Thursday, August 05, 2010
The Chronicles of Natalie
At some point, I found a place for Natalie to go while I work. It's not far from my school, and we call it the children's house. We do so because that's a direct translation from the Korean. It's really a small daycare run from the converted first floor apartment of 'the lady' and taking in, at this time, 5-7 other children younger than Natalie, one of whom is fairly close in age and whom she's come to know fairly well. There's not a whole lot for her to do nor learn there, and that's fine; I don't really want her anywhere on her own where attempt will be made to 'educate' her. Still, I don't want to be sure of the stability nor influence of such a place, either, because I can't be with her those hours and have to quiz her mightily in the afternoons about what her day. Daycare like that exacts quite a pretty penny for me to have to be out of her world for that many hours per day.This week, I've had a week's vacation from teaching, and Natalie's had a week's vacation from the children's house. We've used it for together time, but not much for travel time. We did make a Tuesday trip to Seoul, to Nam Dae Mun (South Gate) and Dong Dae Mun (East Gate) marketplaces--outdoor flea markets, as they are termed--and that encompassed a lot of walking for her and carrying for me--Natalie still loves to be carried more than she prefers walking, and mainly because she knows I'll indulge her. After that day, which like it we've never had since her mother left via airplane on May 9, I decided I knew why it was good that we hadn't decided to range much farther out than the hour by bus it took us to get there. We didn't get there after 1:30 pm, but a little girl of four doesn't last long looking around booths of stuff of all descriptions and scattered, in many cases, rather than organized, almost everything of which is useless to us, if not to most others passing by. Still, the sidewalk space the sellers leave for passing by was far less inhabited than on a weekend day, so we were able to take our time and deal with ourselves without a lot of the usual unintentional .
All I know is that the week of our togetherness has passed by awfully quickly and awfully humidly. Here's a quick rundown of Friday.
9:32 Natalie wakes up, with no turning back. That means I wake up.
10:21 She’s instructing me on the ways and methods of turning the Rubik’s Cube. We’re going to the store to get eggs for pancakes. It’s already 85 degrees Fahrenheit, with a heat index of 104.
10:38 She’s trying to show me something very important she’s doing, sticking Post-It notes she decorated with crayons onto the top of the wooden jewelry box she got in Seoul. I’m trying to write these words. Who will win? I look at her face. She will. We should get to the store.
10:49 We haven’t gotten out to the store yet, but it’s raining, so we’re waiting. Sudden, brief showers have been the most common precipitation this summer, but rain hasn’t been abundant. June and July saw average temperatures in the mid-80’s and average humidities in the upper 90 percent range, with plenty of partly sunny days. August is so far no different
10: 56 the rain has stopped and mom is calling us via MSN Messenger.
11:11 Natalie’s sitting at the window watching the intermittent rain, observing the narrow river as it flows by our building and listening to cell phone music. These days, she listens hard for thunder. She’s progressed from apprehension to fascination.
11:35 the rain has stopped. It’s 80°, heat index 91.
12:30 We go out. It’s become overcast today, but I doubt if it will rain again. Still, we’re taking our new umbrella. We got it yesterday, when, because of a sudden heavy downpour, we were walking the two blocks back from the park in the rain, without the umbrella we had decided to leave at home. By the time we reached the corner by the SK gas station, across the street from our apartment, we were both totally soaked and happily resolved to it. However, while we waited for an opportunity to cross, one of the gas station attendants came from nowhere and offered us a big rainbow-colored umbrella, saying that it was so the little girl would be protected and that we didn’t have to return it. Pretty nice, considering identical ones are sold for W5000($4.50, about). So, our last 30 yards in the rain were covered. But the rain stopped 3 minutes later, anyway.
5:30 We’ve been to the park, via a roundabout walk along the river, then back along the upper road. The park was empty when we got to it at the top of the stairs, along a wall, that lead to it. I told Natalie that she’d have to wait less than 5 minutes until there were more kids in the park, and I was right. Soon, a slightly older girl and her father showed up. The father retreated to a side of the park to smoke, while the girl gravitated to the swing where Natalie was. Natalie immediately wanted to play with her, as she always does, simply seeking companionship. So this girl ran around with her for a while, until we had to go. I’m convinced that the goal of these Korean children who meet her in the park, as well of that of the parents for them, is to be with The Little Western Girl a little while, not to befriend her. They are almost certain to never serendipitously cross paths again, so friendship is useless. But Natalie needs the encounters, so, just to have some kind of directioning comment, I tell her they are her ‘playground friends’, children she should never expect to see anywhere else, and if she ever happens to, she should not expect will engage her with the same familiarity and abandon they may on the playground.
And in fact, at our next stop, Lotte Mart supermarket, merely a stone’s throw from the apartment complex playground, we did see that first older girl who didn’t show up Wednesday at noon, as Natalie had expected. She was with her family, sitting in the cart child carrier, as Natalie was, and reacted to seeing Natalie with what I might call a quiescent interest, in contrast to Natalie’s enthusiasm. She said hello and did remember to know Natalie. But she said but few words, and only in reaction to what Natalie said; she clung to an attitude of standoffishness , for reasons I can’t begin to understand. It’s just that meetings with acquaintances outside regular channels, like playground encounters, seem not to be suitably comfortable for Korean society members, and certainly not for children with the ever-present family around them.
8:01 We’re going to the park. It’s not far, but it’s awfully dark. She never has minded the dark, if it means going to the park. Yesterday, Natalie found a toy dinosaur, but I said she had to leave it there for a day, until the owner had time to come back and look for it. Now, she wants to find out if it’s still there to claim.
9:02 It’s hard to believe we stayed at the park that long. Today, as the last few, has been partly sunny, and the ground has been wet, drying out from the last couple days of intermittent heavy raining. The park is divided between a green basketball court, upon which there were at least 30 players all pounding away at the net so late in the evening, and the still-wet sandbox of a playground surface. Natalie was happy about the sand, because she rarely encounters sand with that much promise of shaping, stacking and patting it into her particular kind of artwork. I had to do a lot of convincing to get her and her dirtied clothing out of that sand, because she found her dinosaur, a plastic squid--probably more popular here as a toy than where you are--and a big stick with which to make roads in the sand.
| posted by John at 3:23 PM
