ever-fixed mark

Parking spaces for most of the houses on our block are in the rear, accessible via an alley. There is not a lot of space back there, and so some homes, ours included, do not have backyards. Even if you were able to find some place else to park your car, you couldn’t turn your parking spot into a yard, because other people have right-of-way access over your spot to access their own.

We have space for three cars, and only have two (actually, one at the moment, but mostly because we’re too lazy to buy another one after our lease ran out), so the parking/back yard situation has not bothered us too much. Our next-door neighbors weren’t aware of the regulations before they moved in, though, and it has never sat well with them. Over the past few years, they have managed, through various means (a new parking spot here, a right-of-way deeded back there) to secure their own patio for their own personal use, and recently they stated their intention to fence it in.

We were a bit nervous about the new fence. The previous owners of our house built our driveway right on the property line between the two houses, not leaving the usual strip of land that would allow you to exit your car, open your car door, etc. without going over the line. These neighbors have been somewhat particular about their property line, politely but firmly calling our attention to our incursions upon it. But what could we do — we couldn’t very well ask them to leave us a strip of their land for our convenience, especially with the current state of detente.

To our surprise, when the fence finally went up, it allowed for plenty of space on the side of the driveway. Unfortunately, the fence is huge, and it extends all the way around the front. Our street is in the center of town, and our houses sit on a rise over that street, so the fence looms about twelve feet over the sidewalk pedestrians — an effect that is far more “rural fundamentalist compound” than “Main Street Victorian.” The house is a half-house, so the fence only extends around one half. It looks as though the occupants are throwing up defenses against only their neighbors to the west. Us.

All things considered, a fence can only help neighborly relations, but every once in a while when I go out the side door and am confronted with that huge expanse, I can’t help but think, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Every time I buy new running shoes, I go through this little charade:

1. Vowing to Support Local Businesses, I march downtown to the running store to try on shoes.

2. He never has shoes in my size, a fairly standard 9-wide.

3. I order the shoes on the Internet.

This time was no exception, although I tried really hard to give him my business. “Could you order the shoes?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said, “that would take weeks.”

I had mine in a few days.

Whenever I buy new running shoes, I also vow that I’m going to get some color, any color, other than white with blue stripes. They do make running shoes in other colors–not a lot, but some–but never in my size. I don’t get this; why can’t I have hot pink or orange or lime green running shoes, or even white shoes with a different color stripe? When I went on-line I was excited to see that Asics makes my shoes in white with orange stripes, but not in my width. White and blue only. (My training partner wears the same shoes, but hers have yellow stripes. She has enormous feet, and I was amused to see that the yellow shoes are only available in size 12. Can you imagine if other clothing manufacturers started color-coding items by size?)

When my shoes arrived, though, there was a nice little surprise: the tongue was blue. Such a little touch, but one that pleases me whenever I look down on them. Something different!

This reminds me of a story from one of the Little House books. Mary and Laura get to wear ribbons on their pigtails for church, but Mary always has to wear blue ones and Laura pink because their mother says that these are the proper colors for blondes and brunettes, respectively. One morning something happens as they are getting ready for church, and in the darkness and confusion their mother ties the wrong color bows in their hair. Each girl is delirious with excitement at getting to wear the other color. (Obviously, this is before Mary went blind.)

Whenever I recall this story I think how easily children are pleased by some little change in routine. Also, I think about what an uptight woman Ma Ingalls must have been. Enforcing ribbon color protocol on the prairie! Maybe her descendants work for ASICS: “Blue is for wide feet! Yellow is for big feet! Orange is only for normal feet!” and so on.

Maybe Laura was remembering it wrong, though. I tend to color-code Aitch and Minor, but not because of anything I’ve read in an etiquette book. Aitch is quite partial to red, and whenever I buy him something new, I’m mindful of the fact that he’s much more likely to use it if it’s red. Hence, his toothbrush, lunch box, and every pair of shoes he currently owns are red, and Minor’s (just for the sake of differentiation) are blue. I just hope that Aitch doesn’t take up running, because how will I find red running shoes in his size?

Minor has been inexhaustibly crabby lately, the kind of crabby that is usually accompanied by an ear infection or other serious illness. He keeps up a constant litany of complaints: Grapes! No, don’t take one off the stem! Put it back! Wait, I dropped it–pick it up! I want to get down! Pick me up!

