It’s nearly bedtime and my kids are brushing their teeth. I overhear this discussion from the bathroom:

“My friend Amelia went to another guojia (country) and she’s never coming back ever, ever.”

“Oh! Last year, my friend Fuluolong went to Faguo [France] and he said, ‘Uhm, il ne va pas revenir non plus (he’s not coming back either).”

“Maybe one day we will go away to Canada, Mommy said.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, don’t tu (spit) on my side!…”

I’m listening to this from the kitchen, and since the conversation has deteriorated into an argument, I know I’ll have to intervene any second. But as I dry my hands, my thoughts are on the uniqueness of my children’s “third culture” lives.

They are speaking in their particular combination of three languages. English is their “mother tongue,” or the language I reinforce as the Anglo Canadian, but Chinese is their surroundings and the exclusive language of their grandparents and father. They’re attending the French international school, so they sometimes bounce into a partial French sentence, which I find amusing because of their France-French lilt against my (preferred) Quebecois accent. Nevertheless, with each other, they’re in a perpetual linguistic dance.

But their lives aren’t just unique because of language. They’re living here in Beijing and, like me, they deal with the regularity of friend disappearances. They’re so used to it, it’s just a casual conversation while brushing their teeth, and I wonder at how this will impact their abilities to bond with people throughout their lives. It’s shifted my own instincts around friendship after only a decade of expat living—and not in a very positive way—so I can only hope that my children are more resilient than I’ve been.

According to TCK (third culture kid) literature, children who experience a life surrounded by the transience of ex-patriotism learn to make friends more quickly but at a lesser depth so that the inevitable disappearance of these friends hurts less. This knowledge makes me sad for them. I hope I can always model close friendship even across distance.

But as I sort out their spitting argument and hustle them into PJs and eventually bed, I’m also still thinking about how lucky they are. They’re living a life geared up to be fully proficient in the world’s two most important languages: English and Mandarin. They’re also learning French, which makes them fully proficient in the country for which they hold a passport, not to mention fairly versatile globally, as well. What’s not to champion about knowing a romance language?

But, maybe more important is the consistent exposure to multiple cultures and societies. Our frequent returns to Canada (specifically Toronto: now deemed the world’s most diverse city by BBC radio) and their daily school life in Beijing at an international school that proudly states that in 2019 they “welcome 50 nationalities,” my kids are living a life incredibly rich in humanity.

The unique upbringing of any TCKs will bring challenges, such as a difficulty finding people to relate to, perhaps, or a tendency to think from a non-conventional angle thanks to these different lenses through which they have perceived the world at these young, impressionable ages; but, these skills and sensitivities—things that are second nature to them rather than accomplishments—will certainly provide more lift than burden to their respective futures.

As I tuck my two TCKs into bed, I feel a familiar comfort: they’ll always have each other. Beijing is home now, but ultimately, “home” is where your teeth get brushed, your spitting fights happen, where your loved ones are. No specific geography required.

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

This article appeared in the beijingkids May 2019 Identity issue.
Photo: Aleksandar Pasaric via Pexeks

After more than 10-years in Beijing, I’m still discovering it. Sure, when you’re based in the same housing compound for a decade, it’s normal to have some commonly frequented destinations. My beaten paths: it’s called routine. But, that’s doesn’t have to take the fun out of this city.

Weekends with my kids (7 and 5) are a special time. The daytimes, if not filled with play dates or birthday parties, give us a chance to really connect with each other. Even though there’s the weekly domestic work around the house to take care of, I find Saturday or Sunday afternoons always offer a pocket of time for card games or chess (their new addiction) or reading and/or homework review indoors. So, when the air is questionable, this tends to be our pattern.

But, about once a month, there’s an “adventure day.” They’re always so excited by this spontaneous announcement (as it’s weather pending) because we’ve all agreed that adventures have to be to places that none of us have ever been before.

Last spring, we went on a walking adventure around our neighborhood. We entered compounds that weren’t ours and explored their grounds and play areas. We took paths we had never followed, went into stores we’d never entered, etc. In the process, we discovered that one of the ritzy compounds next to ours raises two pet ducks. They’ve created a small water area and a little pen. Those ducks came right up to the fence to sniff our hands for food. The kids were thrilled! Imagine—ducks had been here all along and we’d had no idea! (Since then, we’ve visited these ducks a few times.)

