distant ruminations

You just know that a day that starts with you being woken just after 5am and told “Get up and go light those firecrackers” is going to be exhausting. And that was how May Day started for me. It’s not just that I’m this family’s Fuse Lighter In Chief, not this time. That, and that I’m the father of the baby whose first month was to be celebrated that day. The first two strings of crackers went off without a hitch. Sparks from the third string set off strings four and five, creating quite a nice roar, leaving the sixth string as a pleasant denouement. Then my wife suggested I lie back down on the kang and get a bit more sleep. Too late, I’m wide awake now. There are reasons why I’m Fuse Lighter In Chief, and those reasons don’t stop at me being the only one either dumb or crazy (or quite possibly both) enough to get that close to explosives with short fuses carrying a naked flame.

Fortunately in the waiting that followed CCTV News broadcast one of those rare programmes actually worth watching, a documentary about five plays based on five of Lao She’s short stories in whose production Lao She’s son had been involved. Of course, watching this programme was interrupted several times by the demands of a month-old baby, but it seems these interruptions come with the territory.

Our daughter reached 满月 at the end of last week, one month old. Exactly which day depends on which calendar you’re using. This is a big deal here, and it’s not hard to imagine why. It’s not that long ago that, even in the fabled Western developed countries, life, especially in its early stages, was a very precarious experience, somewhat analogous to walking on ice at the top of a cliff. Chinese tradition requires a celebration.

Also, reaching 满月 means my wife and daughter are allowed outside again. One month’s confinement makes no difference to the baby, as she doesn’t know the difference, but it takes quite a toll on a woman who was never suited to the old-fashioned housewifely life. Fortunately a couple of her close friends did come to visit during that first month, and the improvement in my wife’s mood on the arrival of her friends was dramatically heartlifting. If she couldn’t go out, at least a little contact with the outside world would help stop her from going stark raving mad.

And here’s what bugged me about the process: Explaining to other non-Chinese that my wife was 坐月子/in her month of confinement after childbirth generally met with a “Oh, the Chinese are so superstitious!” response. And yes, that is as true as any other gross generalisation. And I was going home to a wife and child who, according to the strictest versions of the traditions, were not allowed to wash in any way for a month. And sometimes it got all a bit too much and my tongue bears the scars of much biting. How can the child of one born and raised in Wellington, of all places, be scared of wind?! And yet the confinement, wrapped up as it may be in so much superstition, fundamentally makes sense. A newborn baby has no immune system – that’s what colostrum is for. Giving birth is a stressful experience, and stress damages the immune system. Keeping mother and child away from the world for a time while they (re)build their immune systems strikes me as a pretty smart thing to do.

And so Friday I bundled my wife, daughter and mother in law and the requisite supplies into our tiny little Suzuki and drove them out to my wife’s home village where the official celebrations were to take place.

Mid-morning on the day that started early with firecrackers some of the extended family started gathering at my parents-in-law’s house, great aunties clucked and cooed over my daughter, debating which of us she looked most like, the paleness of her skin, and exactly what colour her hair will turn out to be. Uncles preferred to hang in the courtyard smoking and shooting the breeze. Cousins alternated between chatting with parents, uncles and aunts and chasing kids. At some point I was taken away to do chauffeur duty, first carting a few cartons and crates of drinks and smokes down to the restaurant on the other side of the old highway at the other end of the village, then to collect and deliver to the restaurant some of the elderly and less mobile members of the tribe. In other words, much driving through narrow village lanes, at super-slow speeds ready to stop at any sudden emergence from a gate or even narrower side lane – often putting the car in 2nd gear and leaving my right foot hovering over the brake, touching the accelerator ever so slightly where an uphill run required just that little bit more than an idling engine and 2nd gear could provide. There was much delicate easing between parked vehicles of varying descriptions and brick walls or power poles. I am glad, for many reasons, that we bought a small car.

The restaurant wasn’t much to look at from the outside. A one storey, probably brick coated in plaster and paint, building on the lower side of the old highway, a functional paint job and a sign pronouncing its (now forgotten) name. The front room was an iteration on the standard local restaurant theme, tile floor, plaster walls with minimal decoration, counter at one end behind which stood a shelf bearing the baijius on offer, wooden tables of the 4-seater size and matching wooden chairs in rows along both walls. Stepping through a door brought me into a large – note, not cavernous, as in those restaurants around the fringes of inner city Beijing that specialise in the wedding trade, nor even gigantic as one can find in such restaurants in Yanqing County Town, just large – room with three rows of five 10-seater sized tables and at one end a low platform with a permanent wedding decoration with gaps for the names of the new couple on the wall above it, and at the opposite end the kitchens. Apart from plastic vines trailed up the columns and along the base of the raised, skylighted ceiling, the decor was identical with that of the front room – pleasant and functional. A door led somewhere further back, apparently into another one storey brick building visible through the windows along the south wall that seemed connected to the restaurant.

