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19/7/05
On Becoming a Parent
Jill and I have always liked kids: when we lived in the US we used to coach children's soccer teams, and that was one of the most fun things in our life. But we had never planned or tried to have any of our own (kids, that is, not soccer teams). We always used to say that we borrowed kids instead: we once took three girls to Sweden for the women's soccer world cup, and we also had two others visit us in France when the men's world cup was going on. Our lives were a lot of fun, but very busy and very crazy: we spent a lot of times on airplanes; we were traveling all over Europe and Asia (with occasional side trips to the US and to South Africa); we just didn't have the space in our lives for children of our own.
(My mother told me once that this was very selfish of me. She also told me that I was depriving myself of one of the most wonderful experiences in the world. I never did manage to reconcile those two statements.)
In the last year or so, though, we had been giving some thought to adoption. Our lives were feeling more settled than they had been previously: Jill had earned tenure, and it looked reasonably certain that we would be settling in France and/or Singapore. We began to feel that perhaps we were in a position to help some child to a better life, and that that might be a good thing to do with our lives over the next couple of decades. It was still very tentative, however. Jill was closer to deciding that she wanted to do this than I was, but even so, neither of us had really made a decision.
The day we met Neung, I told Jill that if someone gave me the papers, I would sign them then and there. Looking back, I don't know what it was that made me so sure; the circumstances, undoubtedly, but it was also something about her, about how she, Jill and I connected right from the start. I could try to describe it, to talk about how engaging she is, how cute, how full of humor, but I suspect there is not really much point. It was just a certain chemistry that was there. "Un coup de foudre," as the French say: love at first sight. Interestingly as well, our impressions of her have changed surprisingly little since that first meeting.
Anyway, while most people come to parenthood with at least nine months to get used to the idea, I have found myself more or less in the position of being an instant parent. As against that, I have been allowed to ease into the job, and someone else has done a lot of the hard work already -- the sleepless nights, the toilet training, the neverending peekaboo.
The first couple of times we took Neung away with us, she was also quite the little angel, never complaining, never objecting to anything we suggested or did, just going with the flow. That gradually came to change, as she became more comfortable with us, and -- I think -- as she became more convinced that we would keep coming back. Now she is most definitely a four year old, capable of being obstinate and whiny and difficult ... and we are very happy about this, because it is indicative of the fact, I believe, that she is comfortable with us and trusts us not to go away. Though I say it myself, Jill and I are so far doing an ok job of dealing with her fouryearoldness. I should make it clear, however, that for the most part she is a very easy going and well behaved kid, so our job is still a relatively easy one. And have I mentioned that she is cute?
In the end, what has surprised me the most is how little I have been surprised by the experience. Being a parent is, as I expected, quite wonderful; it is also, as I expected, in turns aggravating and tiring and stressful. I feel as if I should be waxing sentimental about how she has changed my life, about how I am experiencing emotions that I have never experienced before, about how surprised I am at the person she is turning me into. But while there would be a little bit of truth in such statements, it would truly only be a little bit. I am delighted, thrilled, to have a daughter, and yet I can also still easily how we could have continued on our other path. For that would have been wonderful as well; just very different.
All of which is perhaps a way of saying that, even when I never expected to have kids, I tried my best never to be one of those militant non-parents complaining about the crying kids on the airplane; and now i will do my best not to be one of those militant parents who cannot understand those who choose the childfree life. And there is more: I pledge never to discuss her bowel movements with my friends, and I promise that I will still be able to talk about topics other than comparative assessments of school quality or the kid-friendliness of restaurants.
But did I mention that she is really cute?
20/7/05
The Screensaver
Whenever we drive past areas where the tsunami devastation is still evident (thankfully, there are no longer very many such places), Neung is prone to say, rather plaintively, "Oh no...".
Why do I mention this? Because of the screensaver on my laptop. My Mac screensaver, as a default, randomly shows pictures from my image folder. I keep telling myself that I should reset it to show only selected images -- in particular, I tell myself this every time it flashes up some scanned image of a tax form that I would rather forget about -- but somehow this particular task is way down my 'to do' list. In any case, the tax forms only show up occasionally: you won't be surprised to learn that most of the pictures are of Neung. Narcissistic little girl that she is, she is very happy to sit in front of my computer and see herself show up on the screen. "Neung!" she says, pointing, "Neung! Neung!". Occasionally there is a little variety: "Neung! ... Neung! ... Neung! ... Mama! ... Neung!" And then one day a picture of the crematorium door drifted across.
"Oh no..." said little Neung.
I must reset my screensaver.