This past fall, one of our adventures took us to a neighborhood north of Gulou to a vinyl record store with sofa-filled listening rooms. (Fusheng Changpian 福声唱片) The basement shop’s postered walls contained the paradoxical mixture of both vacant and fierce stares from Chinese rock stars over the past couple of decades. Originally, I’d come to discuss a band performance with the owner, but the kids had never played vinyl before and the spinning black discs held down by those fragile needles captured their full attention.

Sometimes we explore tourist sites that we’ve heard about but never seen before. The Minorities’ Village was one of those adventures. It was a warm fall afternoon a couple of years ago that we went there to finally check out those unique thatched rooftops I’d seen a hundred times when driving east across the northern stretch of the fourth ring road. The kids loved bounding in and out of the diverse houses and imagining living in them. “Where would you sleep?” was the game that day. (But good weather is a must since it’s mostly outdoors.)

This past weekend, our adventure was the Paleontology Museum across from the Beijing Zoo. They love dinosaurs and I found it cool too, maybe even more so because it wasn’t too large and overwhelming like most museums. My son, however, was disappointed.

“Mom! There’s nothing but bones!” he said, dragging his feet. I laughed. “Did you expect a dinosaur to come out and bite us?”  His expression proved he’d truly hoped for something so exciting!

“Adventure day” hinges on the unknown. Sometimes disappointing, sometimes fruitless—several destinations turned out to no longer exist—other times, it’s boring and the kids whine. But the overall lesson is this: never stop discovering your surroundings. I want the kids to be filled with curiosity. Thankfully, Beijing is the perfect playground for us, three urban explorers.

This article first appeared in the beijingkids April 2019 Exploring Beijing issue.
Photos: rawpixels.com via Pexels

Back in Toronto, I used to be a member of a local grocery co-op. It was a cute little shop hidden in the “hutongs” of the Annex district, mostly known through word-of-mouth. I loved this little treasure. Shopping there made me feel part of a movement for environmentalism, community and sustainability.

Then I moved to China, the land where recycling isn’t even built into the municipal infrastructure in a way that makes the consumer responsible (or liable) for their own waste. Watching the elderly dig through the garbage bins for sellable items, I often think wistfully of the “blue boxes” of my home city.

But China brought changes to my life far beyond the reaches of environmental practices: marriage, kids, expanded career, and divorce. My kids are now seven and five. The older they get the more the “days before kids” get a mythological, dream-like quality in my mind and this makes me a bit misty about that Toronto co-op—the days of an iron-hard conviction that conscious consumerism was the only way to make a statement. Money talks: stop buying wastefully and companies will no longer profit from unsustainable practices, right?

Now I understand that it isn’t just the companies’ fault; it’s the public’s own general apathy. Most people just don’t want to consider something as mundane as waste or how individual contributions towards a greener world make any kind of difference. I’ve heard this called willful ambivalence.

And, in a way, I feel guilty of this. Formerly rigid convictions became more malleable since kids. Like, I couldn’t keep them in reusable cloth diapers for long flights; I’ve winced but still purchased toys in packaging more dense than the toy itself; and, just recently, I mistakenly bought a large amount of pecans off Taobao that showed up as a big bag filled with dozens of little portion-packaged bags inside—a colossal waste of plastic.

It’s a sad truth that becoming a parent has sometimes meant living less sustainably rather than the other way around. They’re the future! They should make me all the more rigid, no? But fellow parents reading this will understand how difficult perfect adherence to all convictions can be when kids come along. In response, I’ve learned to appreciate what I can do rather than blaming myself for my failures.

So what’s the current focus? Teaching my kids these vital values so we can implement them as a team. We buy our fresh veggies from a family who sells at our compound entrance but has a farm on the edge of Beijing; that’s buying local. We grow herbs indoors; that’s homegrown organic farming. We keep an old egg carton that holds 18 eggs and buy loose eggs (in reused plastic bags); that’s waste reduction. We save our washing machine water for flushing the toilet; that’s water conservation. These may seem like little things, but they’ll remember.

