What a strange time. Talking to a close friend last week it occured to me that if we do get to travel home to the US in June and July 2021, it will have been two full years since we will have seen most of our family and all of our friends. The way that time has passed or dragged, the things you focus on and bury.. my mind had simply never calculated or verbalized this plain fact.
And Henry -- everyone is asking how Henry is. He turned two in September, is bright and beautiful, with blond curls that we didn't know he had until he started refusing homegrown hair cuts. His pale skin is nearly translucent, his big blue eyes frequently catching the attention of passers-by. More than once we have been out when approached by a Khmer family with a child Henry's age or a bit older; they beckon their child to go stand with Henry for a picture. Unabashed, adults approach him and want to pinch his cheeks; a woman in our neighborhood of grandmother age bellows "BAY-BEE! BAY-BEE!" with a huge grin, every time she sees him walk by.
Henry is observant and serious. I came home the other day expecting my welcome back hug and kiss, but he was deeply engrossed in his ABC Bears book. Our nanny was reading the letters to him and providing the corresponding sounds; he was repeating. He could not be torn away from this important work to kiss his mother. Jeff recently ordered a new batch of graphing calculators to our house -- they quickly became Henry's new before-bed routine. Pecking out the different numbers, learning about the clear button. He's a very thoughtful little man.
Henry's language has taken off. He has recently added some new expressions to his vocabulary, which he deploys only in his favor: "a LOT" and "uh litta bit," which he uses when describing the number of birds he saw on a trip to the Royal Palace (former) or how much more of someone else's food he requires after already having eaten most of it (latter). He also says "first!" with his finger pointed straight up and eyes wide open when negotiating. As in "first readuhbook (one word) and THEN showah."
Henry is silly and energetic. He loves balls -- throwing them into his mini basketball hoop, exclaiming the Khmer words for "got it in" or "didn't get it in" over and over. The pink volleyball, the red rugby ball, the small yellow "spikeball" balls that roll under our couch. Henry loves rushing to get the broom and laying flat on the floor to retrieve them. He loves the overinflated soccer ball he got as a late birthday gift from one of our colleagues, choosing it the most for kicking around the neighborhood circa 5pm. These balls are always underfoot, always come along on car rides or trips, and have provided him with probably hundreds of hours of engagement and movement.
Henry can be shy. Just yesterday Jeff, our nanny and I were all playing with him, throwing him a ball so he could whack it with a small bat (read: the broken wooden slat that used to be one of the sides of a box holding blocks). When he got too excited and smacked the glass door pane with the "bat," receiving a reprimand, he burst into tears. Not because the reprimand was too stern, but because there were too many adult eyes on him when he did it.
Henry can be mischievous. When we were in Siem Reap recently, staying as the only guests in a small hotel, he was eating a peanut butter sandwich and demanded that I clean his hands (since, after all, he is my child). I ran inside for no more than 20 seconds to grab the baby wipes, and when I came out, in a shock to exactly no one, he had disappeared. I followed the sounds to find that he had entered a room further down, where three staff members must have been doing a routine room check. Not only had he let himself in, but he had also climbed up onto the massive white bed, peanut butter hands and all. When something like this happens, like the running away or the peanut butter hands on the white sheets that aren't ours, he often assures me that he was "just joking," to avoid a time out. Sometimes it works.
Henry loves. Multiple times a day, unprompted, Henry will say "Hen-dee love Mommy/Daddy." When he sees a dog, even the dirtiest, weirdest-shaped Cambodian street dog, he proclaims "I lud dat dog!" He loves books. He loves his baby bottle, which is a stand-in for a pacifier, and filling it up himself with the coldest water. He loves pillows. Hiding in them, climbing, jumping. He loves trucks -- trucks in books, or on his shirt, or on the road.
Henry is a constant source of joy for Jeff and I. We smile and reminisce about small moments from the day after we've put him to bed. We laugh about his moods, his demands for songs, his love for pasta, broccoli, rice and cake. It is a constant pleasure to see the ways in which his behavior and character mimic either Jeff's or mine. He is so curious, so sweet and so loved.
As we go into a new year, head back to school, and try to make sense of the unmitigated mess America has made of itself, I will lean into these small moments of joy and try to stay present in them.
