Li's Clever Mother

“Teacher, you are okay?” Li asks me, creasing his forehead and pointing to his chest. Poor kid: right in the middle of his tutorial, I've had a coughing fit. I coughed through part of the first class, my coffee break, and now Li's tutorial.

“I'm fine,” I wheeze, a Kleenex pressed to my mouth. “Don't worry—the doctor says I'm not infectious.” I lapse into another coughing fit. “I just—cough—have a tendency—cough, cough—to cough.”

Li doesn't understand tendency, so I have him look this up in the dictionary. This frees up some more time for me to cough some more.

Li's expression gets even more serious. “You must be careful! When you go home, you must rest.”

I laugh at this. I have another class to teach after this one, plus a long commute, and when I get home, the housework will be all mine.

“When I go home, I must do laundry and cook dinner,” I say. “My husband has a cold too, and his is a lot worse than mine.”

Li's eyes open wide and he shakes his head. “No, no—you must not housework!” he says. “That is very bad for women with cough!”

Much as I'd like to agree with anything that gets me out of housework, I have to question this. “Isn't it bad for anybody with a cough?” I say. “Woman or man?”

He shakes his head. “Especially bad for woman.”

This intrigues me. “Who told you that?”

“My mother,” Li says, his eyes wide and innocent. “She often cough.” He does a good impression of somebody with a bad cough and points to his chest, putting on a pained expression. “So I know that many kind of work bad for woman with cough.”

Thinking that Li's mother could well have a serious illness, I pull out the dictionary again. But after we've gone through asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and tuberculosis, Li shakes his head firmly. “No—my mother just cough, not disease.”

“So what kind of housework is bad for, um, women with a cough?” I ask.

Li frowns, considering this. “Clean floor. Also shop—very bad to carry heavy thing if cough.”

“What about cooking?”

“Very bad.” He furrows his brow. “Also wash clothes.”

“Cleaning the toilet?”

He blinks. “Yes, that is bad too.”

I'm really beginning to enjoy this conversation. I enjoy it even more when Li proudly tells me that he can cook, mop floors, shop for dinner, and do the laundry, that indeed he has become quite skilled at all of these in order to save his mother from the pain of chores that are Unsuitable for a Woman with a Cough. I really want to meet Li's mother. Li may be a bit naïve, but he's not a dumb kid, not by any stretch of the imagination. He studies diligently, is capable of critical thinking, and is almost always the first person in class to answer some of the harder questions. However his mother has worked her magic I have no idea, but I take my hat off to her.

“Take care yourself, teacher,” Li tells me, pushing his chair back and gathering up his books. “Do not housework! Then your cough stop.”

I tell him that I will leave the housework for the weekend. “Thank your mother for me, okay?” I say. “Tell her your teacher says good job.”

Li looks puzzled, but he nods.

I watch thoughtfully as Li exits the classroom, his arms full of books that I know he is going to study.

I am seriously considering introducing Li to one of my daughters.

Foot First

Somewhere in Northeastern Japan, there is a twenty-year-old woman who came into this world her own way: foot first, and painlessly. I think of this young woman and her mother from time to time because their story is so extraordinary.

I met the girl's mother at a party when I was five months pregnant with my second daughter. I have since forgotten the mother's name, but I will call her Saeko. Saeko and her husband had brought their firstborn six-month-old daughter to the party, and, as women tend to do, we started talking about babies, then giving birth. There were a few other mothers there, one of whom was also pregnant.

"It didn't hurt!" Saeko told us. "Everybody told me how painful it would be, but it hardly hurt at all!"

We were all astonished to hear this, so Saeko told us the rest of the story.

Saeko's baby was facing the wrong direction--feet-first. Her doctor consulted a very experienced midwife who was able to turn the baby in her womb, but although this was accomplished successfully, the baby always flipped back to her original position by the next visit. Because of this, Saeko was scheduled to have a caesarean  section, which she was understandably nervous about.

As she was lying on the guerney waiting to have the surgery, Saeko went into labor. "Only I didn't know at the time because it didn't hurt!" she said.

Saeko's belly had been painted with betadine and she was waiting for the surgeon to show up when she had a feeling of strong pressure, but no pain. She told the nurses that she needed to go to the bathroom, and before they could help her up, her daughter began to emerge, foot-first. Slowly, but surely.  And painlessly.

"She just kept moving, slowly and steadily, until her head was out," Saeko told us. "Her legs weren't doubled over or anything. The nurses said they'd never seen anything like it. She reminded them of a dancer, or somebody doing t'ai chi"

"And it really didn't hurt?" a woman who'd had a 50-hour labor asked.

"No! All around me, I heard women screaming their heads off, but I never even had the time to," Saeko said. "And I didn't need to either, because I could hardly feel anything. It was so, so strange!"