Maybe I’m not always conscious of what’s happening in the forests of Tasmania anymore, but the inner community dynamics of my compound’s courtyard is clear. And despite being expats, we’re just as much a part of this intimate community as anyone else is. For me, raising little people in a way that makes the world a better place—even the small world of one Beijing apartment compound—has replaced conscious consumerism in my mind as the most powerful statement. I’m going to go on to say that parenting through the lens of sustainable living is probably the ultimate definition of “co-op.” And, happily, in this one, I’ll forever be a member.

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

This article first appeared in the beijingkids March 2019 Sustainability issue.
Photo: Adobe Creative Cloud

I am raising two kids here in Beijing as the only foreigner in the family dynamic. That means I represent the “foreign language” (English) and all of the “foreign ways.” Over the years, we have found a harmonious balance between Eastern and Western traditions, and now that their dad and I have split, my Chinese in-laws and I do a pretty great job of taking great care of Echo (7) and Paz (5). I’m eternally grateful to them.

I have noticed, however, a difference in etiquette standards, particularly verbally. My kids bark to their grandparents to get them water or to make certain foods and their doting Yeye and Nainai bounce up to their every whim. In Chinese culture, they argue, there is no need for niceties; i.e. such words as “please” or “may I” or “excuse me” contradict the natural intimacy that exists between family members. It creates awkwardness.

I’m not so sure I buy this. Surely acknowledging what people do for us (“thank you”) extends across cultures. And since I can’t fully drop my Canadian tendencies, I thank my in-laws when I feel genuinely grateful and it seems to please them—no awkwardness.

Nevertheless, when this carries over into English with the kids, it doesn’t work. Kids barking orders at their mother? No “please”? No “thank you”? Uh-uh. It’s not the way I was raised; these two children are learning that when switching a language, you also have to switch a set of cultural norms.

So recently, when my daughter said this to me, I was truly touched. My education is working:

“Thank you, Mommy, for the yummy dinner!”

“Oh, honey,” I said. “Thank you for thanking Mommy! That really warms my heart!” With this, I put one hand on my chest and gave her a loving smile.

She looked at me for a moment, frozen. Then she stood up, walked over and placed her hand on my chest too.

“Oh,” she said, eyes wide. “It is warm! Wow, your heart is warmed up now! Come didi! Feel mommy’s heart! Is yours warm?” (Hand on didi’s chest) “Nope, not as warm as mommy’s, look! Touch it! I made it warm!”

I watched this scene silently, completely amused and immeasurably moved. And, remembering this moment made me smile for days.

A couple of weeks later, we were outside walking and witnessed a child picking something up for an elderly man. I used the expression again (“heartwarming”) and my daughter immediately looked up at me, excited.

“Can I feel it, Mommy? Can I feel your heart?”

I stopped walking and turned to her. “You can close your eyes and feel what ‘heartwarming’ means in your own heart, honey, without your hands.” She didn’t quite get this. I went on to explain. “When we do nice things for people, say nice things, or just act politely and kindly, it makes people feel good…right here!” I poked her in the chest and then kissed the top of her head.

She nodded, “Yeah, me too!” And she pointed to her heart. It had made sense to her.

“Exactly,” I said. “The kinder we are to people, the more we make people feel that nice feeling makes us feel nice too. So, everyone’s heart is warm on the inside!”

That night, with a giant, dramatic “xie xie, nai nai!” my daughter spontaneously thanked my mother-in-law for dinner. Her grandmother beamed and praised her for being so grown up.

Then she looked at me and said this in English before throwing her head back with a giant kid laugh: “That’s a Chinese heartwarmer!”

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (벌흔寧) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (벌各질).

This article first appeared in the beijingkids December 2018 Charity and Goodwill issue.
Photo: Adobe Creative Suite

“Well, now that you’re doing interpreting, you can add it to your already teetering stack of jobs,” my friend quipped recently.

This was in a response to a gig I landed interpreting for a major media company at the Beijing offices of the United Nations, a total honor. I nervously stepped into the role with no real experience in the industry except my ten years of living here speaking Chinese. Well, also countless casual interpretation tasks I’d done for my Chinese family members or visiting English-speaking family and friends, but I wasn’t sure that was going to cut it.

Her comment made me pause. “Don’t you have, like, twelve different jobs, Ember?” she added, laughing, in response to my crunched brow.

