Climbing Quandary

On Saturday I disappeared into thin air. Well I didn't disappear, but anyone on the trail thousands of feet below would have seen nothing more than an ant trudging up a giant anthill. Anyway at 14,265 feet up, the air is indeed thin, and the views breathtaking. Or should I say breath-catching!

Here I am celebrating an arduous climb to the summit of Quandary Peak, my first 14er, those tallest kings among mountains that Colorado is famous for. I and six girlfriends left the trailhead in the valley at 7am and 5-1/2 hours later this was our reward.

I'd expected to do the whole hike, up and back, in that amount of time! Some of our husbands had done it a month ago in 5 hours. But unfortunately two of our group suffered bad altitude sickness requiring a slow pace and frequent rest stops on the ascent. (One did feel a little better after throwing up. That bad.)

Around the same time I took the above photo looking up and the summit felt sooo far away, I turned around and looked down to the highway where I'd come from. Wow. It really boosted my mood and confidence when fatigue was taking a toll.

I also contemplated the golden value of such friends I have. No one had an ego to show off. No one was trying to prove anything. There was nothing but patience and encouragement for those who were lagging. (Little did I know that would be me on the way down, running out of water two hours early and bad knees screaming their displeasure at the steep rocks.) I realized that I myself was far more flexible and patient than I used to be, willing to stay with my friends at the end of the line or offering to share my hiking poles. That's big for me, someone who has always been highly competetive. This was just not the time for that.

I love my girlfriends, their strength, humor, complete support and solidarity. Only recently have our friendships gone deep like this, and it's like drinking cool water from a deep clear mountain spring. I will take care of them. Frienships like this should be nurtured. As a Nigerian proverb says, "Hold a true friend with both your hands."

But my friends weren't the only ones that amazed me. And I'm not talking about the guy who passed us early on wearing a kilt. (We asked if it was a skirt or a kilt and he said, "It's only a skirt if you have something under it." Eeek.) I was truly inspired by a Chinese grandfather and his seven year old grandson who held hands most of the way up the mountain. Their pace was slow like ours, so they passed us, we passed them, repeat, and it wasn't until the final and steepest stretch that they went up without us. This photo shows the two of them resting a moment (with mom) and you can see how steep the trail gets. I just accidentally typed "trial" but maybe that really isn't a typo after all.

The high elevation made me far more emotional than I generally am. I nearly cried when I heard other hikers talking about an accident on the top involving a two year old girl in a child backpack that we had seen leave the trailhead on her father's back just before we did. Apparently he had set down the pack with her inside and she kicked her legs enough to topple over forward, hitting her face on the rocks. I didn't see them coming down (I believe I was squatting behind a big rock, he he) but my friends said she had bandaids and blood across her forehead. That was it, tears in my eyes. I have kids. I hate it when kids get hurt. I honestly felt like scurrying back down the trail to see if she was alright. I also got teary watching a big black dog of all things. The poor animal looked disoriented and thirsty and had run ahead of its owner down the mountain. It kept running ahead of us and behind us looking for a familiar face.

By the time we got back to the car it had been an 8-1/2 hour trek. I took some time to reflect on observations about myself. Right there in the back seat I wrote a list, so might as well share it that way.

• I'm easily obsessive. I spent more time on 14ers.com than facebook the week prior, reading trip reports from Quandary and other peaks and searching for advice. I memorized the driving directions even though I wasn't driving. I printed a trail map even though it would be impossible to get lost with weekend crowds. I packed extra clothes, first aid, rain gear, and twice the food I needed. I spent two hours loading my backpack just right.

• My exercise classes all summer have paid off! I felt much better than I expected. On the other hand, I still have far to go to be as fit as I want to. This was good motivation to stick with it.

• I still have a sense of wild adventure and spontaneity even though I haven't been able to live it out for many years. I hope this is just the beginning of rebirthing that aspect of my heart.

• I've lost my fear of indecent exposure when nature calls. There was a time when I probably would have chosen extreme bladder discomfort rather than crouching behind rocks and trees without worrying about what people think. It's liberating.