There was a long silence as we all absorbed this. The woman who'd spent 50 hours in hard labor looked especially thoughtful.

"Is she always this quiet?" another woman asked, pointing her chin at the basinette next to Saeko. Because Saeko's baby had slept placidly through a fairly noisy party.

Saeko nodded. "Everybody says so. I  mean, she cries to let me know she's hungry, but she sleeps a lot. And she's very sweet-tempered."

This, for me, was tough to hear. A few years later, with two non-sleeping children, one of whom was hell on wheels, it was even tougher to recall.

All of us mothers got to cuddle Saeko's baby when she woke up from her long, long nap, and she really was placid and sweet-tempered--no false advertising there. As we left the party, there were murmurs all around about Saeko's luck. One woman commented that Saeko might want to consider having a dozen children. My own personal opinion was that she shouldn't tempt fate.

Over the years, I have wondered to myself what sort of toddler this baby became, what sort of child, and for pity's sake, what sort of teenager. Somewhere along the line, Saeko's luck must have run out or there simply isn't any justice in this world.

But occasionally, when I meet women who are expecting babies and some young mother asks me that question--Does it hurt?--I always tell the truth, that yes, it did. And then I tell her Saeko's story.

Class Act

"None of you did it?" I ask, my eyes wide, my hands held out. "Not one of you?"

A few students have the grace to look ashamed. They lick their lips and shake their heads slightly.

"But you do remember I told you, right?"

One girl nods. "Number three, four, six," she murmurs.

"And exercise two," I tell her. "You remember that, right?"

She looks uncomfortable. I turn to the rest of the class.

"On Monday when none of you had done your reading  homework, I told you I wanted you to do two as well as three, four, and six. Do you remember?"

Three of them actually meet my eyes and nod, but I am beyond irritated with this group. This is at least the sixth time they have neglected to do their homework and I've had enough.

"I absolutely told you to do exercise two!" I say. "I even had you say it back to me afterwards. But now you're telling me that none of you did it."

Lips jut out. Brows furrow. Nobody will meet my eyes.

"All right, you are going to do number two right now--all of you, right here."  And suddenly I realize what I've just said, and it is extremely funny. So is the fact that my students have no idea what the other meaning of number two is. I'm still hopping mad, but I snicker--I can't help myself.

The students look alarmed. Clearly I'm disturbed: I've just changed the channel from pissed-off to ha-ha-ha and they can't figure it out.

"Seriously," I say. "Open your books and start doing number two right now--"  I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from howling.  This is really embarrassing. I could not count the times my students have yakked away in Mandarin, laughing their heads off while I sit there utterly mystified, but suddenly I'm having my own one-woman giggle party. And there is no way I'm going to share this with them.

One girl casts a furtive look my way and reaches for her book. Now that she knows she's dealing with a madwoman, she's taking no chances.

"When you've finished exercise two," I splutter, "please check your answers with your partner's, then we'll go over them together."  My last words dissolve into a fit of laughter as I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

And by God, they do it. Exercise two is faithfully if not accurately completed. They sit there, heads down, pens busy, occasionally taking peeks at me to see if I'm not actually foaming at the mouth. Then we go over it in class.

I don't give them any homework afterwards, though. I think they've suffered enough.

Cleaning Fever

I have a fever. It is such a high fever that I actually think I'm dreaming when I hear girlish voices just outside my room. Girlish voices talking about vacuum cleaners.

"You've got to see this!" the first says, and this voice is familiar--it sounds like my daughter. "The suction is incredible--it'll pick up anything." Good God, that doesn't just sound like my daughter, it is my daughter!

There is a roar as the vacuum cleaner is switched on.

"Oh my God, you're right, this is amazing!"  This voice is harder to place, slightly accented. I recognize it eventually: it is Magdalena, my daughter's university friend who is currently visiting us.

"Try it over there, on the stairs," my daughter says eagerly. There is a satisfying sound of debris being sucked up. "See?"

I turn over in bed and blink. No, I'm not dreaming this up: they're actually out there, two eighteen-year-old girls, and they're having at the carpets in the hallway. The cat scurries in and jumps onto the bed, obviously traumatized.

"Isn't that just fantastic?" My daughter again.

"Yes! It doesn't leave anything!"

"Hang on--get that bit of string there in the corner."

The vacuum cleaner roars on.

"Oh my God, it picked that right up!" Magdalena squeals.

"Having a vacuum cleaner like this really makes you want to clean, doesn't it?"

Are my ears actually hearing this correctly? Having a vacuum cleaner like that doesn't make me want to clean one single bit. Obviously, given the state of our carpets.

"Doesn't that look better?" my daughter marvels enthusiastically. "You can really see where we've vacuumed!"

