I'm a lyrics girl.

I'm a lyrics person. I schlepped our entire CD selection with us to China because, even though our collective music ensemble resides in the tidy digital confines of itunes, I needed access to the printed lyrics. Of course they're now in a bin in our Chinese garage, since great sites like lyrics 007 are now just a click away.

I've been a Bono fan as much for his music as for his social activism. I've listened to countless numbers of U2 songs. How was it that I never caught the lyric in Beautiful Day that references China, until I heard Lee croon the words the other night. (Yes... that Lee).

Chalk it up to a Communications degree with an emphasis in literature, but I need to read the lyrics to fully connect through the music. And now, that song, a decade after it was first penned is speaking to me where I am @ right now. (And sorry Lee... its Bono's version I needed to hear!)

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you ...

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day

Interestingly, according to Songfacts:

• The lyrics were inspired by Bono's experience with Jubilee 2000, a benefit urging politicians to drop the Third World Debt.

My Beautiful Day.

After weeks of playing this shadowy game ... where the stakes are high, and we wait to see who will flinch or balk first, it seems we have finally gained the upper hand. Checkmate. The landlord has panicked. She heard of our apartment search, and that we'd found something worth moving into. She's conceded to replace toilets, and kitchen counter tops, and the swap our mini fridge for a refrigerator with double doors. The henchmen can no longer show up unannounced (there is verbiage in the new contract). And she'll lower the rent.

We can move on with our life as normal (however normal that may be in our present environment). We can book air tickets for our time at home this summer because we won't have to worry about scheduling a move. I can plant my long awaited window herb garden-- rosemary, basil and rows of rocket (arugula). We've yet to all sign on the dotted line, but things are definitely swinging in our favor.

And so I celebrated our retention with something I'd been longing to do since the weather turned... spruce up the garden. Mr Zhang, our driver, took me to the local whole sale flower shop where I perused their wares, practiced my bargaining, and utilized my guan xi (special relationship-- as "old friend" since I was a returning customer.) I went with the equivalent of $17 USD in my change purse and came home with more than sixty bedding plants, including the two luscious hydrangea's and their new snazzy planters. Mr Zhang laid last week's newspaper in the rear of the van to tote my loot home, and smiled as he saw me in action. He didn't try to interfere on my behalf and seemed to be impressed with my bargaining acumen. He even complemented me on my price for the two pots ($3 all in) by telling me I'm becoming almost Chinese!

Once home I began laying the plants out. Trading the hydrangeas moss covered clay pots for the new black ones. Mixing fertilizer and rich black soil among the roots of each annual.

I bought 40 Marigolds. I am not particularly fond of marigolds. They are sturdy, and somewhat arrogant plants, that don't smell nice (which is why I bought them. The feral cats are plentiful in our area of the complex, and after their raging cat orgies in late February, their population has now exploded.) But beyond their usefulness I found, after experimenting with them last year, that marigolds are consistent. And with the soil we have in the yard here, I'll take whatever I can get.

It's feeling more and more right to stay. We saw some very nice, even large homes-- some up to 300 sq meters (around 3230 sq ft), but not one with a garden/yard as big as ours. And only one with a garage, but they were curiously converting it into a bedroom. We saw one mammoth, multi-story behemoth with rabid looking guard dogs in the garden, pulling at the end of their heavy chains. The place had been carved up into lots of dark tiny rooms, and each level had roughly the same layout. I was sure that at some point during that tour we would round a corner and have the Cheshire Cat tell us we were, "Almost Alice."

We are all a little relieved to be staying put. The girls didn't want to move. Even when lured with a third floor floor plan, and promise of big playroom. This place where we've lived for four years, simply feels like home to them.

As I worked the plants into the ground, and transplanted roses that were placed in too shady a spot, I thought how each year the garden seems to yield a little more easily. Each year its a little less work, and increasingly mature.

