Stay at home, Dad. Stay! Gooood Dad ...

Hard to keep up with the epic blaga, even at the sub-glacial speed of every couple of weeks. Allison has become the Road Warrior; she’s coming off a five-day trip to Japan, and another to Singapore and Malaysia; tomorrow she flies to Thailand, and between now and mid-December she has trips to India, Australia, and Phoenix AZ, each one about six days long. In one really tough stretch, she’ll be home for roughly 24 hours at a time, three times, in three weeks. If the travel sounds glam, just imagine the flights, and the time-changes -- and these trips include some red-eyes that pull into Shanghai at the start of a full workday for her. When I think of what she’ll have to deal with, I don’t feel quite so much like complaining about shopping or diapers or my grueling blogging schedule.

We keep telling each other this is temporary, that her travel schedule will cool off after an initial round of meet-and-greets, and hopefully that’s true, but right now we really have to savor the time we do get. When she’s home, the boys just want to gobble her up, and I think they would gladly crawl over the lifeless husk of my body if need be to get to her lap; when she’s away, my second-banana status ends, and my lap becomes the place to be in all of China. It can be an exhausting marathon, and like a real marathon it can bring moments of exhiliration and intense satisfaction. Every day, both Kai and Keegan stun me with their surprising wit, with the voracious pace of their learning, with their ability to fill diapers to the brim and beyond. A couple of days ago we saw a cat in a neighbor’s window, and I asked Kai what the cat says. Kai did a pretty credible elephant impression. I didn’t say anything, just looked at him quizzically. He told me, “The kitty cat thinks he’s a elephant, Daddy.” Keegie, meanwhile, has had his elephant impression down for a while, but he’s adding to his repetoire with chicken, cow, tiger, and bear sounds, plus a spectacular rendition of a giraffe, done with a neck-stretch. He seems to get a new word every day, and a few of them are Chinese, like “Hao,” which means “good,” and our favorite -- Keegan’s first word in Chinese -- “Hai Bao” which isn’t exactly a word, but the name of a ubiquitous, cartoony blue guy who is the mascot for the Shanghai Expo -- sort of a Chinese Gumby, but with a higher public profile than either Mao or Michael Jordan in their respective heydays.

The boys and I have been keeping busy with our weekly music class, pottery class, assorted playgroups, and research visits to schools Kai may go to next year, among other things. And now -- and this was just bound to happen -- the boys have been recruited as models. Yes, someone besides Allison has finally landed a job, and it isn’t me. We were approached at a party, a fundraiser thrown by an expat organization, with an offer to have some family photos taken for free. We thought it was a party favor of sorts, but it turned out to be the gateway drug to careers as little Marky Marks for our sons, who are big-time eye-candy here. We are taking it very slow, though, hoping the boys might earn themselves a little extra toy money, or, if things get really poppin’, who knows, maybe even a little college money. And no matter what, we are NOT buying them a chihuahua to carry around in a handbag. Keegan has his first gig on Wednesday, I believe for a catalogue. I’ll let you know how it goes.

At our various playgroups and classes here, I’m very often the only guy in the room. In my early days as a stay-at-home dad this summer in the Bay Area, it felt pretty normal and average (well, at least after a brief, initial decompression period, while the detritus of American Male Baggage fell away), to be the dad wearing the Bjorn and toting a pocketful of snuggle puppies; every other guy in town, it seemed, was pushing a Maclaren and had a chupie or two clipped to his shirt. Big deal -- let’s get past that and talk potty-training and the Giants, Man! Thank God I had that experience to temper me, because now the social reinforcement has been replaced by some chuckles, a few double-takes, and even the occasional punch on the street. Really -- a woman on Shanxxi Nan Lu punched me for carrying Keegan in the Bjorn without socks. I know this from her wild gesticulations in the direction of his feet, but I had no means of explaining to her that it was 80 degrees out, Keegan can’t walk, and I wasn’t going to put him down. It wasn’t a playful tap or a chiding jab, either; she hit me as hard as she could, I suspect, and she got her legs into the punch, throwing a right hook at me with all she had, which thankfully wasn’t much. Also, since she was four feet tall she hit me in the hip, but the point is she wanted to hurt me, because I was a man who didn’t know what he was doing, and I was endangering the life of a beautifully fat baby with my flabby, foreign, male ignorance.

It’s not nearly so bad with the expat women in the playgroups as it is on the street, but still, it’s clear there’s a range of comfort levels. Some of my fellow parents are chatty, warm, welcoming, and pay no mind to my gender, while others make little jokes, and a few studiously avoid me, though that could be my halitosis. Of course we could say that all of this is just the result of varying personalities and that gender has no part in it, but I think it’s a little from column A, a little from column B. Even the children react differently to me than they do to the other parents, but here the general trend is oddly positive. It’s hard to explain, but often several of the kids will key in on me, come up to me, watch me, follow me -- why? Because I’m a man, and because I’m the only man, and maybe, possibly, because they miss their dads, who probably have to do quite a bit of traveling. At one school I visited, not one but two boys called me “papa” or dada” repeatedly, and I was there for no more than 20 minutes. Allison, who’s seen this phenomenon in action a few times on the playground or in the playroom of Green Valley, says I’m the Pied Piper, but it makes me just a touch maudlin in a way that’s hard to explain, like when you pet a stray dog you can’t possibly bring home.

A reporter who was doing a story on playgroups for an expat magazine was at one of our regular stops this week, and asked me if I’d say something about my experience with the group; she was quite candid that she was asking me because I was the only dad, and she wanted to get that angle. I told her that I was grateful for the outlet for the boys and the chance to learn from the insight and experience of others, and that the moms generally and quickly realized that I was just like any other parent there. All of which is true as far as it goes, and yet the truth, as it can often be, is more subtle and elusive than it appears.

And speaking of things I do with my kids that are hard to explain, here’s a highly random video of an activity Kai and I happened upon accidentally that we call either “spinning” or “tunnel.” He’ll probably be telling his therapist about it one of these days. I hope that like me, he’ll decide that his parents were just doing the best they could with what they knew.

Before I close, I would be remiss if I did not add, in case you missed it, that THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD!!!! OH MY DEAR SWEET GOD!!!! No matter where on earth you may be, when your team finally, really, improbably does it, it’s a beautiful thing.

I’m just looking for a credible Chinese artist to tattoo Edgar Renteria’s face on my tookus.