Get Up Eight

When you hear my voice inside your head

what does it say

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Leaving day has come

Despite my best intentions

And fight.

First born Rhino is ready

But,

I am not.

I stand outside his room as he gathers the last of his items, folds a last of his just washed shirts and places it methodically into a suitcase.

I take a moment to stare at his bags, neatly arrayed three wide, incredulous. His most important possessions and clothes inside

waiting to be whisked away, with my most important possession

Is this really how it goes?

His smile, generous character, easygoing, affable, burgeoning sense of who he is

All of it

Is saying goodbye, tonight.

And, while I am not ready

I do not have a choice in the matter.

Neil Gaiman wrote it best, when he said (roughly) ‘ the cruelest, most bitter irony of parenting is that if you do your job to completion,

your children say goodbye.

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J paces and braces upstairs

the echo of the speaker paints the stairwell

It’s go time.

I don’t know the best time to say this so I choose now, because, maybe, it’s what I want for him to do as well

choose now

be here

steady

alive

make your way into this world. All its pain, and struggle, and tears.

Remember where you came from.

I lean into him, tears streaking

when you hear my voice

remember what it says

that you are thoughtful

generous,

caring,

talented,

brave,

compassionate

and

you are loved.

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We are at work.

Tiny hands, smooth and nimble, grasp pencils. Some hold with greater confidence and care than others. The hands transmit thought, idea, wealth of knowing, to the page.

We’ve done our best to set kids up for success, shared experiences, multiple modes of learning, conversations and collaborations.

Their work today is to show what they understand.

Hmmmm?

Ooohhhhhh, ok.

Scattered coughs and clearing of throats. They are focused and hard at work, huddled somewhere between transmission and receipt, uncovering and broadcasting their understanding, such as it is.

The work we do as educators is amorphous, opaque.

Is this a good measure of what they know?

Did they get it?

and the kicker

What’s our plan if they don’t?

Quiet music serenades this dance

You said, ‘hold gently what you wish to grow old with’

Like a sparrow in your hands still needs to fly

Hold gently what you wish to grow old with

Don’t close those hands’

My old hands are here, too.

They point, nudge,

encourage.

But these old hands don’t work like they used to. Time has not been kind to them, fastening buttons and holding a pencil are uncomfortable chores, the result of nerve damage over years reminding me, on the daily

you’re not a kid anymore.

But the time and space around me, in this moment, is filled with tiny, powerful hands. And they remind me of a time when I, too, grasped a pencil with confidence and care.

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There’s a classic Far Side comic where a man, just waking up, sits on the side of his bed, still in his pajamas.

He’s staring at the wall, featuring a huge white poster with his morning reminder:

First pants, THEN your shoes.

My motorbike has a switch connected to the ignition. When I kick out the stand to put the bike to rest, the engine itself kicks out. Without turning off the ignition switch.

If the switch is left on, there’s a trickle, trickle, trickle draining of the battery. So if I leave the bike parked for a few hours, it’s goodbye starter, and an instant stranding.

It’s taken me upwards of half a dozen times, dependent on friends and colleagues to bail me out, to learn not to do so. On the sixth time, I felt like I needed a huge wall sign to stick on the bike.

First switch, then the kickstand.

Today, I’ve got that persistent, tired behind the eyes fog. I power myself to get out the door and hop on the bike. It starts without a problem and I make my way to school.

I power through my morning, and in a moment of bewilderment at a couple young third graders who, through no fault of their own, are confused and behaving like, well, children, I blurt, without thinking,

First pants, THEN your shoes!

They stare, befuddled.

And in the moment, this remembrance of laughs past takes the edge off, and makes me smile.

---

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There are echoes, tonight.

Only the very best kind.

We appreciate our home, perhaps most acutely when we welcome guests.

And tonight, I’m up on the third floor. Listening to the laundry dance and shuffle, waiting for this cycle to finish.

I am tired

But it’s a good tired.

There are four more voices ringing the halls tonight.

Hello

Dad‘s trying to get onto the Internet

I’ve got the password

Is it working?

I think so

I hear a chuckle from sister two doors down as she catches up with family on a call.

Footfalls echo up and down the stairs.

Bags are offloaded, toothbrushes put to work. The zip zip of suitcases finding temporary rest.

When you have visitors, it helps you put your eye on wants, needs, and luxuries.

And as the laundry machine signals its work coming to a close, I appreciate the ones who’ve come from so far,

and the space they will inhabit,

if only for a short while.

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I scribble my name in red pen, heading the list.

Eight more names accompany fat 500K bills into the pot, and we’re in business.

Seats at the table, cards in hand.

We know when to hold, when to fold. Our biggest challenge is when to walk away.

And btw, Kenny, you absolutely count your money when you’re sitting at the table, not just when the dealing’s done.

How do you all do with the climate here? It’s so gray and dark for so much of the year 

Oh, yeah. The other day we saw a sliver of sunlight peek through at the café underneath our place. So we stretched and reached, just to be in it.

So, vacation, you head for the sun? 

Yeh, one of the first things we think about.