I hoped it was an analogy to my time in China. But, I had to catch myself and consider the ebb and flow of the garden life. I had to remember that things looked beautiful now because the parched land had just drunk deeply from a slow and gentle two-day spring rain. The new grass seed had taken in some spots because the spring sun is not as unrelenting as the summer rays. There are highs and lows to this life. There are months when I find my language skills yue lai yue hao (getting better and better), only to turn around one day and realize I've plateaued again. (I've dropped lessons from May onwards --since April really-- because I was wasting my time and my teacher's. I'm focusing on conversations with anyone who will talk to me now, because sometimes immersion is better for me than two hour language sessions.) Life is a sweet journey along a sine curve. A straight line, after all, would be quite boring!

Bei Bei came home at noon and we went to the bird and flower market. At the market I got fresh cut flowers for each of the girls bedrooms: beautiful orchid blossoms, painfully beautiful, for my oldest; deep red Gerbera daisies with long tubular stems for my middle who loves all things red. Bei Bei picked a bundle of simple carnation pink carnations, and I endulged my self with two dozen creamy white roses. (Total price: 93 rmb, about $13 US + $1 for the fish Bei Bei bargained for herself-- no shop keeper can deny the cute blonde haired, blue eyed five-year-old who converses in Chinese! "Too expensive!" she retorts, and they cave with a grin.)

Bei Bei selected five gold fish and six water plants for our large ceramic fish bowl. We came home and set up the fish, she found a snail, we watered plants and pulled weeds. The big girls came home at 4:00. They played in the garden. E. helped dead head our earlier plantings and hang my new solar powered lanterns.

Mr. Johnson returned after 5:00 and started the grill. The girls took a bath and set the picnic table in their PJs. We enjoyed grilled chicken with peaches, a cool night among new plants and sweet children.

We saw...

the world in green and blue

saw China right in front of you

It was a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

Beautiful day

In the Garden Collecting Snails

"It feels like a massage!" she enthused, as she (lacking any sense of squeamishness) handled the slimy creature. She studied his characteristics and movements. She named him "Snailie". She cried when he eventually slipped from her gentle, grubby hands.

Don't worry. She still has a fish bowl full of evolving tadpoles. And five new slippery gold fish for the outdoor fish bowl. And her ant farm (presently on loan to her pre-school classroom.)

In the garden collecting snails,

on the bed reading fairy-tales,

I get all I'll ever need

from three little girls

J.J. Cale & Eric Clapton

A Good Year Blimp ... Really?

So Sunday night were were sitting out in the garden, as you do this time of year. It was nearing dusk. We had just finished our end-of-the-weekend picnic... Spicy salami and soft German bretzelin for The Three (with generous gobs of sweet mustard for the two who wanted it.) And sushi rolls for Mr. Johnson and I with generous gobs of wasabi paste, when we looked up and saw a Good Year blimp, soundlessly hovering just meters above the neighboring apartment building. The Good Year blimp... visible from our back yard!

Mr. Johnson dashed to the house to get a camera, but by the time he returned it had floated toward the coast and was heading East.

We have been marveling as of late of all the things that have arrived in Qingdao since we arrived four and half years ago:

The Goodyear Blimp, Baskin Robbins, Subway, Dairy Queen, Papa John's, Zara, H & M, Hooters-- though we inappropriately joke it must be hard to find buxom, well-endowed wait staff in the land of the padded A cup. (Or as my cheeky South African friend once quipped, "those aren't breasts, those are lift buttons!") We have at least three movie theaters that sometimes show movies in English (ticket prices are based on length of the film ... which reminds me of MGJ's recent trip to the dentist where they charged by tooth for the cleaning.) The new Sephora that opened sells Clinque (Clinique!! Though at quite a mark up from what I can procure it for at the Carson Pirie Scott counter at home.) It's almost not hard to live in China anymore, we joke. Except perhaps for those of us who need more than just an A cup!

Lucky, Lucky, Liza Lu

Honest. Gutsy. and Saying Goodbye.

I saw our friends off on Friday.

I watched as they said good-bye to each one of his staffers on the back steps of their building. I watched as stoic 20-something Chinese guys, with stylish haircuts and handsome suits tried to stave off their own tears as they sent their German boss and his family off with good wishes. I watched as his female staffers, dabbed self consciously at wet eyes, and realized mine were wet as well.