He’s not one of those kids who freaks out whenever his routine is broken; he’s just responding to the situation at hand by requesting something just a little bit different from whatever he has. I call these “micro-demands.” Meeting those demands doesn’t necessarily alleviate the complaints; he just moves on to the next.

This is supposed to be the stage where the child gets frustrated by his inability to communicate. That may be the case, but I’m always amazed at subtle differences he is able to get across with just a few words and gestures. Unlike Aitch at this age, Minor really loves to talk. His words aren’t very clear, but he has a lot of them, and he gets a big kick out of imitating us.

Minor has mastered the use of the head nod for “Yes” and the shake for “No.” He can also say “Yes,” but not “No,” which is the exact opposite of Aitch at that age, and which I find very surprising. He certainly hears “No” enough. For some reason, though, he is very good at one-syllable words that end in “s”: Gas, bus, and “yas” are his clearest words.

Anyway, he responds appropriately with the “Yes” and “No” shakes in conversation, which means we can get quite a lot out of him as long as we remember to frame our utterances in the form of yes/no questions. It also gives the impression that you’re having a conversation with a much older child. For example:

I am trying to change Minor. He’s fussing and writhing on the changing table.

I say, “Minor, do you want to go in your crib for a time out?”

He looks at me. He looks at the crib. He looks back at me and shakes his head no.

I ask, “What do you want?” He shrieks. Yes or no answers only!

“Do you want a toy?”

Head shake.

“Do you want a book?”

Head nod.

“The cow book?” Head shake. “The dog book?” Head shake. “The Little Fire Engine?”

“Yasss! Yasss! Yasss!” Vigorous up-and-down nodding.

Our daily game of Twenty Questions.

The mystery of Minor’s birth place was really bugging me, so I made a few calls to the adoption agency and spoke with the Korea program director, who was extremely helpful.

I asked her to confirm the source of the information on the adoption decree, and she said it comes from the birth place named on the Korean legal documents. Our agency does not provide these to the parents, although other agencies do. She said that these documents routinely list the child’s birth place as Seoul, even if the Korean agency knows the child was born elsewhere. (We didn’t notice this with Aitch, because he actually was born in Seoul.) This is a holdover from the bad old days when placement for adoption was seen as shameful, and the child’s existence officially began the day he was turned over to the adoption agency in Korea. Apparently, many older adoptees who are just starting to dive into their personal history are surprised to learn they weren’t born in Seoul, like it says on their birth certificates.

I am not the first parent to notice this discrepancy, but she does not know of any parents who have been successful in changing the birth certificate. That would require getting revised legal documents from the Korean government, which they will not provide.

Regarding the conflict on the referral papers, she offered to confirm that Minor was born in SouthernCity, not OtherSouthernCity, which was terribly nice of her. She thought the mention of OtherSouthernCity might have been a translation error.

I’m happy to know that Minor’s record isn’t damaged forever because of some mistake I made, but I’m sorry that both the boys have inaccurate birth certificates. I may have not stated this clearly in the last post, but their birth certificates, issued by Port City, do not identify us as the boys’ adopted parents. They identify us as simply the father and mother, which is good and correct and all that, but…it is the BIRTH record, not the parenthood record. We weren’t in the picture at the time of their births; listing us as parents without acknowledgment of their other parents is withholding a big part of the story.

I thought that their birth certificates would look something like the one my parents kept in their bottom drawer when I was a child: not just the parents and the date but also the time, place, and hospital of birth, along with an adorable baby footprint. Since birth parents are generally not identified for Korean adoptions, I thought their names might be somehow redacted or anonymized. I didn’t know that birth certificates were re-generated for adopted children with the names of their adoptive parents, and I never anticipated this half-fictionalized birth certificate.

I keep thinking of that scene in Robert Cormier’s young adult book I Am the Cheese where Adam discovers his two birth certificates and figures out that his parents have changed their identities to enter the Witness Protection Program. I picture Minor finding it in a drawer and saying, wait, is this me? I thought they told me I was born in SouthernCity, not Seoul! And then the Mafia will kill Husband and me and put Minor in a mental hospital.

Sorry if I spoiled it for you, but really, you should have read it when you were 13.