I started counting them, upwards in order of priority: musician, writer, singer, songwriter, voice-over artist, translator, English tutor, recording engineer, audio editor, voice coach, booking agent, interpreter, researcher…

Of course, my number one job is being a mother to my two kids, daughter Echo (nearly 7) and son Topaz (nearly 5). The freelance frenzy I manage daily is designed to fit around their needs, first and foremost. So far, it seems to be working.

While my friend described it as a dangerously stacked tower, I liken it more to the game Tetris. Remember that video game? A series of differently falling shapes all comprised of squares must be fit together to eventually create complete horizontal lines on the bottom of the screen, which then disappear, clear space, and turn into points. The trick to Tetris is knowing in which direction to turn the shapes quickly in order to fit them into available open spaces.

For a freelancer like me, living in Beijing is like living at the bottom of a Tetris screen. The work falls out of the sky, is all coming from different spheres and requires some concerted manipulation to fit into the solid timeline of a day. When I manage to fill a day with lucrative blocks that keep my rent paid, kids fed, and their school fees paid, I give myself serious points.

Yet, it’s also a bit frenetic. There are times when I have to press pause on it all and just focus on one thing. Most of the time, as my greatest passions, music or writing gets this privilege. They’re also the fields with the largest ongoing projects. As well, I’ve learned to favor work that doesn’t require a fixed weekly time schedule because I often have to travel for my music. I’ve brought my tutoring or coaching down to once a week, for instance, limiting my number of students.

But, for a Tetris-style freelance mom, kid blocks are the most important. They’re the early morning routine that ends with watching them board the bus at 7.40am, paired with the afternoon bus pick-up at 4pm that ends with the kids being tucked in bed at 7:30pm. All the jobs I do in-between must somehow fit together. And exercise, socializing and empty blocks (to literally do nothing) are just as important in the game. Without planning them in, I’d feel much less healthy all around.

That media company called me back to interpret again for a UN-related event this week. I’m excited about this new “shape” that has fallen from the freelance sky and seems to be fitting in quite well. That’s the beauty of Beijing: you never know what opportunity is around the corner here. And if you compare it to a video game that you’re ultimately controlling, life never needs to feel like it’s all going to topple over.

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (벌흔寧) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (벌各질).

This article appeared in the beijingkids November 2018 Beijing Makers issue
Photo: Adobe Creative Cloud

A siren-style wail just rose from the living room. It sounds like “Moooommmmmy!” and signals a war is on. I hear struggling, yelling, and I can barely get my hands dried from the sink before my son (4.5) is already at the kitchen doorway in choppy tears and my daughter (6.5) is at his back, haughty and indignant. Kicking is reported. Hitting is reported. Mean things were said, apparently. On both sides.

Fighting between kids is normal, I know. So too is exasperation on the part of mothers. I want my kids to get along, of course, but my deeper desire is for my kids to understand that emotions can be controlled. They are temporary visitors to the body/heart.

“Looks like Sam and Albert are having a party in both of you right now,” I say to them, dishtowel still in my hands. This briefly pulls them from their drama and there’s a considered pause. I continue.

“Because you both let Albert the Angry in, you’re being mean to each other. Hitting, kicking, saying mean things are all not okay. And look,” I wipe a tear off my son’s cheek. “When you do those things, Sam the Sad comes and joins the party! What can we do about this?”

Yes, we named them—the feelings. There’s “Albert the Angry” and “Sam the Sad” and “Gilbert the Giggler.” Sometimes we add in “Francesca the Frustrated,” but generally the first three characters are enough to keep the scene rolling.

My daughter contests the exercise. She knows where I’m going with it but the offending chronology of wrongdoing is what she feels most warrants my attention.

“Didi kicked me first!” she declares and then she also starts to cry. I say what I always say then, that the order of acts aren’t important; what’s important is that they handle the bad feelings properly before they escalate to the point of doing mean things.

We all go to the couch. We all sit down. I’m given the play-by-play of the drama once again and I listen, concede which acts were unfair and sound too rough, but then continue to encourage the focus on the feelings rather than the specific details.

Okay, I know this is all easier said than done. As adults, we struggle with the simple concept of emotional control. Some flat-out reject its validity. Expressions like “you can’t control how you feel” or “it/he/they made me feel like this” or “feelings don’t lie” are common. But, I argue that if kids can accept this concept early, maybe they will always be psychologically more grounded than their own parents.

