Month: July 2022

June and July

It is hard to believe summer went by this fast. Kate started and finished her first summer camp at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. I took two memorable trips (Cape Cod and Montr`eal). Our sunflowers took off in full bloom and added a nice cottage curb appeal to our house. We bought an inflatable pool that is embarrassingly large for the front yard but it is a cheaper and probably better substitute for trips to the city pool.

As most of our friends went and already returned from their main summer vacation, we are only getting ready for ours. Our family usually spends a month in Montana where Chris’ parents and siblings live. We are leaving this Sunday and will be gone for three weeks. The rising heat and humidity in Cincinnati only add to our anticipation for the trip.

Progress report:

Research: I finished all the data analysis for the empirical project and wrote up a draft! My main results are:

Children from less-educated households who are cared for at a center (relative to having only parental care) have higher reading and math scores when they reach kindergarten.

Child care type (parental care, center care, or relative care at age 2) does not have a significant effect on cognitive skills for children from more-educated households.

Once approved by the Institute of Education Sciences Data Security, I will be able to circulate the paper and polish it for publication.

Studies on child care choices are interesting and important on their own and with young children at home, I have additional incentives to read the literature. With rich data on individual households and children, this project is a thrilling adventure that feeds my own curiosity. The best part is pushing the “run” button on many lines of software code and watching trends emerge from initially unorganized information.

French: This is a neglected area for the past month and half. Due to staggered travel schedules, French club was not able to meet. Losing the accountability and interrupted by trip preparations, I only managed to study two lessons with Coffee Break French. My saving grace was the trip to Montréal with Aisela. When the Customs Border Officer in Canada asked me in all seriousness: “What is the purpose of this trip?” In broken French, I declared: “I come here to practice my French.” I don’t know it was my answer or my French that was amusing to him. He tried to contain himself, but couldn’t help letting out a chuckle.

Reading:  I finished 3 books: Poor Economics; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; 斑马. It is a great mix of economics, classic literature, and modern fiction. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo are recipients of Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019 for their work in field experiments to alleviate global poverty. I read their second book “Good Economics for Hard Times” and enjoyed it. So I decided to add their first book “Poor Economics” to my reading list. Both books serve as a literature review of empirical work in development economics. Insightful and eye-opening. Through the statistical findings and behavioral psychology in the book, I sensed the deep humility and patience of a group of researchers who aim to tackle a seemly unsolvable problem.

Nothing beats a good story. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is one. Good writing transports you through time and space, and leaves you with strong emotions as if you are the main character. I felt Tom’s fear, joy, a sense of freedom, short-lived guilt, and desire to do the right thing. His passion for adventures and thrills? Not me.

斑马 is a story of a Chinese woman’s journey to fight infertility, and rekindle the relationship with her husband along the way. I find the author’s message rather trite and the plots far-fetched. However, it is nice to read a light story in Chinese and I have a couple of classic books in 武侠and SciFi lined up to read next.

Cape Cod

David’s favorite color is blue. He wants blue popsicles, blue cups, blue markers, and blue flowers. I tell him: “Baby, there are no blue flowers.” Our trip to Cape Cod proved me wrong. Blue hydrangeas were in full bloom almost everywhere. We stayed in a town called Falmouth. Just like its flowers, this place took me by surprise with its beauty and tranquility. Unlike a tropical beach town, in Falmouth, large, dense trees shade the roads and obscure what lays beyond.  You only pop out of the cover to see a beach, an ice-cream shop, or the main street downtown. You almost forget there are also auto shops, furniture stores, and hospitals in this world. Everyone is in vacation mode, fully relaxed and joyful. This might be why people tolerate an hour-long wait for croissants from the best bakery in town (don’t ask me how I know).

This is our third vacation together. I mean the four high school friends and our families. We have known each other since we were 12 years old and went our own ways for college. Since then, our paths crossed and then parted. It was 8 years ago on Olivia’s wedding when we all met as a group and decided to keep it that way. It is so special to chat way past midnight in Wuhanese, just like old days on our bunk beds. Except that our topics switched from boys and dreams to summer camps and vacuum cleaners. It is an odd feeling to see the same teenage girls in them, yet a fresh layer of maturity and richness reminds me that 20 years have gone by.

The husbands get along just fine. They bond in different ways than women. After all the kids are put to bed, the wives run to the common space and get straight to business, drinking (mostly tea, we are Chinese remember?) and chatting.  The men play Texas poker, Catan, and occasionally just sit next to each other and catch up on work. One night, in an attempt to include men in our favorite activity, the women dimmed the lights, lit some candles and brought wine glasses. The normally accommodating husbands joined force in a group protest and refused this disruption to their game.

The children, 7 of them, play well together. Our hope for them to practice Chinese with each other vanished early on. English is the dominant language among the little ones. For a long time, Kate believed she is half Chinese and half English. So I did my part. Still, to tell her about her roots is different from letting her live it. Traveling with a group of Chinese friends, eating Chinese meals on most days, and watching the dynamics in other Chinese families hopefully will be treasured memories some day.

In Cape Cod, the things that possess comparable beauty with those hydrangeas are the water and the sky above it. The whole crew rented bikes one day and lined up on a shady trail along the coast. Kate pedaled in front of me and her hair was dancing cheerfully in the wind. With joy, she said: “Mom, I just love this. Don’t you?” “Yes, Kate! It is lovely.” I truly felt that way. There is no better vacation than this. Childhood friends, happy family, beautiful weather, and don’t forget the croissants. Just when I thought this is a fairy tale, the trip took a sharp turn.

Maybe we were meant to have a full experience of this resort town. Chris’ heart went into Afib (irregular heartbeats) after racing the men in the garden of The Breakers.  The incident led to a trip to the ER and a cardioversion on his heart. It was less scary than the first time it happened (4 years ago), but still, I couldn’t help feeling a big knot tightening in my chest the whole time. Prayers were said aloud and in quiet. While waiting for some medication to work, I read him a chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It brought me some well-needed peace. In that moment, I was willing to trade anything for him to be well. My trench coat, our savings, sleeping in every day, or even my sabbatical.

Our friends back in the house fed our kids and put them to bed. A group of them brought me dinner. Emily made rice, stir fried asparagus and mushroom that night. In the same bag with the food, there was a light jacket, a roll of toilet paper, two slices of bread and a juice box. The cardioversion took place around 11 and all the men came to pick us up a little after midnight. After my briefing with the girls, we said goodnight early.

The rest of the trip was less light-hearted, but still enjoyable. You know we are not sick of one another when we pinned down the next vacation destination and started looking into rental properties the night before departure. For me, this is likely to be a very memorable trip as it is infused with deep and mixed emotions, joy and worry, love and fear. As our family slowly resets into our routine back at home, I hope to hold on to that piece of blueness a little longer.