Magdalena makes an equally enthusiastic reply. The two of them could be doing a parody of those over-zealous fifties housewives in cinched-waisted full skirts and high heels you used to see in magazine advertisements, gushing over their brand-new collections of tupperware or gleaming kitchen appliances. I turn over in bed, flushed with fever--and guilt. Magdalena had only been over for two days when I succumbed to the flu. We haven't been able to show her a very good time, and here she is now, amusing herself with my housework.

"Whenever I come back, I always hope Mom hasn't vacuumed," my daughter says.

Bless her: this is true, and she is seldom disappointed.

"With a vacuum cleaner like this, I can see why you want to do it," Magdalena says.

 "Yes," my daughter agrees. "The one we had before we got this one was awful. You could go over a spot a dozen times and not see any effect."

 Ah, I remember that last vacuum cleaner: using it was a long exercise in futility. You could work for hours with very little to show for it afterwards. This is a little like writing. You can slave and soul-search endlessly, to have the fruits of your labors cast aside in seconds, scorned, or worse still, not even noticed.  Maybe I should go back to doing regular vacuuming so that I too can delight in the satisfaction of a job well done. Of course, I abandon this idea as quickly as it comes.

The girls' voices grow more distant, along with the drone of the vacuum cleaner. I settle back on my pillows and marvel at my good luck in daughters and their friends.

Interrupted

The phone rings, shattering my peace and interrupting my train of thought. But I have to answer it: what if one of my daughters is sick or in trouble? What if she needs money? What if somebody I love has died, or a friend just needs to talk? And finally, what if by some crazy quirk a wonderful bit of good fortune is about to fall into my lap? I am both an optimist and a pessimist, so I absolutely have to answer the phone.

And of course it is an annoying telemarketing person, just doing the only job she can find, but still driving me half wild. These people have been tormenting me for years now. They have brought me flying into the house from the garden; they have forced me to scramble down from ladders; they have vexed half a dozen sleeping cats who have been dumped off my lap so I can rush to the phone and be interrupted. Even one or two of these calls a week is too many.

And then a tiny lightbulb of inspiration flashes in my brain. I will have some fun with this call: it is my phone, it is my time, and it is my right.

"Hello?" I say in a low, respectful tone, the kind of tone you would use if there was an elderly invalid in the house and you were a totally out-of-touch menial whose job it was to answer the phone.

"Hello," says a brassy voice. "Is this Mrs. -- uh . . . " There is a long pause and then the lady mispronounces my husband's name.

"I'm sorry," I say in the same quiet voice. "With whom do you wish to speak?" I aim for posh east coast American since I can't do British.

The woman repeats herself, doing a little better this time, but still struggling with the consonant cluster.

"Ah," I say. "Just a moment. Madam is sleeping at present, but I will see if I can awaken her again." I pause. "This may take some time."

The woman apologizes so quickly I feel a twinge of remorse. "No, no--please don't bother her! It was just a courtesy call!"

Courtesy call. My remorse vanishes in an instant. "May I take a message, then--?" I start to say, but the woman has hung up.

I put the receiver back in its cradle and go back to what I was doing, smiling a smile of deepest satisfaction. I'm still nowhere near finished with the chapter, but I have still managed to achieve something extraordinary: in barely 30 seconds, I have managed to get a telmarketer to hang up on me.

American Beatles

I am collecting homework when I see them, a real blast from the past: the Famous Four. It's the well-known photo of them crossing a road, single-file, mostly long-haired and bearded, and there they are, on the back of Xu's mobile phone. How touching, that today's young people still revere the classics.

"Hey," I say, tapping the phone. "You've got the Beatles on your phone. Are you a fan?"

Xu smiles, caught out. "I don't know," he admits. "Just--famous picture."

"The Beatles," I say, instantly feeling a lot older. "This photo was on their Abbey Road album."

He nods. "Famous American singer."

This stops me in my tracks. "No, not American--British!"

"Really?" Xu asks, looking doubtful.  "I always think American."

"Believe me, you are wrong. They're British. Just ask Patrick."  Patrick is my co-teacher, British, and roughly my age. I smile just thinking about his reaction to Xu's statement.

Now the rest of the class is interested. Weilong, who sits across from Xu, agrees with me: the Beatles are British. Jenny, who sits next to him, however, has always believed they were American.

This is the hardest thing about being old: the things you don't know often render the things you do know null and void. Although my students trust and respect my knowledge of English, my general ignorance of anything to do with IT never fails to astonish them. After all, kids like Xu and Jenny have grown up knowing the difference between DVDs and CDs, that YouTube is not spelled U-tube, and that 'cn' in a URL tells you it's from China. The credibility of people who have demonstrated their ignorance of such fundamentally obvious things has to be suspect.

"The Beatles are British," I tell them. "End of story."

"But one man dead in America," Jenny informs me  pompously. "New York."