“Let’s close your eyes for a second,” I say and both kids are willing. “Pretend there’s really a party happening inside of you. Albert the Angry is kicking the chairs and spilling all the drinks on the floor. Sam the Sad is crying in the corner and won’t talk to anyone. Who can we invite into the party to make everyone feel better?”

Their eyes fly open when I poke them, one in each side, right in their ticklish spots. They stifle giggles but aren’t quite ready to get out of their moods.

“Gilbert the Giggler has burst into the party. And guess what? He sees the spilled drinks on the floor and he falls flat on his bum with a SPLAT!” I say this with as much animation as I can muster and poke them both again, playfully. My son laughs. I continue.

“Then he slides all the way over to where Sam is crying and splashes all those spilled drinks right up onto Sam’s nose and Sam is so surprised that her nose is wet that she stops crying!”

The kids are both engaged. They’ve stepped out of the warzone scene, emotionally. They’ve stopped crying and are listening. I take their hands.

“So, these are the feelings in you right now. Sometimes they need to be asked to leave the party. Bye Bye, Albert! Bye Bye Sam! Hi Gilbert, let’s clean this stuff up, huh? And how do we clean up feelings? We have to do nice things for each other. Sometimes we need to say ‘sorry.’ We always have to be kind. Smile. Have fun!”

I snuggle each of them into me then. They’re no longer tense. A white flag has been raised over this living room stage.

Years ago, in my study of Buddhism and meditation practice, I learned a concept that changed my life. Don’t get me wrong, it’s bloody hard to master, but it’s brilliant when it works. The concept is this: feelings are temporary like clouds passing in the sky. If you attach to them, they become beliefs. If you watch them passively and just let them pass, they will change and take on new shapes. The extension is this: yes, we can control how we feel; we can choose not to attach to the negative (or positive) feelings and this agency can, indeed, improve the quality of our lives. How so? It keeps us from the extremes of both spikes and dips. It keeps us balanced and level.

Poke, poke. Giggles elicited. Now they’re both on top of me and they’re finding my tickle spots too. I can’t help but laugh with them.

So, I’m still working on it. My kids are working on it with me. Most of the time, my feelings still rule me rather than me ruling them—reacting is so easy but stepping back and considering before responding to emotion? That’s much more difficult. Yet, when I succeed, I feel a hundred times better for it. With enough practice, reacting should become a rare occurrence and calm “emotions management” should become the norm, right? If we actively acknowledge the feelings and ask ourselves whether or not we can choose to feel differently, surely we can reject the negative spirals (especially) and let the feelings pass as innocuously as innocent clouds.       

Reducing emotional complexity down to characters in a simple internal play (similar to that movie from a few years ago called “Inside Out” – very cool film!) gives us the chance to actively re-write the scripts of our human interactions in the very moment in which they are taking place. And by using this technique, there’s active acknowledgment of the existence of feelings rather than what is often advocated for children’s emotion, which is to simply stop crying and be done with it. Yet, obviously, a dismissal of emotions by no means manages them. By identifying our emotions as visitors that we can control, we can then find a path to a more peaceful existence that is neither ruled by emotion nor devoid of it.

The war play finds its act of armistice. Positive play resumes. I even get the dishes done, finally. That night when they are going to bed, my daughter asks me this question:

“Mommy, do Albert and Sam fight too?”

I pause. Does our anger fight with our sadness? Do our feelings battle each other internally as often as we individuals battle each other, externally? Most certainly, yes, but then who manages that? How can we be emotionally literate enough to distinguish which feelings are operating and why? This is another layer yet again. I take a deep breath.

“Yes, sweetheart, our feelings often fight with each other inside of us too. We can help our feelings stop fighting the way Mommy helped you and your brother stop fighting today. We just have to separate them and take deep breaths, and this will help us understand what’s happening—what we are really feeling and why. It’s just no fun getting upset.”

“And kick them out of the party,” she says, firmly. “They’re messy!”

I laugh. She’s so right about that.

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

This post appeared on the beijingkids October 2018 Mental Health issue.
Photo: Adobe Creative Cloud

This was my six-and-a-half-year-old daughter two days before our mutual recording session. The quintessential professional, she looked up at me with chocolate-brown, earnest eyes and said emphatically:
“I still don’t remember all the words, Mommy!”