The conversation flows, easy and unforced. We mostly know each other at this point, a product of monthly tourneys and cash games on the regular for about three years now.

Silence is broken by regular and repeated prompts, splashing of chips across the dark hard wood of the table

you’re big blind

I call

re-raise

blinds are up

We are seated, together, for something as mundane as two decks of cards, chips,

and chips.

We nibble and scarf the healthy and not-so healthy snacks. Make a few good choices, plus a couple bad ones.

---

A boatload of uncertainty follows when we make a choice to live abroad.

A life far from home is fraught with transition. And loss. Untethered and wayward, we scramble for ways to ground ourselves. 

And on this cloudy, oppressive Moldy March evening, we find what we need indoors.

the sunshine is coming from inside the house

This table has just what we need: community, connection, a taste of home.

There are good people everywhere

you just need to know where to find them

tonight, they’re here.

A family pot is met with a toast. Glasses raised, as if to say

we are here

we did it

---

One by one, the field in this tourney whittles itself down.

the players, this time in black ink on a laptop, recap their own tales of woe, regret, and dumb luck.

SH – first out

LS – two hands after losing half of his stack when MK hit a flush to beat his trip Qs, AK off loses to MK’s pocket 10s

JG – Killed, by a  no-look straight from LH

TN – up A9 to BM’s A6, but she hits the 6 to send T home, literally (it’s 9:45 and 90 minutes past his bed time)

AVO – LS all-in on AK vs. all-in A4 suited did not end well

BM – Pocket Aces, cracked!

LH – AK vs luckbox D’s A4….4 on the flop (lol, this game is so dumb)

MK – Deep stack DR pushes MK all in with 73…call with A9….7 on the river (lol this game is so dumber)

When you’re hot, you’re hot.

A brief debrief, plus recess, then play continues, post-tourney style. Cash game time.

Pockets and lips loosen, stakes lower, hero calls ramp up.

We smile and laugh our way forward, a couple hours more.

bluetooth speaker tracks the play, afro-beats and all-time bangers.

Song and poetry punctuate play

I want to live a life that is worth living

one route, like there is only one way out

so what if I fall

better that I try instead of nothing at all

Ceramic chips migrate around the table, much as their owners make their way around the world.

Play eventually slows,

friends bid goodnight and trickle out

see you in April

I lock the shutters, gather leftover carrots and dipping peppers, recycle a few too many cans, toss empty chip bags and chocolate wrappers.

Dishes into the sink, soaking with hot, soapy water.

I love these quiet moments of after-guest soothe.

Listen to a podcast to wind down. The hosts are discussing, of all things, the Winnipeg Jets (despite missing tonight’s game, league commish Big E makes his presence felt), when one of them asks, rhetorically

did you know that writing in red ink is unlucky

Huh

tonight, lucky in cards and lucky at life, I think I disagree.

---

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The haze is ever present these days 

We’d come to (hopefully) the end to a rough run of AQI, possibly the worst we’ve seen in our years here.

We deal. And make sense of bad air, with a mask, and

with gratitude.

Because we are here by choice. And the pros way outweigh the bad air cons.

Not to mention, many Hanoi residents don’t have the choices we do. They live with it, accumulating hours upon hours in the haze, without compromising their spirit, drive, or eternal, boundless sense of community. 

We are here

Today they’re all out. The morning AQI started rough, but has since cleared. We’re down around the 200 range.

Just slightly hazardous. 

And, believe it or not, just around the ‘slightly hazardous’ range picks up our mood.

The sun peeks through the haze, muted and toney. Like all the joggers who make their way past. I’m sitting near the pond watching the farm ladies set up some sort of scaffold for the plants they will grow.

Hard work is not a novelty here,

it is the norm.

And these six hat wearing worker bees are putting it in, both metaphorically and literally. 

As they strain to support each other, one of them makes some kind of comment, and four of them at once burst with laughter.

It seems there’s joy in this work for them.

And it seems they’ve created their own. 

And I remind myself that being happy is a choice

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The pain has been around since the middle of the night. 

Throat feels raw, first scratchy, now a bit more intense.

We had an important music performance this morning. Parents on campus, families everywhere, the type of thing that you can just can’t miss.

Fortunately, finished by morning recess.  

But the pain was not. 

I sneak down to the nurse, who always welcomes me with empathy and care. She takes my temperature, then looks at my throat. She gives me some ibuprofen and strepsils.

And recommends that I rest. 

I shoot off a couple of messages to my team, and my supervisor. 

Throat has gotten progressively worse. I’m going home to rest

My co-teacher and ‘work sister’, compassionate soul that she is, insists on sending me home 

We will be fine 

She says

And I know she’s telling the truth. 

I’m grateful to be among colleagues who care and look out for each other. Nurse’s orders are to go get some spicy pho with greens, plenty of garlic, and steamy hot broth.

One of the many amazing parts of living here is that there are literally hundreds of shops with a meal ticket designed just for a sore throat 

The steam rises off the bowl as I ladle a spoonful of red, spicy sauce and a healthy portion of pickled garlic slices.

I sip the broth

grateful for this easy, ready cure

for what ails.

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