• Lastly, I observed that I tend to be a bit self-promoting and I need to learn to listen and engage others without talking up myself. It seemed that so often when one of my friends was telling a story, I would push my own similar stories into the conversation. I'm not as good a listener as I want to be. As I think about it, I realize I frequently do the same thing when commenting on blogs or facebook. That's kind of hard to admit, but it's something to work on.

Saturday was a special day - my first 14er and the first time I ever spent a whole day with girlfriends. We climbed a mountain together, and I climbed a personal mountain, that of bonding with a spectacular group of women. We scaled so many rocks that we all called each other rock stars! Our next adventure will be awesome, I am sure.

Confessions of Imperfection

"Mom!" I heard fear in my daughter's voice as I unbuckled my middle kid. Suddenly my giggling baby was flying "wheee" toward me on a stolen tricycle across the OUAC parking lot and that's not all, a car had to brake for him. Later I knew I should have apologized and lavishly thanked the driver for taking care. In the moment I felt too embarrassed and incompetent to even make eye contact. I snatched up the baby (unhappy to relinquish the tricycle) and held him tight.

My daughter was supposed to be holding the baby's hand. But at six, she isn't responsible for a one-year-old in front of a toy store. The baby brother is strong, fast and capricious. From now on, he will always be the last one removed from the car.

Why is it that I take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only mama who suffers significant lapses in parenting finesse? Wouldn't it be better for children everywhere if I really was the only recurrently maladroit mother out there? Yet as I read "get born" facebook confessions of moms who left safety seats unbuckled, forgot to feed a toddler, spaced the daycare pickup, or can't remember children's birthdays at the doctor, I know we share a bond of imperfection. My neighbor's daughter drank cough syrup. A friend's son choked down coins and she had to recover them from subsequent diapers.

I once arrived at a MOPS meeting and discovered in the parking lot that I had only two kids with me and my week-old newborn was still at home, sleeping in his carrier just inside the door. Can anybody I know outdo that? I HOPE NOT, but I wouldn't doubt it. I'm tempted to scrutinize other moms when they're having a good day, convince myself they are always full of beauty, wisdom and eternal patience, and measure myself inadequate. I begin to fantasize that they never fall from grace and there must be something seriously wrong with me, living in such blatant humanity.

Those reminders that I'm not alone help curb the tendency to indulge in a classic guilt-ridden pity party probably involving excessive chocolate or corn chips. Well that and looking in my children's endlessly loving and forbearing faces. I really don't expect my middle son to harbor ill feelings about the preventable tantrum scar on his eyebrow, or the fact that his bike helmet is tough to fit on his misshapen skull forever flat on one side and pointy on top because I neglected to rotate his sleeping head in his first four months of life. No, he will forgive and love me just as my daughter has after being accidentally locked in the garage for ten terrified minutes when she was three - and just as the baby brother will if he ever finds out his mama let him loose in front of traffic.

The Sunrise Yurt

"What's a yurt?" Common question. It's a hut-shaped canvas tent on a wooden frame and deck, equipped with bunk beds, a table and chairs, and a skylight. We camped in one for the first time a week ago at Bear Creek Lake Park west of Denver. The campsite came with the usual fire pit, grill, picnic table, and mosquitos.

Although I grew up tent camping every summer at secluded lakes surrounded by lush lodgepole pine forests in the Oregon Cascades, my Singapore-raised husband is a greenhorn. Our only previous kid camping experience was in 2007 with a 3-yr-old and a 4-mo baby. The 3-yr got bored, scraped her knee on a rock, and woke at 4am jabbering on and on about the stars and how stinky the tent was. Good thing we only planned an overnight trip. The baby was totally easy, hanging out on a blanket during the day and waking once to nurse at night. Well he did have a very inconvenient diaper blowout but hey, it's not like outhouses are all that convenient either!