Then, at last, it was our turn. The time came for the final embraces, for the final double kiss (one on each cheek), the Final Goodbye.

Then we watched as the they climbed in a van headed east down Donghai Lu toward the airport, with one-way tickets out of China tucked into their passports. And we finally saw them off.

But we had been seeing them off all week:

@ All day play date when their girls came to hang out with us as the packers came to their place and boxed up their life into tidy rows and stacks of cardboard and bubble wrap

@ The Korean BBQ dinner at the end of that exhausting day

@ Our all day play date two days later where my friend graciously carved out hours in their fleeting moments to hang out with us. (I busted the big girls out of school for the afternoon and we enjoyed laughter and sunshine and tea in the garden to the chorus of five girlies who function like sisters.)

@ the outside courtyard of a recently opened mall, where we were joined by Canadian friends. It was a "this-could-only-happen-in-China Dinner": The Kids armed with Hello Kitty Happy Meals from the Golden Arches, The Adults with trays of Indian food sneaked out of the food court (it was far too beautiful an evening to be cooped inside the confines and din of a Chinese basement canteen!), and a bottle of vino surreptitiously pulled from a handbag and poured into paper cups. Under a inky black sky, and the heady combination of curry and merlot we toasted friendship, and families, and laughed at the visual reminders we will always have of China when a local father coached is toddler to crouch and pee not 10 feet from where we (and others) where dining alfresco!

We have going away parties scheduled every Saturday (beginning last week) for four weeks in a row. It's a bitter-sweet time of year.

Friday night it all caught up with me. (The way emotion comes and rolls over me like a wave is never predictable.) Mr. Johnson and I were out to dinner at our favorite Italian joint, nearing the end of the meal, and overwhelmed by exhaustion from a busy and emotional week, and quite possibly by the fabulous antipasti, wood fired pizza, and seafood pasta we had just consumed. He caught my eye, and held my hand, and I felt the tears begin, dripping from my eyelashes, rolling unchecked and unabashed down my cheek.

Perhaps it was simply

the moment,

or the house red,

or the fact we were dining in Italian restaurant next to a long table of actual Italian citizens.

Two quick tangents:
1. There is never a better sign that you are at a good Italian restaurant than to have Italians deeming it Delizioso.
2. Olive Garden will never cut it after Trattoria Verde!

But I honestly think the Italians had something to do with it. Nothing is more honest than macho men who can greet each other with a brotherly kiss. Nothing is more gutsy than an adult man who can rock a white leather belt.

I love honest and gutsy. Its a huge part of what it takes to make a go of living abroad. And you have to be a little of both to let your emotions show. Traditionally, Italians have cornered the market on these traits, and they are noble ones to emulate.

I cried because I missed my friends already. I cried because its sad to see people go. But I also cried because of the richness and complexity that comes with the life we've chosen. Our lives are enriched by the people we meet, the culture we live in and opportunities we have here. The stakes sometimes are incredibly high. You meet and develop friendships with people for a relatively temporary amount of time, but not necessarily in a temporary way. But the payoffs are worth it, I can see that, even through the tears.

"The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal."

Shadowlands

Lockdown.

In 1999, I was a week from my due date with our first child when two teenage boys, tired of being bullied by their peers, and unsure of how to deal with their depression, emotions and rage, walked into their Colorado high school, and killed twelve classmates and a teacher, and injured 21 others before turning their weapons on themselves.

With a heavy heart and a swollen belly, I went to work the next day. My boss, a mother herself and also a grandmother, shared the same sense of heaviness that swept across America that day.

But she also had some thoughtful words for me as I was on the cusp of parenthood, and contemplating the wisdom of bringing a child into this increasingly dark world.

She shared some basic but encouraging thoughts:

Everyone feels this way about parenting at one time or another.

And ... there will always be terrible things happening in the world.

But ... it shouldn't stop us from bringing little people into it.

And... it can't stifle the joy that comes from having them in our lives.

