Thinking of Zubin

June 26, 2018

It has been four days since my last post. I did not write for three days – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I put down about 500 words yesterday, and am thoroughly at my wits’ end on how to increase my daily word count. Everything I write feels inadequate and not at all how I want to describe Zubin, how he was. I feel myself slipping from Rachael’s advice to keep writing and not look back. I feel that I am repeating myself and not being able to show as much as I want to. My word count goal for today is a 1000 words. So far I am 50% of the way there. But it is weighing heavily on my mind. And I will write some more after dinner tonight.

I was invited by a friend to go shopping and sightseeing on Friday. I do not enjoy  shopping at all but I did relish the opportunity to spend some time with her.  It turned out to be a comically frustrating day.  We drove 40 minutes to get to Zhongshan road. There, I tried to withdraw some money at an ATM. However the machine swallowed my card and kept displaying “processing…” on the screen. I tried canceling the transaction but it wouldn’t let me cancel either. A bank official told me that they would have to see my passport before they would return the card. So we drove back another 40 minutes to the hotel, got the passport, drove back another three quarters of an hour and finally got my card back. At that point I was fed up and just wanted to be done. So we clicked some pictures, drank red bean chai tea and headed back. But before that we made one stop at the shop shown in the picture below. Evidently it is a very old and famous snack shop in Xiamen. My friend insisted we try some seafood soup, peanut soup and a spring roll with mangoes and pineapple. It was as good a day as any, still I was thankful for my friend’s company. She remembered Zubin from when she had visited us in June 2017. It is always nice to hear when someone brings up Zubin and says that they remember him as a sweet kid. It is no use telling me not to think about him (which some people have done.) That is simply not possible. He is all I think about most of the time.

Over the weekend, we went to Wuyi mountain with another friend and hiked for a long time. We were joined for lunch by a family with two small kids. I remembered how Zubin loved kids. I am sure that if he were here he would have found a way to communicate with them in spite of the language barrier, and they would all have become best friends by the time lunch was over.

We all felt his absence acutely throughout the trip.

 

Picture of Zubin with his little cousin. Notice his tender expression!

 

 

 

 

A popular snack bar on Zhongshan road:

 

 

June 19, 2018

It is my second day in China. I finished Rachael’s book (so yesterday’s goal met!) The book is a fast but extremely good read and chock full of information. I love her humorous and gently insistent style. I might take her class in the Fall. Now my writing project starts from today. My goal for today is to start by planning my memoir. I have to create an outline with chapters and scenes for my project. And then, dip my first toe in by writing 500 words today. I am taking Rachael’s suggestion about writing bad first drafts very seriously and am planning to just get the words on paper. I think that doing the outline is somewhat easy, especially because it is like starting by drawing a line in the sand. I can always change it later. Important thing is to start building with the first block.

While having breakfast today, I noticed a little girl, about 7-8 years old, sitting with her mom at another table. The girl was happily chattering away. I remembered how my little Zubin loved to talk. He could talk non-stop about the most interesting stuff (to him) for a long time. And once he said “I love talking. I love the sound of words coming out of my mouth.” I used to sit next to my Zubin, just like that little girl’s mom, looking out distractedly and probably thinking of all the things she needed or wanted to do besides being a mom – have a career, do shopping, sightseeing, and just to be free. Except I am free now and I don’t want this freedom. I want nothing more than to take care of my Zubin and to laugh with him at his little boy jokes and the silly faces that he made.

At lunch I met another woman who admired my green earrings and said that her favorite color is green. I liked her instantly and shared that my son’s favorite color is green too. Then I showed her Zubin’s picture. She assumed that he was not with me at present (true in a way) and remarked “What a cute boy!” and then moved to the next topic. I didn’t say anything further because I didn’t want to share too much in case I made her uncomfortable and also because she thought Zubin was alive. I liked that and wanted him to keep on living in her mind.

Here is the view from the room where I have been writing:

 

June 18, 2018

So June 17 was already over (effect of traveling east) by the time we reached Xiamen, China. Today is my first day here. I thought of Zubin all of last evening and night. I couldn’t believe that I am traveling without him. That he will never again go anywhere with me – ever. My brain shuts itself when I think like that. So mostly I try to stay numb. I headed down to breakfast at Sheraton where I will be staying for the trip (lavish! I know. Benefits of being a corporate widow. Plus they give good discounts for frequent business travelers – thanks to my husband.) Zubin loved big breakfast buffets. You wouldn’t have been able to tell because he wasn’t a big eater. But give him some chicken nuggets, a petit chocolate chip muffin and cereal, and he was a happy camper. He mostly loved the pomp and show of these expansive spreads. Today is also Dragon festival in China. Zubin loved dragons. Not hard to imagine since they are the stuff that many little boys’ dreams are made of. He loved the legend and lore of it. He couldn’t get enough of dragon stories. Just for Zubin’s sake, I asked our concierge about the legend behind Dragon festival.

Legend goes (in a very condensed version) that there was a patriot and poet who lived around 300 BC in the state of Chu. His name was Qu Yuan. He was a major advisor to the King in the war among the seven states of Chu, Han, Qi, Qin, Wei, Yan and Zhao.  However his political opponents slandered him and got him exiled. The Kingdom of Chu subsequently lost to the state of Qin. Qu Yuan was so depressed by this defeat that he drowned himself in a river. The local people were very sad at his death and they rowed into the river and threw lumps of rice to feed the fish so that they would not eat his body. Resulting local traditions include dragon boat racing and eating sticky rice dumplings called zongzi. I think Zubin would have enjoyed this story – particularly the part about feeding the fish. In the evening we got invited to a friend’s home for dinner and got to eat some zongzi.

Between the jet lag due to the 15 hour time difference and the dinner with our friend’s family, I set myself a modest goal for today. I am working on finishing Rachael’s book and leaving the writing for tomorrow. I love you Zubin. I am thinking of you baby.

June 16, 2018 

I am sitting on a plane ready to takeoff for China. I am supposed to be feeling excited. But I am just sad. I remember flying with Zubin by my side. He was such a pro-traveler. Even at 3 he had the routine down. Within minutes of the plane taking off, he would be reaching for his headphones and cranking up the kids’ entertainment channel. He loved watching movies on flights. And he was a fan of animated movies – you know the kind they show on kids’ channels – Incredibles, Moana, Coraline , Kubo and the Two Strings and such. I loved watching these movies with him. They were my guilty excursions into a child’s world of fantasy and magic. The last time I watched one of these movies was with Zubin. I haven’t been able to bring myself to reenter his world without him. On this flight though, I thought I would try to watch a kids’ animated movie. I scrolled through the titles, many of which I had already watched with Zubin. I could not pick any of the familiar ones. So I selected Tad the Lost Explorer And the Secret of King Midas, a Spanish animated film translated to English. I watched it with a constant ache in my heart thinking of the numerous times when I had watched similar movies in the hospital room with Zubin. I remembered when colorful animated graphics and bright music of these movies had blended with fluorescent lights in sterile rooms of our pediatrics cancer hospital, and my kid’s innocence and fate had danced a complicated macabre tango of life and death.

On the rest of the flight I decided to read a book that was recommended by my friend. It is called Fast Draft your Memoir: Write your Life Story in 45 hours by Rachael Herron. I am going to follow her approach and see if I can complete the first draft of my Zubin’s story during this trip. It will be excruciatingly hard, but I am determined to do it.