With a 6-yr, 3-yr, and 16-mo baby this summer, we thought we'd have another go. Not owning a large tent, the yurt was perfect. And the campground, though not the private and pristine wonderland of my childhood memories, was a big hit when all the kids saw not one but two playgrounds, a horse barn, and a swim beach selling ice cream bars by Big Soda Lake. We spent hours at the playgrounds and splashing in the water, when the kids weren't collecting rocks in plastic cups or tossing the frisbee or playing house in the 2-man backpacking tent we set up just for fun. I gave them an inflatable chair inside the tent and they kept pretending it was a potty.

But what's a camping trip without some little mishaps? I bought plastic spatulas at the thrift store for my camp frypan and didn't think about a flipper for hamburgers on the charcoal grill. Ok, drag out the grilling cage we registered for when we got married and have never ever used. The burgers hung out of the edges but still cooked up great under my husband's grilling expertise. Next challenge: pancakes for breakfast. Sounds easy, but I forgot to bring *any* butter, syrup, jam, honey, anything remotely resembling pancake toppings, and the pancake batter itself was an unsweetened biscuit-style mix. In fact the only significantly sweet item in the food chest besides whole fruit was marshmallows for the s'mores we'd enjoyed by the fire the night before. Out came the roasting sticks, and marshmallow-filled pancakes soon graced the picnic table.

Comforting a crying 3-yr-old at 1am who didn't want to walk a quarter mile to the toilet and kept insisting we go home right away was distinctly the low point of the trip. He woke the baby in the portacrib, who Daddy cuddled back to sleep and shared his bunk with until morning. And tropical-blooded Daddy needs to remember a heavy blanket next time! Again, good thing it was just one night. We concluded that our family is still quite young for full fledged camping and maybe we should stick to day trips for a while.

At least that's what we thought on the way home... but with all the fun we shared as a family, here we are a few days later thinking about how to plan the next camping adventure. It's surprising how easy it was to minimize the bad and crave a repeat of the good. All we need is a family tent and some kind of cargo solution for the gear...

...and another destination with a playground and flushing toilets wouldn't be a bad idea! I can survive this kind of "camping" - views of RVs through thin trees, Home Depot perched on the hill, suburban lights flanking the night skyline - for a few more years. My first camping memories were around age 7 or 8 and continued until I left home, so perhaps I'm not really ripping off my kids by not exposing them to truly rugged and hard-core camping at the preschool stage. Although I feel their childhood flying by so fast, I have to remember that they really are still little and there is still time for dozens of quiet and remote family camping memories to be made. And dozens more s'mores to be eaten.

The Good Kind of Sore

Last month I took my first "Spin and Tone" class twice a week at Aztlan. After three pregnancies (my final baby now 15 months old) I have no abs, unless you count belly fat hidden by loose fitting t-shirts. Technically I've reached my pre-pregnancy weight... so why are my favorite blue shorts still tight? As it turns out, pre-pregnancy SHAPE is an entirely different endeavor! While I'm not optimistic about certain body parts (like the ones that nursed three infants), I am determined to get in shape this summer and shed the final five pounds to my long-elusive goal. My simple motive: to energetically enjoy Colorado's beautiful hiking, biking, and camping with my family, and maybe even learn to snow board this year.

So I took the class. We rode spin bikes for 45 minutes in a guided workout of sprints and hills, standing runs and hovering climbs. Then we grabbed free weights, floor mats and fit balls for another 15 minutes of toning. Though a step up from biking my daughter to school every day, I could handle the spin section alright. The combination of Pilates, plyometrics and weight training, however, truly wore me out. I tried to take it easy the first night, but the next day I was unmistakeably sore - the good kind of sore.

I spent most of May feeling the good kind of sore. Though weight loss has been negligible, in just one month my energy and endurance are rising and the belly is beginning to shrink. I graduated from knee pushups to regular ones on my toes and I no longer roll off a bosu ball backwards. I even wore those blue shorts last week.

The best thing, though, has been to enjoy family bike rides more and more. On Mother's Day we rode the greenbelt trails north of our neighborhood, me pulling the two boys in a trailer and my recent kindergarten graduate chasing Daddy on her own bike. The next week Mama took the kids out alone. On Memorial Day we all rode the Poudre River Trail (photo) through the hot afternoon and to my amazement, I was hardly tired at the end.