20/7/05
A Brief Update
We have been back in Thailand for the last week or so, taking Neung to and from school, and also trying to ensure that the paperwork keeps moving. The holdup is that, even though Sanam has clearly been Neung's caregiver for a long time (and, as we said, Neung's father has long been out of the picture), Sanam does not have an official document recognizing her as the guardian of the child. So she has had to apply to a Thai court for that document, and we are not quite sure how long it will take. Post-tsunami, of course, the courts have a lot of extra work to do, but if we are lucky, we may have this document within a couple of weeks, at which point we can apply for Neung's passport and then bring her to Singapore. If there are any hold-ups though -- and it is quite likely that there will be -- it could still be a couple of months.
Last weekend we took Neung to Bangkok, where she was able to see Chat and Jiraporn, and where Jill and I were able to visit the lawyers that we have been in correspondence with. In addition, we were able to deal with the purchase of the truck for Sanam. Once again, our timing was good: we missed another tsunami evacuation prompted by Saturday's earthquake. Apparently they evacuated the entire camp where Neung normally lives, and I presume they evacuated our usual hotel, as well.
We will return to Singapore this weekend to do laundry and take care of various administrative stuff, but plan to be back in Thailand in the middle of next week.
27/7/05
To Be Filed Under: Petard, Hoist by Own
Whenever I used to think about having a kid, I always imagined that one of the most fascinating and fun things would be watching language development. I love the inductive learning that children do, figuring out the language rules, and then applying them in new contexts.
Now we are starting to observe this with Neung's learning of English. She has progressed from simply learning pieces of vocabulary and rote phrases, and is just starting to come up with her own simple sentences in English. She has also reached the point where she can answer some simple questions. We are still a long way from having real conversations with her, but she has clearly reached a breakthrough point, and her learning has accelerated rapidly [note to math pedants: yes I do mean the third derivative] over the last few weeks.
All that said, most of her English does still consist of phrases that she has learned either directly from us or from the English language videos that she watches. What is more, Jill finds it amusing to teach Neung the occasional phrase that is, shall we say, not entirely flattering to me; she is recruiting the kid early as a player in our marital discussions... Thus Jill thought it very funny to teach Neung to say "Papa is SOOOO slow!"
(A digression on the whole "Mama" and "Papa" thing -- these were the words that Sanam and Panya started using with Neung to refer to us. I think that in Thailand the terms are often used a bit more freely than we are used to, but in any case, Mama and Papa we became. I think Jill may eventually get Neung to migrate to "Mommy", but I will probably stick with Papa, partly because I like the European sound of it. Oh, and that's "Papa" with the stress on the first syllable, just to be clear.)
Anyway, Neung thinks this phrase is very funny. "Papa is SOOOO suhlow!" she says. Often. Whether or not the occasion warrants. Which it usually doesn't, just by the way. If Jill had been content to leave it there, it would definitely have been her victory. But then she made her critical mistake: in a fit of hubris, she thought it would be even funnier if she could get Neung to add the contrasting statement about Mama, forgetting that the kid's pronounciation still leaves something to be desired.
"Papa is SOOOO suhlow," says Neung, "and Mama is SOOOO fat"...
27/7/2005
The Missionaries Who Weren't
Many people tell us that they think we are doing a very kind and good thing by helping Neung and her family. I won't deny that it is gratifying when people say such words, but, truth to tell, I don't feel as if we are doing anything particularly generous or altrustic. I simply feel that we are the recipients of great fortune. We are not suffering any real hardship: yes, it is tiring and awkward to be making so many trips; yes, it is a pain to be living and working out of hotel rooms (with dial-up internet, natch); yes, it is irritating to be spending so much on airfares, car rentals, and hotels; but these are all inconveniences, nothing more.
There are many we meet, however, who truly are generous and deserving of such praise. For example, we recently met a family who are full-time volunteers for an organization that that provides hospital ships around the world. Up and down the coast we see people who have given up days, weeks, or months of their lives to build houses and fishing boats, or to teach local children, or to distribute food to the relief camps.
On one of our trips to the Nam Kem camp -- in April I think it was -- we encountered a middle-aged American couple with two grown daughters. All three women were wearing heavy smock dresses, and to my untrained eye they had the look of Amish or German Baptists. They were looking somewhat lost, and very hot. It turned out that they had just arrived and were planning to live in the camp for several months, teaching English.
Their names were David, Tabea, Joann, and Eliza Johnson (they were later also joined by another daughter, Rea), from a group called Bruderhof, which I had never heard of before. The Bruderhofs are apparently a worldwide communitarian pacifist Christian group, perhaps a bit like the Quakers. That is my untutored description, but if you want a more accurate idea of who they are, you can go to their website (http://www.bruderhof.com), where you can also read David's fascinating accounts of their time in Nam Kem (including, in a nice bit of internet circularity, his account of meeting us).
