Back in Action

Zee is dressed for a safari in his new duds. 

Dipsy no want to wear da skurt

On Saturday mornings, as a special treat (read: when mommy needs 5 more minutes of sleep or wants to finish an entire cup of coffee or when she wants Zee to finish his oatmeal with wheat germ and black strap molasses), Zee is treated to some time with the Teletubbies. He is instantly glued to the television, mouth agape, drool soaking the front of his blue bear pjs. He tends to watch in silence with random giggles here and there. One day as he watched, each Teletubbie took turns wearing a skirt and dancing. One by one they put the skirt on and did their 'solo' until it was "Dipsy's" turn. The announcer came on and said "Then it was Dipsy's turn to wear the skirt." Now, the Teletubbies faces don't move or make expressions so most of their emotions are communicated through physical actions and tone of voice. When Dipsy heard it was 'his' turn to wear the skirt he looked into the camera, paused and then said "uh-oh" followed by "run away" as he turned and darted off through the rolling green hills of Teletubbie land. He ran and Lala chased him with the skirt. At the sight of this, my usually chipper son, started crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he shrieked as if to say "no! don't make him wear the skirt!" That's silly, I thought, he doesn't understand what's going on. He's amused by the colors and gestures and messy pink tubbie custard but he's not 'getting it'. He must have gas or be bored or hungry or something. So, I picked him up and fed him or rocked him or something to quiet him and turned off the TV (I was nearly done with my coffee anyway).

The next time we played the DVD he saw the same sketch and just as he had done before, he started crying when he saw Dipsy being forced to wear a skirt and dance around for our viewing pleasure. Lala finally caught Dipsy and somehow coaxed him to wear the skirt and he danced around in the skirt for a minute, seemingly happily, until he had had enough and took the skirt off again. Zee cried through the whole thing. I told Zee, it's ok, Dipsy is happy wearing the skirt afterall, but Zee wasn't buying it. We had to turn it off again.

Is our little boy an emotionally intelligent genius? Is he kind and compassionate and empathetic? Of course! But then, I may be a bit biased....;)

A Celebration of Life

I attended a “celebration of life” ceremony last night. The name of the observance felt odd because the gentleman had passed on to the other side. The deceased was the father of a former student of mine. A relatively young guy only four years my senior. He had lost control of his motorbike and crashed into a pole. I don’t have the details of how the accident happened but the end game was that he was killed. After the reading The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)...For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one..., my former student, now a freshman, spoke to those in attendance so beautifully about his father and the lessons he had taught him. He said, “My father always taught me to treat others equally and said if you do this, you will have friends everywhere in the world. I hope I can be as good as my father was,” he ended. It was well spoken, articulate, authentic, from the depths of the heart. I had met his father at a parent teacher night. Although the interaction was brief he struck me as “real”. He wore his hair long and he didn’t dress up – something I appreciated and admired. He was a stay at home Dad and didn't try to pretend to be someone he wasn't. What you saw was what you got. He stayed after my talk to the parents and made an effort to shake my hand and thank me for teaching his son. As I left the “celebration” I hugged my former student, now fighting back the tears that streamed down his face, and told him how proud his father would be of him. As I rode my motorbike home I pondered my life, my Dad, Mom, sister, my son, my wife, my own role as father and husband, my own "celebration of life", and the reliability of my helmet.

