Daniel in Thailand

A couple of Saturdays ago, I took all three children on a Big Trip to the Big City (Boston). We were supposed to go to The Children's Museum, but we were so far behind schedule that that didn't happen. So I took them to Chinatown, and tried to take them to a well-established old playground, but it turned out that the playground was under renovation - hopefully renovation, and not conversion into some site of yuppy consumption... In any case, the swingset and slide were removed, the surface was pure soil, and there was a construction barrier around the periphery, so obviously this playground was off the agenda. But it turned out that there's a nifty rock garden at the far end of the plaza where the official Chinatown pagoda stands, right along Atlantic avenue - a stretch of rocks along the side of a man-made waterfall/"creek", and the park is lined with bamboos.

I pointed out to Ian that there were bamboos, in all likelihood, because bamboos are native to China. Ian got very excited by that information, because it reminded him that his stuffed panda likes to eat bamboo, as do all pandas, and pandas, after all, are from China. So he started lecturing Daniel on the sino-significance of bamboos and pandas, just like in China itself, and Daniel asked, "But aren't we in China?"

We broke the news to him that Chinatown is not actually China, in spite of all similarities. This seems to have planted a seed...

The children played wildly in the rock park, climbing the rocks, defying gravity over the stream, picking up fallen bamboo leaves and chutes, off the ground, for Ian's panda, Pando - which Ian duly "gave" to him when we got home, ceremonially festooning the stuffed creature with real bamboo byproducts... After a long period of carefree fun in and around the rock park, we went to our bakery of choice and bought an obscene number of coconut rolls, ostensibly for Mommy, who was recuperating at home from a bout of preventive surgery, and then we went off to the Vietnamese greasy-spoon that we like to frequent - or Vietanese, as the boys identify it. At the next table was a very proper family - either older parents or perhaps grandparents, of a very academic stripe, probably from Cambridge or nearby - dignified, bespectacled, with graying hair - and a boy slightly older than Ian. Ian spent the whole meal with an animal by his side, which he had made from Legos, and as the Cantabrigians were walking past our table on their way out after their meal, the boy came over, stood next to Ian, and said meekly, "Ummm... I like your Lego's creation."

Of course, I was very moved by the gesture, and thanked the lad for his appreciation, since Ian was very proud of this particular creature. And it also wasn't lost that we had stumbled on somebody who spoke precisely Ian's obscure dialect. The icing on the cake was that the boy was wearing a t-shirt displaying the Table of Elements.

I also noticed that everybody was quite curious about our presence. I don't like to draw unilateral attention to myself, but the scrutiny was unmistakable. The women at the next table seemed very pleased by our quiet prayer before the meal, and the ladies on the other side of us tuned in with rapped attention as, at Ian's request, I explained to him how to use chopsticks, with the metaphor that just as you have two jaws but only one moves and the other does all the work, that's how the work is divided up between your hands when you eat with chopsticks...

Meanwhile, Ian was playing, "I spy with my little eye," and drawing me and Daniel into the game. Since it was a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown, there was an endless supply of things to spy with your little eye while you're waiting for the chicken pho to arrive. Definitely the best one was Ian's "something red, blue and blonde," or some such description of Madeleine, per her clothing and hair...

So we had an exciting little day in Chinatown... But when we got home, apparently Amy asked Daniel if we had actually made it to a museum, and he provided a blunt assessment of the day. Amy told me, "Daniel said he just went to Thailand, and it was really boring." I think the "just" is as in "we just went to Thailand - not somewhere fun like the Children's Museum." But why Thailand? My best guess is that, once we told him that we weren't in Chinatown, he made a very logical guess, based on the proximity of cuisines, as to what country we might be in when we visit such an exotic place.

When I was a youngling, my family visited our aunt, uncle and cousins in Connecticut, but somehow I confused Connecticut with California, and could hardly contain my excitement at being in such a spectacular place, even if the entire state was basically just her house. But it's a sign of the times that the children of our jaded present age can make a day-trip to Thailand and find the entire globe-trotting adventure to be tedious.

(June 11, 2011)