Child Bearing Hips, Etc.

I definitely don't have one of those and was slightly concerned. But then I remembered that there were billions of people in China. Lots who suffer severe Asian-flat-ass syndrome yet seemingly having no trouble over populating the earth. My mom never really went into specific details about our birth stories (or she would never have gotten a grandchild, except for the four-legged variety). All I remembered was that she went into labor sometimes in the evening and eventually gave birth to me almost 24 hours later. 24 hours and no epidural! And then she volunteered to do it again, and again! With no drugs! The woman is obviously a masochist. My grandma was in labor with my mom for 2 days. 2 DAYS! Needless to say, she was also a masochist since she repeated the same horror 3 more times after that. Being pregnant gave me a new pair of eyes to look at these lovely women in my life and adore them even more than I thought possible. I marvel at their strength and quiet pride when they look at what they have brought into the world, all from their 5-foot-or-under frames.

It's a tradition in my family that the kids spend their summer break from school with the grandparents. I honestly don't recall spending any significant amount of time in the concrete jungle that was Bangkok during the summer. At least not until I was heading into secondary school (grade 6-12) and things became so ridiculously competitive that Bangkok kids had to spend their summer vacation in tutoring schools if they wanted a shot at getting into decent secondary schools and colleges. Even so, my parents were adamant that we spent some parts of the summer with the grandparents. My grandparents lived in the southern part of Thailand. The trips there were always magical. Sometimes mom and dad could drive us there (12 hours!), but most of the times we were sent on a train with our nanny. The things I loved most about the train were the food and our sleeping quarters. At every train stop, vendors carrying local foods would come up to the windows offering the season's finest selections. Fresh foods, veggies, and fruits. Lots of them were on sticks. It was like a Disney World of Edible Things I Had Never Seen Before. As if that wasn't enough fun already, after dinner time, 3 strong men in dark navy uniforms would come around to convert our seats into our very own sleeping cabins. With crisp white sheets, fluffy pillows, and springy rubber mattresses! I never slept so well as on those trains. And that was just getting there. I don't have enough words in my vocabulary to properly articulate the joy those summer memories bring. I have lots of grandparents. Of course, I have the usual 2 sets like everybody else but in Thailand we also call their siblings grandmas and grandpas. And why not? They all have had their hands in raising and loving us just like any other grandparents. It seemed their mission for the summer was to feed us all those things city kids were "deprived" of, and my siblings and I were only too humble to oblige. You think Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at your house were huge? My grandmas cooked like that on most weeknights. And we were to finish EVERYTHING. Seriously, it wasn't uncommon to find me at a kitchen table around 10 o'clock, still eating. Not because I had to, but because it was so damn good I couldn't stop.

But most importantly, I learned to be a kid with my grandparents. I learned to climb trees to pick fruits or just because I wanted to climb. I saw where eggs come from when I had to retrieve them in the morning before breakfast. I learned where the Big Dipper was lying outside on the cool marble patio after dinner, holding my dessert of papaya that was shaped like a foot-long sword. I almost lost a tooth eating a yard-long stick of sugar cane that my grandpa cut for me. I played King of the Hill outside in the rain. I played with guns and horses that were made from the banana tree trunk. I swam in creeks. Ran barefoot and learned why I shouldn't do it. I learned to kick box and crochet, all in one busy summer. I saw where we came from. I learned to appreciate when my parents said "when I was your age, we didn't have anything." I saw the lands the grandparents before my grandparents farmed rice and rubber trees to put food on the table and their kids through school. I saw where their bones were kept. I met really old perfect strangers, who came up to me crying and kept telling me how much I looked like my grandparents and greatgrandparents and what great people they were. I can not teach my children this. They have to be there to learn it for themselves, just like I did. For the first time in a very long time, I heard a spark in my dad's voice when I mentioned summer vacation. He said we weren't going to get the baby back after the summer. Speaking like a true grandpa.