Near the end of our first week in California, we move down to Orange County. We stay this year with Jordan’s uncle Ray and aunt Kate, who bring us on a trip to San Diego along with Jordan’s cousins and grandparents. It’s been, more or less, exactly a year since we were with Jane’s side of the family, and it's both gratifying and bittersweet to see the little ones growing up and growing into their personalities more and more. In comparison to some of the extroverts we meet during the week, Jordan is moody and mellow, plays happily with others, but retreats into himself when things get a bit too much. At a holiday get-together at our high school friend’s house, Jordan leaves the other kids, opens a baby gate, and goes downstairs on his own. I find him singing to himself in the dark, and riding a little push-car at max speed around the empty kitchen (making use of those spacious, California single-family model homes). I watch him zoom along and see so much of myself (and Jane) in him. One night as I’m cuddling with him on the couch in Chino, Jordan tells me that he’s tired and that he wants to go home. “But we are home.” “I want to go to Brookline.” Two weeks and a total of seven changes-of-accommodation have taken a toll. I rub his back and tell him that I miss home too.
In between, lots of joy. Jane’s mom, who is sentimental without really knowing how to express it, invites us all to Jane and Kate’s childhood home in Anaheim for a Saturday family lunch. As the next-most sentimental person present, I corral everyone for a Christmas portrait and take shots of the house and the neatly-tended succulent garden in back. We ride the Pacific Surfliner down to San Diego with Jordan’s cousins and grandmother, and I spend most of the trip sitting next to and talking with cousin Luke, who at five years old tells me that he likes school more than home because he “learns a lot” and has friends. In San Diego, Jane and Jordan and I get a family caricature done by Khryzstof at his little booth next to the USS Midway, and Jane’s dad drives us to the San Diego Model Train Museum in Balboa Park, a building which essentially validates every fiber of Jordan’s being. The next morning, Jordan enjoys running around our hotel and nearby Seaport Village with cousin Clara, and swimming that evening with Mama in the hotel’s rooftop pool. The car ride back up to Orange County is heavy on traffic (the day before Christmas Eve), but Jordan talks through the whole two-and-a-half hour trip, our non-stop chatterbox and fount of stories, songs, and silly laughs. We head back to Chino to bookend the trip - by this point running on fumes, Jordan elects to spend most of Christmas Eve and Christmas hand-rolling model trains around the living room - the same model train set that my parents used to set up during my and Evelyn’s childhood at Rowland Heights. He also eats an entire bunch of organic bananas (six total) over 36 hours. We eat lunch on Christmas Day at the nearby Sizzler Restaurant - not our tradition growing up, but certainly the oddball tradition of Asians all over the region.
I tell my mom pretty frankly that we may not be back in California for a long time after this trip. She’s saddened and debates whether she should try to return the car seat that she recently purchased. Perhaps we said similarly a year ago (I genuinely can’t remember), but the feeling grows more acute the older we all get. I have a long conversation about this with Jane’s mom, one night in Orange County as the kids play before dinner. The feeling is that we have to focus on our own home life, and our home community now, much like how our parents did when they immigrated and left their parents behind in China and Taiwan. One generation later, the rulebook has changed. All of us (elders and children alike) have our own lives to lead in America, and family is created through choice and intention more than blood relation. Our grandparents crossed the Pacific to live with us throughout our childhood (or perhaps it was for air conditioning, says my mom); Jordan’s grandparents won’t do the same, nor can we expect them to. Perhaps most importantly, we can’t ask our two-going-on-three-year-old child to resolve these different worlds, different threads of his past, by himself. All we can do is to teach him to be strong and empathic, kind and capable of creating community - loving those who love him most, wherever he goes.
We arrive back in Brookline on a Saturday night; tired but quite happy to be home. For the first time ever, Jordan actually naps toward the end of the long plane ride across the continent. We set about chores: laundry, cleaning, ordering takeout for dinner, and swapping out an old battery in the hallway smoke detector. Detoxing from two weeks of whirlwind commotion and endless Bluey, Jordan occupies himself by flipping through his favorite books in the quiet of our living room. Somewhere along the way, we get a rather kind and thoughtful text from Jane’s mom, who says she appreciated everyone’s effort in bringing the grandchildren together for the holidays. We invite them to visit and tour New England with us in the new year.
