at present.)
On the road again
I'm posting mid-holiday from the Guangdong province. There's a lot to tell about, some of which may actually be interesting. However, I really don't feel motivated to type much right now. I have been able to use the ol' Bic in the last few days, so at least I can post it someday.
I will state right now, for the record, that knowing a little bit of Cantonese and a little bit of Mandarin is really not all that helpful in a place where folks may be speaking one or the other. I try to use some of my dimly remembered Cantonese, and then switch over to one of my stock Mandarin phrases. Ah, well. We can usually, eventually, get what we want. Plus we have amused a few of the locals by speaking some
guang dong wa. Sometimes I think that's my current purpose in life--to bring brief moments of amusement to the lives of others. Ah, well...