I am an indifferent atheist, by which I mean that while religion is essentially an irrelevance to my life, if you pushed me I would say that I believe there is no god. I don't take the Richard Dawkins view (that religion is a bad thing that makes people go on crusades and fly planes into skyscrapers) but nor do I view religion particularly positively. I tend to the opinion that there are good and bad people who do good things and bad things, and religion acts as a one possible excuse or justification for both. Many Christian groups have done wonderful work in Thailand since the tsunami, and many of the good people that we have met would tell you that their reasons are based in their faith. Still, ever since we found the Jesus coloring book among Neung's things, we have eyed visiting Christians with some suspicion. There is something more than a little obscene about proselytizing on the back of such tragedy and suffering.
Thus it is fair to say that we were not at all sure what to make of the Johnsons when we first met them. On first meeting they did seem to have -- and, David, when you read this, I hope you will forgive this comment! -- something of a Poisonwood Bible look to them. If you read David's dispatches, however, you will see that he is much more searing and scathing than I am in his critiques of visiting missionaries and proselytizers. The Johnsons came to Nam Kem with no goal other than to help local people recover from the tsunami. They are not missionaries in any usual sense of the term. They are providing a place for kids to play and learn, and -- importantly -- a place where the local ethnic Burmese are as welcome as the Thais. (In most ways, I was wonderfully impressed by the response of the Thai government, the Thai military, and the Thai people to the tsunami, but the discriminatory treatment of the Burmese is sad and shameful.)
At different times in my life, I have been struck by how I sometimes feel a real commonality with people who are at first glance very different from me. Even leaving religion aside, there is surely a gap between David and his family's worldview and ours: they are committed to a very simple life; we live in airconditioned luxury in Singapore and teach economics and marketing! Yet there is also a strong similarity in much of our thinking about the world; I enjoy meeting them whenever we go to the camp in Nam Kem, and I am honored to include David and Tabea's family among our friends in Thailand.
(They have also been incredibly helpful to us in terms of keeping an eye on Neung when we are not around, and we often end up phoning them when we want to check that Neung is ok. Because we already have many Davids in our life (including a brother and a brother-in-law), we keep things clear by talking of "Camp David". "I'm going to call Camp David," says Jill in the restaurant, secretly hoping that people at neighboring tables will be impressed.)
These are the kind of people who are truly giving of themselves. We come and go to the camp from our resort hotel in our rented Honda 4WD CRV; they are living in hot cramped housing in the camp itself, and walk everywhere. We can go back to Singapore whenever we wish; they are far from home, and plan to stay for a year. I say the following with no false modesty, no disingenuousness: David, Tabea, Joann, Eliza and Rea are far better people than I am, and my admiration for them has no bounds.
29/7/2005
On Cultural Difference
There might be the occasional kid in the US who, like Neung, would choose yoghurt over ice cream. But show me the American four year old who, when presented with the buffet choices, would reject all the chocolate desserts and instead demand the sea snails.
29/7/2005
Scooby-Doo and Path Dependence
The second time that we came to visit Neung we brought a jigsaw puzzle that happened to be a picture of Scooby-Doo. I say "happened to be" because there were few choices at the place we bought the puzzle, and I think Jill picked it out not so much because of Scooby-Doo but because he was kicking a soccer ball. Of such arbitrary and chance decisions are terrible consequences born.
Neung decided early that "Scooby-Doo" was the English word for "dog", and because so many dogs wander beside the Thai roads, "Scooby-Doo" rapidly became one of the most repeated words when we were driving. Thus it was perhaps inevitable that when we saw the DVD set of the original Scooby-Doo series in a store, we decided to buy it for her.
I never claimed that every decision we make is a good one.
Suffice it to say that Neung has become a huge Scooby-Doo fan. This is the video that she demands constantly. When I was four, I think I would have found even the cartoonish frights of the Scooby-Doo ghosts to be scary, but Neung grasped right from the start that this is joke horror. At the start of each episode, and in appropriate places, she pretends to be scared, for this is what the show demands. Me, I keep thinking of the South Park parody -- I forget the details, but it was something like "and the ghost galleon was just a projection created using this flashlight, this mirror, and these cotton buds... (Kyle: 'You've got to be kidding'...)".
If there is a compensation for our terrible case of buyers' remorse, it is Neung's attempts to sing the theme song. I can't begin to describe this; perhaps I will make a recording and post a link at some later date. But what is it with that song? For those of you who have forgotten (I trust that's everyone), it goes like this.
Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We've got some work to do now.
Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you? We need some help from you now.
Come on Scooby-Doo, I see you, pretending you've got a sliver.
You're not fooling me, 'cause I can see the way you shake and shiver.
You know we've got a mystery to solve so Scooby-Doo get ready for your act (don't hold back)
And Scooby-Doo if you come through you're going to have yourself a Scooby Snack (that's a fact).
Scooby-Dooby-Doo, here are you, you're ready and you're willin'
We can count on you, Scooby-Doo, I know we'll catch that villain.
"Pretending you've got a sliver"??!! I mean, like, zoinks, what were they thinking? Did they only have five minutes to write the theme song, or something?
30/7/2005