I love these family excursions. My husband and I like to dream about the hiking and biking adventures we will have when the kids are all old enough to keep up. Yesterday I put training wheels on the three-year-old's black and yellow 12-inch garage sale bike. Soon there will be one less for me to pull behind!

This month my self-selected torture is 7 a.m. "Shreadmill" with a treadmill workout followed by circuit training. My first class was yesterday and I'm feeling sore yet again. The good kind of sore.

Bubbles

------------------------------------------------
----------------------bubb----------------------
-------------------les pop in-------------------
-----------------the children's-----------------
-----------------faces as hands-----------------
-----------------reach for floa-----------------
-------------------ting shiny-------------------
---------les------ ---circ----------------------
-------bobbing---------------------------------
-------in warm---------------------------------
---------sun--------- ----- ----ny---------------
------------------------- --schoolyard-----------
------------------------- -skies filled----------
------------------------- --with kinde-----------
-------------arte----------- ---rg---------------
-----------n laught-----------------------------
-----------er while-----------------------------
-----------goodbyes-----------------------------
-------------wait-------------------------------
--------------------- ----for--------------------
---------------------- -the bel------------------
--------------------- -l to ring-----------------
--------------------- -on the ve-----------------
---------------------- -ry last------------------
----------------------- --day--------------------
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Skydiving Souvenir (or, Becoming A Mother)

Becoming a mother is like being dropped from a small aircraft into the ocean from 12000 feet. You prepare for it by putting on a parachute and a life jacket, but when you hold up your ticket with two pink lines, board the plane and take off, you're struck with horrible air sickness. What were you thinking? Then the plane hits some altitude and you cruise for a while enjoying the ride. But fear strikes again as you near the point of departure. That first leap - the squeezing tightness in your belly - there's no turning back. You get a surge of adrenaline and fear and joy and craziness. When the parachute opens you begin to enjoy the ride down. But not for long. You begin to spin, to flail, to realize how quickly the ocean is approaching, and with great pain you and the ocean collide. You take a gasp of air and hold your breath. This is it, the moment of becoming. Push through! Under the water you are rolled and swayed dizzy. Your arms find a soft object and hug it close. Finally you struggle to the surface where you realize, for the first time, that the life jacket you carefully packed along does not fit you at all but it's just the perfect size for the seven-pound person you found there under the ocean and dragged with you up to the wave-tossed top.

And there you are, treading water in the middle of a vast sea. It's very disorienting, the constant buffeting of the waves, endless straining, incessant protection of that precious gift you hold. But in time, as days and weeks pass, you find you are able to swim with increasing skill, guard with greater confidence, and navigate with clearer direction. Eventually your feet find solid ground and you emerge bedraggled on the shore. Gazing down again at the perfect souvenir of your skydiving adventure cradled carefully in your arms, you know it was worth it, and you will never be the same.

On Mother's Day, visit Get Born Magazine at www.getbornmag.com for a special message from editor Heather Janssen AND to be entered for great prizes!

Escape

The phone rang after breakfast. "Let me just start by saying this is an emergency," my friend spoke in a hushed, urgent tone. Her accent is heavy when she is shaken. "I found out that there's a chance that…" He what? "So I took her for a special interview and they think it's true…" She's six. "We didn't sleep at the house last night. He's coming back home tomorrow morning. The police told me to take out all my important documents and anything with sentimental value…"

I brought boxes. I rode her new bicycle to my garage and went back. Thinking about my daughter's playmate since birth – her world severely upended – my stomach churned ill and my body trembled with adrenaline. Three days prior we'd made plans to play at her house next week. It's on the calendar.

He is ominous, the man who did this. Five and a half years now I've been listening to the retelling of horrors going on behind closed doors. Verbal abuse, threat letters, bold lies, power games, extreme intimidation. Shoving and slapping. Why didn't she leave? Of course she never imagined that their precious only child wasn't safe. The girl adored her daddy on the occasions he was home. And then there was the money. She had no income apart from his. But the main thing was the fear of starting over in middle age without direction in a foreign land.