I am a professional touring musician of many years who is now a mother of two. Unlike years ago when my professional ethos revolved only around tasks associated with the development of my own art (original music), having kids softened me. Now I favor work that connects to my passions in any context (including writing!) and this keeps me (mostly) off the road and present as a mother. While some of this interim work is not always artistically satisfying, I soothe myself by remembering that at least it’s associated with my talents.

There is a strong education market for English-language children’s songs here in China. Being a native speaker who is also a singer (as well as a songwriter—and yes, I’m often hired to write such songs themselves!), I regularly travel to hard-to-find studios across Beijing to sing professionally.

But, this past weekend was a little different. The studio owner has known me since my daughter was an infant and, with some quick math, she zeroed in on Echo’s age.

“There is one song that could really use a child’s voice,” she said plaintively in a WeChat message.

I felt my insides twist when I heard it. Despite Echo’s incredible grasp of pitch and rhythm (musical talent I’m delicately fostering), I hesitate to put my kids in any exploitative position. Sure, she’d be paid, too, and her school fees are expensive, but isn’t this child labor?

I tentatively brought up the topic in front of my very doting and protective Chinese in-laws. Echo is “super curious” to see what Mommy does for work (besides performing on stage) and was instantly ecstatic to come with me. And hearing she’d also get paid, her grandparents encouraged the experience without a moment’s hesitation. I was surprised. Was I taking this too seriously? Maybe it would be fun? Maybe it would be a good Mother-daughter bonding?

So, I assented.

“Mommy, do I get to push all those buttons?” This was her first sentence when she entered the studio on the day of the session.

“No, sweetheart,” I said gently. “That’s for the recording engineer to push. We get to go in there and sing in front of those microphones.” I pointed through the control room’s window into the isolation booth.

It all went really well. Echo remembered all the words to her song and then sat quietly and colored while I did the remaining tracks. I was so proud of her. What’s more, the studio staff was beyond gracious. Echo left with many unfinished coloring pages, much to her delight, and a pocketful of cookies to share with her Didi.

Perhaps exploitation is a concept I’m sensitive about as a white-skinned, English-speaking foreigner living in Asia. But, are we colonizing our children by introducing them to our vocations while they’re still kids? If we consciously provide them with an array of choices and never force them to do what they don’t want to do, maybe it’s okay to let them do the odd money-earning job, especially if it makes everyone happy? The job was fun and easy. And she is genuinely a good singer.

That night at bedtime, she was humming her song. “Mommy,” she said suddenly, interrupting herself. “Can I be a singer too when I grow up?”

My heart swelled. “You can be anything you want, sweetie,” I said, smiling.

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

This article appeared on p46 of beijingkids June 2018 issue

An acquaintance of mine just gave birth to her first child two weeks ago. I saw her by chance today, outdoors and smiling as she took in the sky and the clean spring air, looking like she’d just emerged from a dark, mountainous cave. I remember that feeling so distinctly—the sense of being an escapee when simply venturing outdoors without the baby. It’s the reality of new mothering, especially when they’re infants and still living off your body. You are tied to them. Happily, yes, but inexorably.

When we stopped to chat with her, I was walking with my youngest who is now nearly four and a half. I said the typical thing that parents say to other parents while gesturing down at his little hand in mine: “You’ll blink your eyes and suddenly he’ll be this big.” I lifted up his arm for emphasis. I watched the exchange from outside of myself, like I had become a cliché of motherhood. She laughed on cue. My son proclaimed his age proudly and then we all parted ways with requisite smiles.

Yet, as I walked back to my apartment, this was my recurring thought: that’s not always true. Also true is that a human childhood is long. It’s an eighteen- to twenty-year journey and, frankly, sometimes I wonder how I’m ever going to get through it. It’s regularly exhausting. Sometimes crazy-making. Sometimes infuriating. And often the choices we parents have to make in order to accommodate the stability and structure these little people require are, well, confining, to put it mildly. I don’t resent the control that my kids have placed on my life, nor would I want it any other way, but sometimes I’m washed with a wistfulness for the days when I could work for a block of time, save up a stash of cash, and then disappear to a beach town in the winter months if I wanted to. Alone. No one to answer to. No one to make breakfast for. No one to wake me up in the middle of the night to take them “pee-pee.”