Earlier this week, we went to the City Clerk’s office to procure Minor’s birth certificate. The former city clerk is now the Mayor, and the new city clerk (who has three adopted children) has two administrators working for him. All were extremely nice, making it a big change from our last experience, and when they handed me Minor’s birth certificate I was pleased to see that all the apostrophes had been added in the right places.

The fee for a birth certificate is $10, but the admin gave me a replacement for Aitch’s offending document on the house, because, as she said, “You’re the one responsible for getting it changed!” I never mentioned it, so I assume that Port City has that marked in my permanent record, along with “Complains frequently about city merchants failing to shovel sidewalks.”

One odd thing: Husband, looking over Minor’s birth certificate to make sure everything was spelled correctly, noted, “The birth place is wrong. Wasn’t he born in SouthernCity, Korea?”

The clerk showed us that the birth place on the certificate, Seoul, was indeed the city listed on the adoption decree. So the question was, what is the source of the information on the adoption decree?

I assumed this was just a simple mistake on someone’s part, probably mine, as I had signed off on the information at the courthouse. (But let the record show that I signed it in the hall, with Minor clinging to me; I’m lucky I didn’t approve a completely different name.) When I got back home, though, I checked all of Minor’s paperwork. The only document that lists his birth city is the referral, and…get this…it lists two different places, both SouthernCity and OtherSouthernCity.

Oh. So this must be why, whenever someone asks me where Minor is born, I say, “It’s either SouthernCity or OtherSouthernCity, I can never remember.” I can’t believe I never realized that both cities were listed.

More importantly, there is no other official record of his birthplace anywhere in my paperwork. There is a hospital chart from a hospital in SouthernCity for his admission to be treated for jaundice three days after his birth. I assume he would have been taken to the same hospital, or at least a hospital in the same city, so I’m fairly confident he was born in SouthernCity, and not OtherSouthernCity fifty miles away. It would be good to confirm this officially, for Minor’s sake. It’s too weird that his Port City birth certificate not only implies that I gave birth to him, but also says that it occurred in a city he did not arrive at until he was a month old.

I feel like I owe it to the boys to give them as much information about their birth families and their heritage as I can, and yet I can’t even answer Question #1 for Minor, “Where was I born?” With adoption this information is sometimes unavoidably obscured, but damn it, I should not be the one obscuring it.

I am returning to work from a two-week vacation, and upon checking my e-mail I discovered I’ve been assigned two new projects. This brings my total number of projects to…a lot. I have a very detailed system for managing multiple projects, involving a set of linked MS Project timelines, a time-tracking database, exhaustive project plans, daily goal-setting, etc., but it is still difficult to go from zero to sixty like that. Last night, I was feeling anxious about it, and I had a sudden desire to map everything out on a white board.

The computer presents an unlimited canvas for documentation, but there is something so comforting about a white board, with its defined space and colored markers. In every collaborative meeting I’ve ever attended, all the decisions were made after someone scrawled some arcane diagram on a white board, someone else reconnected a line or two, and everyone nodded their heads, after which another attendee was dispatched to photograph the gibberish with his cell phone for posterity. Unfortunately, most of the walls in my new office are pitched, limiting the locations for hanging to the bathroom, the hallway, or at knee-height behind my desk.

What I needed was a white board with its own stand, like an easel. Where could I get such a thing? Then I realized I had the perfect solution at hand:

When they write up our office renovation in Architectural Digest, there will be a note that says, “Office by Fisher-Price.”

Today was the first day of my vacation that the weather was nice, the kids and dog were healthy enough to go to their respective day cares, and I was feelinga little less undead than previously.

Kayak trip!

I was paddling out to the middle of the lake reflecting on the sudden spate of paddling accidents that have been reported in the local paper when I noticed there was a lot of water in the ‘yak, even though the wind was calm and there was no spray. One minute I noticed my cooler was getting wet, and then next minute I was hip-deep.

I reversed, beached the boat, upended it, and saw a neat rent in the stern. Great.

I called the kayak repair shop to ask for an estimate. “How did the hole get in the boat?” he asked.

“Uh, I dunno, maybe we dropped it when we were transporting it?” I offered.

“The hole is in the boat because you drag the boat,” he pronounced.

If you already knew the answer, smartass, then why did you ask? Yes, I drag the boat. I have a bad back and weak upper arms. Sue me. Or, in your case, just charge me extra for being an idiot.