More friends came. I photographed an inventory of every room. She sorted, we packed, that's mine, that's his, and in a matter of hours we ransacked the house – certain prints missing from the walls, old clothes and unessential toys littering the floor, kitchen chairs without a table, clouds of dusty dog hair in corners where furniture had stood, no more kindergarten artwork displayed from every angle. Somewhere a 10x10 storage unit contains all that is left of her life: hope for a new one.

I don't want to be involved in this. I don't want her bank statements, baby photos, and Picasso from Germany stashed in my basement. Even so, it's an honor to be entrusted with the things most dear.

With shrieking pledges of divorce ringing in her ears, she's been getting dental work done on his insurance, getting aptitude testing and career counseling, and making sure her foreign visa was renewed even though it wasn't due for another two years. Last year she went through the "what if" scenarios with a lawyer. Yet as bad as things were, she was tolerating it and hoping that those papers wouldn't come too soon, not until she'd started some classes, not until she had a plan for the afterlife, maybe not at all. Certainly she didn't want to make the first move.

She cashed out the checking account and we locked up and left. She got a new cell phone that he couldn't trace. The police wanted her at the station to record a call accusing him of the crime. I returned home feeling I'd lived a twisted day in a tv melodrama. Unreal - if only it were.

Gun In Hand, Going To My Head

One by one I pushed shiny bullets into the cartridge. Ten of them. Slammed it up the grip of the black Taurus 9mm. Aimed straight at the heart from some twenty feet away, and…

Missed.

A week ago I spent an afternoon at the Front Range Gun Club with some Singaporeans, one of whom owns two firearms. The last and only other time I'd been shooting was fifteen years ago in Oregon woods with friends (including my husband – before we were even dating). I don't remember it being as intimidating, or as thrilling, as the gun club. Yes I said thrilling. I came home thinking there must be something wrong with me that firing a deadly weapon gave me such a high. At a law enforcement human-silhouette target nonetheless.

At first that was kinda creepy, aiming at a life-size profile of a person. Everyone else on the shooting deck was firing at innocuous round bullseye targets. I never could bring myself to aim at the head. But I did hit the heart a couple of times. (Honesty may require mention that I entirely missed the target a few times too.) Turns out that my husband is a very good marksman, thanks to his service in the Singapore Armed Forces. Especially with the rifle.

As for me, the rifle was a different story. M16. Target 60 feet back. Heavy gun, loud, awkward, frightening actually. Still thrilling, but not like the hand gun. That was almost addictive. For days I floated in a giddy afterglow. Am I twisted in the head?

I couldn't stop thinking about the whole experience: the dim, cave-like atmosphere – spotlights on the target line – noise thudding beyond ear plugs – metallic weight in my palms – pressure of the trigger in the crook of my finger – shells flipping upward – excitement of discharging a deadly weapon – eerie target… I had trouble sleeping, replaying the events. By the next day I was seriously contemplating getting real lessons in how to shoot a hand gun. Is it wrong to say that shooting a gun was thrilling? I feel like I shouldn't have enjoyed it so much – pressing the smooth bullets into the cartridge one by one, slamming the cartridge up the handle, cocking, locking, aim, unlock, fire… oh I am getting carried away again…

Okay, the tough thing was getting home and explaining to the 5-yr what we'd been up to. I had told her just the day before not to build a “shooter” with her tinker toys to chase her brothers, we don't play shooting people. I wasn't going to tell her at all where we had been but Daddy cheerfully spilled the beans before I could intercept. So I had to explain it all. I wish I had a picture of the completely disconcerted, confounded look on her face – huge saucer eyes and hanging jaw – when I said yes they were real guns, and when she saw the life-size shadow-person target riddled with bullet holes. She was mortified!