And this, at three tables along the inner wall of the large room, is where the tribe gathered. Some so old they needed to be driven to the door, helped out of the car, and escorted to a seat, others so young they had no idea why they were here, but could see space to run around and soft drinks and good food. Everybody but she whose first month of life we were celebrating, her mother, and her mother’s cousin.

And it’s probably best that way, as when the uncles gather it’s not just baijiu that flows, but smoke too. So leaving my daughter at home, my wife there to take care of her, and one of my wife’s cousins to take care of my wife left the uncles free to celebrate as best they know how. And they did, trust me on that. I found myself pouring out baijiu for three old codgers, subject to the usual friendly ritual humiliation senior men dish out to their juniors, sticking to Sprite myself, still being on chauffeur duty, and glad for it knowing the livers of these three old codgers. Baibai is not dumb, and a bit of a trickster, but not quite as smart as he’d like to be. When he’s getting wasted he likes to hassle others, but in a friendly way, but he tends to lose track of just how far gone he himself is. Dagufu I don’t know very well, seeing him basically once a year at Spring Festival and then at big family gatherings as they happen. The tribe isn’t big enough that I’ve seen him more than twice in one year. Laogufu likes his drink just a bit too much, but he’s one of those fundamentally decent blokes with a slight protective streak who you know will call enough when enough has been reached. Sober he’s silent, and the drink brings him out, but in his eyes you can see the desire to nurture. Two of those three are grandfathers, and seeing them with their grandsons is a veritable picture of grandpaternal warmth.

A big, hearty meal, country-style, more food than the tables could hold, solid food, the kind that has good, strong flavour and plenty of fuel. A good meal, in other words. Then the crowd dispersed a thousand times quicker than it had gathered. Rural life gets you no holidays, no days off. The elderly were ferried home, not being up to walking to the other end of the village, then those who were too busy hosting finally got a chance to eat. Then we packed up the leftovers and headed home.

And after two hours of sleep, I still felt exhausted.

But our daughter’s first month of life was properly celebrated and, as exhausting as it may have been, it was a lot of fun.

Two weeks and two days ago my daughter was born.

Well I think it’s fine, building jumbo planes.

Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.

Switch on summer from a slot machine.

Yes, get what you want if you want, ’cause you can get anything.

One thing I think nobody bothers to tell you is just how icky the birth process is. Blood and other fluids and mess and pain and terrified, powerless husband sitting there watching doing what little he can to help. And then this head pops out looking for all the world like something out of one of those alien horror movies and you’re thinking “How the hell does something so collossal get squeezed through such a tiny hole?” And the eyes and mouth are screwed shut in the most extreme discomfort. And then there’s that first tentative, plaintive cry and you realise you’ve been holding your breath and your heart starts beating again and your brain melts under a tsunami of relief and love and happy neurotransmitters. Then she finds the full force of her lungs and expresses her displeasure with the ordeal she’s just been squished through and the doctor says, “It’s a girl” and when they’re done cleaning her up they hold her up bottom first so we can see it’s a girl and tell us again just to make sure we believe both what they’re telling us and what we’re seeing. And having watched her produce your first child your respect and love for your wife is instantly magnified so many gazillions of times even a mathematician couldn’t count.

And two nights and a day of contractions and pain and cold, impersonal staff and running from counter to booth to plastic bench in the corridor to eventually a bed and up to the birthing suite for 17  hours forced separation with no information and messages not delivered and brutally dismissive staff and pacing the corridor, occasionally steeping outside for fresh air and to cool off because you’ve caught yourself making careful note of the positions of the security cameras for when you decide to explain just how angry you are with the lack of information and bad attitudes, catching what snatches of sleep can be caught on the plastic seats around the walls of the lobby and final reunification in the delivery room with me calling out for a doctor or somebody, anybody professional to come and help and more coolly impersonal but at least professional staff to finally deliver the baby, all of that is forgiven, forgotten. Temporarily.

3618 grams. I run to the door to tell my mother in law, who asks how much is that? Fortunately the brother in law has arrived, saving my addled brain from having to multiply by two. Seven jin two liang. My mother, on the phone later that day, asks the same question. Oops, I’d forgotten to do the calculation, so I do it later and email the result to her. Seven pounds fifteen ounces. 52 cm long. Nobody needs that converted into older measurements.

And then it’s quiet and we’re left alone with our daughter lying in her cradle, eyes wide open sucking all she can see, a sceptical look on her little face as if she’s carefully noting everything and filing it away for later analysis, and she looks so perfect and fragile and vulnerable and complete even the least religiously minded could understand the full meanings of the words ‘blessing’ and ‘miracle’.

And you roll on roads over fresh green grass.

For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.

And you make them long, and you make them tough.

And they just go on and on, and it seems that you can’t get off.