"Yes, I know," I say, a little dizzy when I consider that this happened at least ten years before she was born. "But he was still born in England. All of them were born in England."

"Mm," Jenny says, frowning.

Now I get it: they don't really care, one way or another, what nationality the Beatles were. They've got that look in their eye that says What difference does it make? A foreigner is still a foreigner. The look I've had myself when someone has pointed out that a CD is not the same as a DVD.

"Remember what we were talking about earlier?" I say.  "About how you feel when somebody thinks you're Japanese? Or that man you told me about who argued that Confucius was Korean, and how much that irritated Chinese people?"

Xu and Jenny both nod, their eyes open wide. Suddenly they get my point:  every country wants credit for its cultural icons. I will never forget my response to the Japanese student I once had who insisted that Simon and Garfunkel were British. Or for that matter, the spirited, spluttering reaction of a theretofore quiet Kazakh student when a Chinese classmate suggested that the first person in space was American. Xu and Jenny may not believe me, but when they leave, I have no doubt that they will be thinking about this.

And I am right. Three days later, Xu catches me after class. "Teacher, you are right," he says. "Beatles are British. I look in Wikipedia."

Ceilidh

None of my students know what a ceilidh is and I can't get over this. None of them have even noticed the posters plastered all over the hallways.

"How pronounce?" one of them asks, pointing at the board where I have written CEILIDH in big block letters.

"Kay-lee," I tell them. "Surely somebody has told you about them?"

Blank stares all around.

"Seriously?" I ask them, exaggerating my shock by opening my eyes wide and holding my hands up. "Nobody here knows what a ceilidh is?" They shake their heads and knit their brows. Most of them are sitting, slumped, at their desks, mobile phones in hands, thumbs clicking away. Technically, they're still on their break and I'm just setting up, pulling books and papers out of my backpack. But I use this time to try and engage the livelier ones.

"And you've been in Scotland how long?"

"Since September," Gan says. Gan will answer any question, no matter how rhetorical. He lines his pencils up on his desk and breaks my heart by coming to class every single day in neatly ironed shirts and trousers with creases in them.

I hold up the poster I've swiped from the corridor so that everybody can see it. "Then you have got to go. You can't live in Scotland and not got to ceilidhs!"

"Dance?" one of the girls asks, pointing to the poster. I nod.

"Yes, but it's not just a dance, it's a whole experience. There's music too, and I'm pretty sure there'll be free food at this one."

This finally gets everybody's attention, especially the boys'.

"Free food?" a boy called Jiang asks, sitting up straighter.

"You bet. It won't be great, but it'll be there. And afterwards you'll dance and listen to music and have fun."

"But I can't dance," Jiang says, his face falling.

"Neither can I," I tell him, "but I still love ceilidhs. They're more fun if a few people can't dance." This is entirely true. People who don't know what they're supposed to do at ceilidhs provide a source of innocent merriment for the ones who do. I've done my bit as a graceless klutz at ceilidhs, and it won't hurt Jiang to do the same.

"But it is raining," a girl called Lin says, gesturing at the window.

"Ceilidhs are indoors!" I say. "And come on, this is Scotland. You can't use rain as an excuse for not going to ceilidhs." In fact, rain is one of the reasons people go to ceilidhs in the first place. What else are you going to do on cold, grey, wet days? Whooping it up to fiddle music is just the thing to revive your spirits.

Since everyone seems interested, I decide to show them a ceilidh video on the internet. The first YouTube clip I find is from our rival university. It shows a group of students being instructed in basic ceilidh dance steps. This isn't what I'm after, so I fast forward until the students are actually dancing. But the dancing is so careful, so earnestly, precisely executed and well-behaved, that I immediately abandon this clip.

"Okay," I say, clicking through YouTube videos, "this is going to take me a little time. Just hang on."

The students don't care: this is keeping them from reporting verbs and transportation graphs. We're near the end of term and they're exhausted. I could tell them we were watching a how-to taxidermy clip and they'd be okay with it.

And then I find the perfect YouTube clip. It shows a ceilidh in full swing, the fiddles merrily playing, the dancers' faces lit up, their hair plastered to their heads as they strip the willow. You almost feel the steam in the air. You can spot the ones who don't have a clue, but when they aren't tripping over their own feet or running into others, they are smiling.

"I will go," Jiang says, watching a boy run smack into another one. "Free food?"

"It says so on the poster," I tell him, fervently hoping it's more than potato chips and coleslaw this time.

After the class, the minute I open the door, I see one of our Asian students in a full kilt, obviously planning on going to the ceilidh. He is a strapping, good-looking boy. I can hear Lin behind me, saying something in Chinese to her friends. I wheel around and manage to catch her eye.

"We are going to the ceilidh too!" she says.