Given the events of the week, I guess God is telling me not just to shut up but to sit down, too.

Early this week, I lost my voice. It didn’t hurt. For two days, when I forced air over my vocal cords, nothing came out but a faint wheeze. It may have been related to the mono or to the Cox-Sackie virus the boys now have (Minor’s case comes with the popular mouth-sores option!) or, who knows, it may be related to Dog’s gastroenteritis. Or none of the above. Whatever; for the first two days of my vacation, I couldn’t talk.

On Monday night, I went to yoga, and when I greeted the teacher with a croak and she realized I had laryngitis, she said, “Maybe you’re meant not to talk for a while.” I’m not a big proponent of the mode of thinking that assigns universal motives to random occurrences. If there is a God, I’m pretty sure he didn’t send a virus to attack my vocal cords just to teach me a Life Lesson. But as a good English major, I’m all for making meaning out of the text in front of you, so I thought, “Okay. Laryngitis. A good opportunity to listen instead of talk.”

After an hour of yoga we settled into savasana, the final meditation (otherwise known as “short nap”), and I had to admit I felt much better NOT trying to talk. The teacher advised us to take in a deep breath and then let it out in one quick exhale. We did so, and the person next to me burst into sobs.

BURST. Into. Sobs.

I didn’t know what to do. I was on my back with my eyes closed, of course, so it was easy enough to pretend that nothing was happening. I wasn’t sure if she would prefer anonymity or comfort. I thought the teacher would know what to do, so I stayed put. Everyone remained silent. After class, while I was rolling up my yoga mat, the crying woman slipped out the door. The rest of us made small talk about the weather while we packed up to go. Or, rather, they made small talk, and I wheezed along.

I felt terrible for this woman. I guess you never know what people are carrying around inside of them. Ironically, it’s easier to get sympathy for small pains than large ones. “How are you?” “Terrible, the kids are sick and I’m exhausted.” “Oh, poor thing, I hope you feel better!” As opposed to: “How are you?” “Terrible, I’ve been sunk in a severe, drug-resistant depression since my spouse was diagnosed with a wasting illness.” “[Crickets.]”

Since I quoted Erving Goffman’s theory of politeness in an earlier post, I’ve been re-reading Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. His description of an everyday conversation, with all participants going to great lengths to hide what they really think and feel, and preserve their own and others’ socially-acceptable “lines,” is exhausting. It makes me wonder how we have the strength to get through the day. I suppose some of us are better at this than others; in fact, when I was teaching, I once counted up the conversations with different people I had on a daily basis, and I determined that it was the 100+ quotidian social interactions that were the untenable part of my job. (Total social interactions as a work-at-home consultant = as few as one, which involves me asking Husband, “Where do you want to have lunch today?”)

Goffman says that when someone fails to maintain a socially-acceptable “line” in a conversation — for example, when someone says or does what they really feel, and it makes others uncomfortable — that qualifies as an incident. An incident is remarkable enough to be the topic of conversation. An incident is blog-worthy, which Goffman didn’t say, but I will. That’s pretty much half your blogosphere right there.

This morning, I decided to attempt a ten-mile run. I mapped out the race course on WalkJogRun.Net and then wrote down the directions on a sticky note, because I really didn’t want to make a wrong turn that would extend a 10-mile run into an 11-mile run. Or even a 10.1 mile run. Any extra yardage was pretty much unacceptable, in my opinion. I also noted the locations of a few key mile markers, and then I put the sticky note in the pocket of my running shorts. You know, that little rectangular pocket that gets all sweaty, the one with the fold-over flap to secure the contents, the flap that also makes it difficult to extract anything while you are actually wearing the shorts.

So I ran and ran and ran, trying to recall the mile markers I had recorded, reluctant to wrestle with the note in my pocket. Finally, I noticed I was coming up on the 95 overpass, a location I remembered as the halfway mark. I rejoiced as I hit the middle of the bridge, until I saw that I was running over the spray-painted words, You Will Die Some Day.

Hm, I think the artist missed the ominous note he was shooting for. Some day? Certainly, but with any luck not on this run.

Then I took out my sticky note and saw that the 95 overpass was the FOUR mile mark, not the five. And I did die a little bit. But not all the way!

And I finished the whole damn ten miles without walking once.