And after four days in a small, overcrowded room in the ward and still more bureaucracy I pile them into a car made very warm by the sun, and believe me, I’ve never driven more slowly and carefully since I was a learner driver, except this time, of course, it wasn’t a nervous lack of confidence in my ability to handle the vehicle. I was acutely aware at every second of that little life in her carseat so completely dependent on my actions for every aspect of her health and well-being.

But we’re finally free of that horrible hospital. The one friendly nurse, who is warm and friendly to the point of getting just a bit too intrusive for my tastes, only serves to magnify the generally cold, impersonal, bureaucratic production line nature of the hospital and I hate it. I hate it so much driving out the gate that last time felt almost as good as the last step I took out of the gate of my high school. I’ll have to go back to get my daughter’s birth certificate, but I’ll cope. And it’s one of Beijing’s better hospitals. We know that because of the crowds. And no staff trying to hawk milk powder. And their insistence on natural, vaginal birth unless the medical circumstances actually render a c-section the safer option.

But they’re home now, my wife and daughter. Home and enrolled in the local hospital where she’ll get her vaccinations. Home where they belong, where they have space and privacy, where we can settle in to being a family.

Why do they call newborn babies a “bundle of joy”? That’s far too simplistic. Joy, yes. And confusion and frustration as we try to decipher her cries and find where the instruction book was hidden. And disturbed sleep. And terror. This life is so fragile, so vulnerable, and so totally dependent on us. My wife has enough trouble taking care of me and now I’m a father. I’m terrified I’ll do something wrong and break her. And then her big, dark eyes look up at me and around the room and suck in all the information they can get. Or she smiles. And ‘joy’ just doesn’t cut it. ‘Joy’ just doesn’t even come close to describing that feeling.

Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.

But will you keep on building higher ’til there’s no more room up there.

Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?

Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

And I don’t think Cat Stevens and I are the only two to have ever mourned the loss of a simpler innocence in which children could simply be children. I don’t think we’re the only ones to have ever felt lost and overwhelmed and drowning under the weight of concrete and steel and copper and plastic and technology. My mind somehow desperately retains a memory, battered, withered and fading, of grass and bushes and trees, riverbanks and seashore, sunlight, rain, a gentle breeze and wide, open space in which every step is adventure. Well, Tolkien seems to have felt a similar way. And this idea has become so utterly cliche’d it is now all but impossible to express, since expression requires a recipient on the other end to not nod off in boredom.

I know we’ve come a long way,

We’re changing day to day,

But tell me, where do the children play?

And that’s what I’ve been asking for months as my wife’s belly has swollen. And it’s what I ask every time I look at my daughter and at the world we’ve brought her into. Because to be honest, I don’t think I’ve even started to begin understanding what’s going on out here.

And then I find myself wondering if that innocent time ever even existed. Was it just a dream? Have we been lied to? Does it perhaps exist in some alternate dimension to which a few of us have somehow managed to maintain just barely enough of a last vestigial spiritual link to keep the dream alive, even if in a drastically weakened state, a dimension to which artists and poets and prophets occasionally open a tiny, smudged, blurry window? Or is it just the wishful thinking of those too weak to cope with the hardness of the modern world? Or the wishful thinking of those too strong stubborn to give in?

I don’t know, but I look around and it bugs me. Is there anywhere left for my daughter to play?

[Quotations, but I suspect you all know this, from Where do the Children Play? by Cat Stevens.]

…and so we wait.

The hospital’s alright. We know that because it’s so crowded. There wouldn’t be such a huge demand for its services otherwise.

Based on my experiences those times I’ve accompanied my wife to a check up, Monday mornings are worst. Friday midday and early afternoon isn’t too bad, although the lack of newspapers at the kiosk in the main lobby was a worry. Still, I got me a paper. See, the waiting is so interminable for those of us there in a support role that reading material is essential for me. And then the waiting reached the point where I wandered out of the hospital grounds and down to the nearest newsagents for a couple of magazines. Hospitals of this nature have an awful lot of doors bearing signs saying things like “no men beyond this point”, or even “no family members”.

Naturally enough, considering this hospital’s specialty, there’s a multitude of women in various stages of gravidity, from barely bumpy bellies up to centre of gravity thrown way off and moving oddly in order to maintain balance. But somehow today seemed to feature a lot more little warmly-wrapped bundles bearing tiny, bamboozled, overwhelmed and incredibly sleepy-looking babies. Still, considering how much there is to take in when one has just popped out into this world, it’s no suprise how these newborns looked. Indeed, considering the massive sensory overload a newborn must experience, let alone all the indignities a baby must suffer, it’s probably a good thing that it takes so long for babies to start developing memories.

And I had the good fortune to be born on what is by global standards a goodly-sized island in a country that had at that point maybe 3 million people and roughly 20 times as many sheep. The sheep population has since shrunk drastically, while the human population is roughly a fifth that of Beijing. And here we are waiting for our firstborn…

Waiting. 40 weeks and counting, and the only problem the doctors saw today was that there’s no sign of this baby popping out to meet us in the next few days.