Of course her words proved all too true:

Two years later when I was pregnant with our second I watched on live TV as that second plane flew into that second tower changing forever life as we know it.

But she was right in other ways too:

My children have also changed my life from how I once knew it.

All for the better.

Even if there are difficult questions, and hard facts, and things that they learn about life and the world we live in.

"They said 'Lock down' lots of times at school today," my pre-schooler told me non-nonchalantly last week.

Fifteen times to be exact. The word Lock down .... chanted 15 times over the loudspeakers as a drill. Doors where locked. Heads counted. Prayers said.

I knew because the school sent a note home explaining it. Encouraging parents to give age appropriate information about the lockdown procedure.

I also knew because my 8 year-old has been talking about mental illness and the importance of making it to the closest classroom in the event she is outside of her own if "Lockdown" is intoned.

We live in China, and for the four years we've been here I have felt safer in public and private places than I would if living in a comparably sized city in North America. Chinese citizens are not allowed access to guns. They face great consequences if charged with/accused of a crime (not just if they are convicted of a crime -- but in Chinese society its almost the same.) You are guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around, and it makes for a society fearful to step too far out of line.

But there have been some issues of late. Demented or angry people taking out frustrations on their Society's most innocent. There have been several incidents across China (remember this is a HUGE country with a HUGE population... one our of every six people on the planet live under the Red flag with yellow stars!). Incidents involving attacks directly on students and at Kindergartens. There have been additional incidents they describe as "copy cat."

So, when I walk to the bus stop to get our girlies each afternoon, I wave to the local police officer who has been stationed outside the gate of the small Chinese kindie Bei Bei attended last year. At the girls international school there is heightened security as well, and practices for "Lock downs," and a reminder that this world is indeed flawed.

So we are talking about "Lock downs" on three age-appropriate levels. And we are doing homework and eating meals, and having play dates. We read continue to read Charlotte's Web aloud in the evenings, taking turns reading from two battered copies. We tuck the girls in, kiss them good night, adjust pillows, turn on night lights and remember that although this world is flawed, there also remains much beauty.

Goodbye Season

It's a long, sad week of good-bye. We are packing in as much as we can into this short time: playdates, coffees, dinners ... with our friends who will soon emigrate to North America.

When we left them after dinner last night I told Mr. Johnson it's like hospice. You sit, forcing a smile to cover your sadness, smiling at the people who love to be with, fearful to make eye contact for too long, lest they see the misty eyes. You know that the moments are ticking away, and you know that they are going to a better place... but we are feeling so sad to loose them all the same.

E. and I had a good 30 minute cry before she finally climbed to her top bunk last night.

We're still scoping tickets for this summer, but I think we'll have to add Vancouver to the itinerary.

Soccer - Team Brasil

photos by: vincent wu

All rights reserved

A farm girl, an Indian girl, and Princess Leia Walk into an International School for "Book Week"

Last Thursday the girls were supposed to dress like a character from a book. This has been a rather popular tradition in our home. (E. won in Year One for her portrayal of Horton from the Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hears a Who, and again in Year Two when she went as Miss Frizzle of the Magic School Bus Series fame.) This year proved just as exciting!

MGJ had several options floating about. Princess Mia from the Meg Cabbot series was her original idea, but then at the last minute she decided to don the Indian dress we picked up Kuala Lumpur's Little India, and dressed like a character from the little known book, Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman.

Bei Bei has been planning her costume for this exiting event for more than a year. She has wanted to be Princess Leia. Specifically, she wanted to dress like famous Star Wars princess dressed in Return of the Jedi when Leia rocked the metal bikini. We managed to talk her into the classic long flowing dress, which she was very pleased with.

E. didn't have any specific character she wanted to be. She tossed around the idea of Hermoine (she has cruised through the J.K. Rowling series this year), but decided against it, as every year there are many Harry's or Hermoine's making appearances at book week. She opted instead for Fern from E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. (We are reading Charlotte aloud in the evenings.) E. made a rather convincing Fern Arable, don't you think?

Eat. Pray. Love. Read. Swim.