A blood surge

Bam! In one second my boy went down. I was watching him and clapping as he maneuvered himself around on his oversized tricycle. As I moved into the kitchen my eyes left him for ONE second. I knew the reason he had fallen was because he craved his Daddy's attention. I ran over and noticed the tricycle was on its side. Zee was in a bad way as his face lay planted on the marble floor. I quickly assessed his little cranium for trauma and then I noticed the blood gushing from his tiny mouth. I tried to remember CPR, my EMT classes, my breathing techniques. My boy was bleeding a lot. I observed his mouth. I noticed his little teeth had nearly gone through his upper lip but they were intact. I focused on keeping my voice calm while Zee looked to me for help. I hugged him close as I tried to apply pressure - he wouldn’t have it. I place an ice cube to his lip but to no avail. I tried a frozen banana, licking it to entice him, as I kept trying to apply pressure as the blood dripped onto the floor, soaked my shirt. I filled a cup of cold water in desperation and put it to his swelling lip. Zee swallowed some as the remaining water turned red. “Thank goodness!” I thought. But the blood kept flowing. I quickly rang Vanessa to see when she would be home. I didn’t want to alarm her but I thought it might be time to get our boy to a medical facility. I found a glass jar of popcorn kernels and shook it to take Zee’s mind off the pain. It worked and he started to play with it. The blood surge started to subside. My breathing became less like a sprint and more like a marathon. Zee looked at me with the biggest fat lip I have ever seen. Mom arrived shortly. I warned her about looking at the lip. She gasped at the sight and my heart felt as if it was stabbed. Zee had settled down and made the signal to Vanessa for the breast. Vanessa and I feared it would be too painful for him to feed and it might create a negative association. We were wrong…fortunately. Zee took to the breast as if nothing had happened. Vanessa and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief.
Later, at the medical facility, as Zee flirted with the woman at the front desk I reminded myself that there will be more of these bang ups. The woman at the front desk handed me a card with a name on it. It read Master Zee Dickey. I realized my boy had graduated. He was no longer our little Zee or our little Bear. He is now our Master Zee….with a fat lip.

La Vida

What can I say? Life is good. Zee continues to grow and blossom as the local women jockey for a chance to hold him, touch him, kiss him, croon over him, take pictures of him. They are the paparazzi and Zee the star. He is an icon as the women run toward him "Zee, Zee" they scream. I swear that you would think he was the next Buddha or the offspring of Mohammed - but I love every bit of it and I am known as Zee's Dad. Bapak Zee. I am the father of a star - My star.
Vanessa is loving her work and on top of all of her duties at work she is studying to be a lactation consultant. It is great to see her so passionate about something so important. She is still breastfeeding and is doing some very interesting work and advocacy in relation to breast feeding.
I continue to learn, to grow, to question myself, and to love it all. Teaching is an even more enrichening experience than I could ever imagined. Although it is draining and leaves me exhausted it also envigorates and excites me at the same time. It seems as if there is never enough time to soak up all the knowledge. I am taking an online coarse related to conflict, race, disrimination, identity, the Holocaust and designing a Conflict curriculum and then a Holocaust curriculum after that as it relates to bystanders and perps. It is interesting to learn more about my Mom and how much prejudiced she endured and how much she and my father overcame. So much to learn. Vanessa and my conversations are deep and interesting and we are surrounding ourselves with positive people but our days are a blur as we realize the week has passed and Zee has learned a new facial expression, sign, word, Mensa problem.
My parents just wrote to tell me about a good friend who I met in Mexico years ago at a Hostel in D.F. that stopped in to have dinner with them. He was accompanied by his wife and child. How cool is that. A good time was had by all.

I ran a half-marathon yesterday morning with some friends and it felt good. There was a light breeze on part of it and I thought about my family and friends. I felt my pace increase as a smile spread across my sweaty face. About 20 0f us went to take coffee afterward and while there I received a call from Vanessa to tell me some of our closest friends from Atlanta had just told her that they may be stationed here in Big Smoke with us and they will be living in the same complex. We will be neighbors! How cool is that? We are keeping our fingers crossed that all falls into place as is meant to happen. Life is happening and it is seldom I get a chance to blog, to reflect, or to take it all in but it's a good thing when there is that time to do it. A friend stopped into my class today and asked me if I wanted to do an adventure race in Singapore. ....why not I said. What else do I have to do.
It is amazing how your body adjusts to four and five hours of sleep and loads of Java and sleeping in is 0500.