sitting here in the rain

sitting here in the rain
I cannot see
your wind-wild eyes
watching me
somehow time stopped
long ago
only moths and mysteries
remember when
but now
water like a flood
pours into my flesh
my vision fails
and I look out upon
rain-beaten worlds
twisting and floating
down they fall
hard to concrete
like the empty green bottle
I smashed yesterday
under the dock

---

I wrote a lot of stuff like this when I was seventeen. I kept a notebook by the bed and tried to write a poem a day. Most of them were more troubled than profound. I recall that puzzled me then, as it does now, since my teen years were essentially stable and secure. Only my best friend saw my writings, and she shared her secret writings with me. At the time, we thought our stuff was brilliant :)

words fail

She died at six days old. I attended her funeral this morning. I've been out of touch with the couple for some time and didn't even know they were expecting until she was born. She wasn't breathing at birth, had some seizures, and was rushed to the children's hospital. I saw pictures of her at three days with a tube in her mouth and a cold-cap on her head to control brain swelling. Assorted tubes, wires, machines everywhere. More pictures, lots of beautiful black hair. Glowing baby skin, bright eyes, round cheeks, arms stretched above her head. Then the news last Wednesday.

My heart aches for my friends. They tried for three years to conceive and she was their miracle firstborn. Seeing the father cry as he spoke of the blessing she was... words fail...

I was almost afraid to look at her, but I did; my heart needed closure. Another swell of tears. That sweet little girl, sleeping peacefully in a pale pink dress in a lace-covered white bassinet, will live on. Her heart and kidneys will give two more children hope for life. I will never know the full purpose of her short time on earth, but when I think about the impact of that one act of love... again, words fail...

Nine Years

Nine years ago today I lost my life. I gave it up, gave it away. On January 20, 2001 I married Richard Wei Tjan Lim. How many times have I regretted that act? Literally screamed out loud my anger against God? Slumped in despair before pastors and counselors, my heart bleeding into a wad of kleenex?

I could sling a lot of mud right here but that wouldn't be appropriate. Nobody cheated or broke the law, nothing like that. Nobody drained the bank. No violence, no filth. I won't publicly post all the problems we faced, but I will tell you how I felt: Unloved. Deceived. Trapped.

And it all started nine years ago today. I cried on our honeymoon in Maui and slipped into the night for a walk on the beach to wrestle with my heart and my loneliness. By our first anniversary I had sunk into lasting depression. In the shadow of Aspen trees in a little yellow house on a quiet culdesac, I suffered the deepest wounds my heart had ever borne.

Eventually we did try counseling. (Talk isn't cheap, by the way.) When a seasoned marriage counselor told us that our situation was rather unique, I felt lost. No wonder our premarital workbook hadn't prepared us. No wonder marriage help books weren't helping at all. No wonder all that therapy did little to improve our love life.

My heart went numb for years blocking out feelings of rejection and isolation. We had three babies. We quit counseling. We smiled in public. I got over my depression and focused on the kids. As any couple does, we went through good times and bad times, but it seemed the bad always eclipsed the good and I always returned to regret when I allowed my heart a moment to breathe. I didn't do that too often. Without my faith in God, tenacity in honoring my marriage covenant, and my duty to the children, we might not still be together.

But I am so glad that we are! Last summer it all changed. One random day in August we went from our worst year together to beginning our best one. I wish I could understand what precipitated the shift but I have no idea. My husband's behavior simply changed. Drastically. It took a while for me to trust that it wouldn't be temporary, but things remain just as good five months later. Forgiveness flows, hope lives again. There is love and desire in his eyes when he looks at me, and I feel an intimacy we've never shared before. We talked about it just a few days ago and he couldn't figure it out either. In fact, he wasn't even aware of the depth of the revolution at the time – definitely not some great act of willpower to make things different. Believe me, we have been there and done that with less than satisfactory results.

Let's not figure it out then, let's just enjoy it! No I don't get butterflies in my stomach when Richard holds my hand. My heart doesn't race when I catch his eye and we aren't having some passionate honeymoon that we missed out on before. But we are finally a normal couple with normal challenges, and “normal” is a big step up. “Normal” feels wonderful! I can live with normal.