These aren’t the words you share with a brand new mother, though. She saw me with a walking, talking, functioning little human and no doubt it seemed to her like centuries from now that her brand new son will be so grown up as mine. What she really needs to hear now is that the journey will speed by, she’ll more than make it through, and she’s certainly strong enough! Think of all the adults in the world who have made it through before us, all the parents of grown children who are still functional members of society! So what I said was the right thing to say. I know that.

Nevertheless, I can’t write honestly about motherhood without both perspectives: how precious their existence is to my life and how challenging this role has been. Yes, rewarding too. Aren’t all challenges rewarding? But, wow. It’s hard. Motherhood is the Everest of female roles. Climb if you dare. Bring back-up, several sherpas, extra oxygen, and a huge backpack of patience. And remember: the view up there is breathtaking. You’ll never regret it for a single second, even when you feel like you’re going to lose your footing, tumble and die. Because you won’t, really. You’ll make it.

And one day, your kid may become a parent and say to you, “Thank you for doing this for me.” Or, maybe not. But regardless of any eventual proclamation of appreciation (and yes I did that!), I know for certain this one truth:
It’s all worth it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician, singer and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She has a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

Photo: Adobe Stock Photo
This article appeared on p47 of beijingkids May 2018 issue

After the name exchange and typical “where are you from?” the most commonly asked question of expats is: “What brought you to China?” I’ve condensed the answer down to two or three concise sentences that, admittedly, have come to sound slightly rehearsed. Of course, the real reasons are much more complex.

This winter, though, a spotlight suddenly shone on the question in reverse. My family faced the decision of possibly leaving China. So I had to ask myself: “Why leave?” There was no simple and easily rehearsed answer. A long list of reasons revealed themselves. Then another long list of reasons emerged about why we should, in fact, stay. Indecision reigned. I lost sleep.

You see, I would argue that expats like me who have been here for more than five years (and have ties to not just the community but also to Chinese households through marriage and family) have done what it takes to accept the fact that our duration in this place could indeed be indefinite. We have made it our home. We have adapted. There was no other way to survive! That isn’t to say we haven’t had our “bad China days” like everyone else, but we can’t deny that a long-term relationship with a place is not unlike a long-term relationship with a person: there are phenomenal things about China and there are certainly challenges. But that’s what committed people do: we stick it out.

When we arrive at a crossroads in which our long-accepted notion of home threatens to come to an end (I speak from experience), destabilization takes the wheel. The annoying lyric “Should I stay or should I go now” by The Clash incessantly played on a loop in my head. Questions piled on top of questions like: What will I do professionally in Canada? How will I handle the absence of my in-laws regarding childcare? How will I preserve the Chinese language for the kids in a non-Chinese speaking school and environment? Etc. Etc.

Of course, the reasons for leaving were also plentiful. My ageing parents in Canada. The free education. The absence of (though much improved, still ever-present) air pollution. Free healthcare. A new beginning.
When I say I lost sleep, I wasn’t kidding. On the eve of possibly making great changes, our minds play out various scenarios. I spun new future stories until the wee hours of the morning, all while I had to still be a mom and get my kids on the school bus the next day. It was unhealthy. A stupid obsessive thought wormhole I slipped in for weeks.

That, in itself, is a testimony to Beijing’s magnetic charm. How do you leave such a draw? After so many years (9+) in this city’s force field, I am unquestionably changed. I love my life here. I love my apartment and my rhythms. I love my friends and my freelance “juggle” that feels positively circus-like at the best of times. To have mastered the skill of keeping such colorful and diverse jobs simultaneously suspended in the air feels like a victory. How do I let this all go?

So, in early January, I decided to stop deciding. I mentally placed the dilemma of choice to one side and let myself sit with the lists. Sometimes you have to actively stop spinning the “what if” narratives and just wait for the “mind snow” to settle, as if our brains are snow globes and the crossroads have given us a shake.
The result? We’re staying.

For now. But that’s the best I can give you, Beijing. And now I’ve rehearsed a nice concise answer for “Why stay?”

About the Writer

Ember Swift is a Canadian musician and writer who has been living in Beijing since late 2008. She and her husband Guo Jian (国囝), who is also a musician, have a daughter called Echo (国如一) and a son called Topaz or “Paz” (国世龙).

Photo: Pixabay
This article appeared on p43 of beijingkids March 2018 issue.