Today is my first truly Happy Anniversary!

Stepping Up

My husband took the picture. I wouldn't have. Had I witnessed the scene unfolding, I would have promptly scooped up my two-year-old, scolded him, and sent him dragging all those step stools back from whence they came. But for better or worse, I arrived too late.

He is a persistent little guy, and as self-sufficient as can be. He needed a shirt. So he collected step stools from two bathrooms and started stacking. Thank God he is sure-footed and has a good sense of balance. In the end, he did get the shirt he was after, nothing crashed to the ground, and we have a great visual reminder of his ingenuity.

Although I'm not an over-protective mom, I still don't think I'm ready for the challenge of raising this vivacious toddler and his tumbly baby brother. My careful, cautious girl never did stuff like this, and probably never will. But I'm learning that risk is inherent in raising boys. To tell the truth, when I saw what my son had accomplished, I was actually kind of proud of him. Good thing I wasn't there to ruin it at the start.

Christmas Confetti

shovel falling snow
icy bootprints, foggy breath
time for hot chocolate

baking soda, flour
butter, eggs, sugar and salt
frosting and sprinkles

the kids are in bed
bags and boxes stacking up
underneath the tree

bright eyes wake early
red and green wrapping shreds fly
Christmas confetti

Prawns for Thanksgiving

This year we spent Thanksgiving Day at the Singapore Zoo gawking at monkeys and elephants, riding a boat and an open-air bus, and frolicking in the children's water playground. Six hours later we rolled home digesting authentic Indian food and ready for a nap. It was great family time!

My in-laws know nothing of Thanksgiving Day aside from hearsay, but they did understand that it was important to us. Kitchen pots were clanking as we came through the front door met by the scent of fried ginger and chilies. I cleared the small family table and food began to appear. The centerpiece of the evening was a plate of fat prawns which my husband's father had proudly prepared himself. Also on the menu were chicken, salmon, cauliflower with carrots, kabocha squash soup, and white rice which we all scooped for ourselves from the rice cooker in the kitchen.


I am thankful for the opportunity to spend time with family on the other side of the globe, and thankful that they can enjoy their grandchildren dismantling their non-babyproof home. The meal caused me to reminisce about roasting squid over an open fire on the beach in Hong Kong on Christmas in '96, and I'm thankful for another unique holiday food memory, even though Chinese chicken is a poor substitute for the appropriate glorious holiday fowl. I am also thankful that my parents will come to Colorado for Christmas, which the kids are thrilled about too. And if you haven't guessed it, I will be roasting a turkey!

Welcome to Singapore

After 29 hours in transit by car, shuttle, jet after jet after jet, airport trains to and fro, escalators, elevators, feet and shoulders aching from the strain of three small children and a pile of luggage, we arrived at Singapore Changi Airport just beyond midnight..... and nobody greeted us.

We pulled our suitcases off the luggage carousel, peering through a glass wall expecting the smiling faces of PoPo and YeYe, grandma and grandpa. Excitement turned to dismay as we rolled our baggage cart through the customs exit and the waiting room cleared, leaving us alone. We waited a bit, wondering if they were delayed by traffic, or perhaps by the car rental. My husband called the house multiple times without answer.

Eventually we realized that they weren't simply late: it appeared that they weren't coming at all. And we didn't know what to do.

The children were pleased to discover an "Urban Playground" on the basement 2 level. It was next to a still fountain pond with bits of floating foam. I laid down on a cool gray marble step surrounding the pond and rested while they played and my husband stayed upstairs near the baggage claim trying the phone again and changing some money and visiting the info desk, all the while hoping his parents would suddenly arrive.

Lying there at 2:23am, I closed my eyes and listened to the clanking clatter and playful exchange of my first 2 kids on the whimsical playground. A jazz rendition of "Silver Bells" provided ambiance while a widescreen television tuned to the Singapore Cartoon Network droned in the background. I heard the footsteps and cell phone voices of occasional businessmen passing by. The piercing whirr of marble polishers on the walls down the corridor kept me awake. But the best sound of all was the faint rhythmic whisper of my baby's breath as he slept in the stroller beside my face so blissfully unaware of it all.

Of course the mind hopes for the best and fears the worst. Did they have a car accident? Another heart episode? Were they okay? Were they home? Why weren't they answering the phone?

Finally around 6am they did. It turned out that they were expecting us the following night and had merely slept through the all the phone ringing. I didn't know whether to feel irritated or relieved. I was glad that they were fine, as they are elderly and I had truly begun to worry. They were at the airport very quickly after that, YeYe white as a sheet and extremely apologetic, PoPo saying she thought she may have heard the phone a few times...

And then began the adventure of cramming 3 suitcases, 6 carry-ons, 3 kids, 3 carseats, 4 adults and a stroller into a 5-passenger hatchback for the ride home...

I Like Dates

"I like dates." This ingenious signature sat under a profile photo of dried dates in a food-related web forum I read a while back. Made me snicker.

But shuffling plates among two picky children at Country Buffet and hustling out to nurse a crying baby in the car while my husband goes shopping next door and returns to change the toddler in the back hatch and then singing Twinkle Twinkle all the way home to calm the still-crying baby (true story!) is not a date. Neither is trying to catch snips of a riveting dvd between stinky diapers, spilled milk, and loud sibling rivalry over the train set. Forget romantic snuggling under a blanket; we can't sit on the couch together five minutes uninterrupted.

Dates were fun before kids came along. Movies and meals dotted the calendar, and often unplanned we simply took off cycling or drove to the library or meandered around the neighborhood hand in hand under evening stars. Most significantly we talked – about our life together, our days, our dreams, what to plant in the vegetable garden, where to go next weekend.

We do go on occasional dates, real ones without kids, but aside from being woefully scarce, they seldom involve meaningful connection. Discussions revolve around meal plans, daily chores, and… the children, of course. Even when they are absent we can't escape from them! And frequently we're too busy complaining to actually hear each other. Perhaps if we went out more often we would exhaust the grumbling and start sharing the joys again.

I still smile when I think about that forum signature. I like dates too. Better put some on the shopping list.

Zero To One

My husband used to ask our child-blessed friends which was harder, going from one to two or two to three. I always wanted three. The general consensus was that once you have two, adding more was easy.

I had sailed through college, worked several years including two abroad, entered grad school and married soon after, all along nurturing a horde of hobbies: photography, guitar, hiking, Japanese, on went the list. I held onto my dream in the face of infertility and when I defended my master's thesis eight months pregnant, life was good.

True, I did not like holding, smelling, hearing, or even looking at babies. "It'll be different when it's your own," I'd been told. But countless hours spent in my blue rocking chair, bedroom door shut, weepy eyes studying a tiny suckling infant, heart aching desperately to love her with a fierce maternal bond did not make it so. I was a babysitter and not even a good one.

I lost myself in those postpartum months. Yet in the dark cocoon of depression I was being forever transformed. When at last I spread my wings to soar, I found joy and freedom and beauty in the flight. I discovered the height of a mother's love. I became a mom.

My third child was born this year, and I am happy. My whiteboard pen has been replaced by a feeding spoon, book pages by baby wipes, guitar picking fingers plucking cheerios from linoleum. Though at times I cast a wistful glance at the box of watercolors or the shelf of gourmet cookbooks, I am content to stash them away for a season of life that has redefined me. And I know that if I am ever asked whether it's harder going from one to two or two to three, I will have to say that my greatest challenge was going from zero to one.

Kristina Lim

Kristina Lim

I enjoy raising a girl and two boys, the youngest born in 2009. I have a Master's degree in TESL and although not currently working, I have taught English as a Second Language in Oregon, Japan, and Colorado, and spent a year as a writing consultant at Colorado State University. My writing has been published online by TESL-EJ and Utmost Christian Writers. Beyond that, my main interests are photography, traveling, and web development. I also participate in a MOPS group.

See more on my blog at kristinalim.net.

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