The TriDad Life

Dear Beanpod,

We’re starting to get the hang of this. You’ve captured our hearts, even as you have essentially moved in to dominate our lives. We love this new responsibility, taking care of you. I would simply never want to go back to a time where there was no you.

Which, I suppose, is a good way to segue into the topic of today’s letter. You see, the place where you find yourself here in your first days, the home that your mother and I keep, is not too far from where we grew up. We love being here. It’s a great place to raise a family. We seem to be in sync with the tempo of life. It works for us.

But, it wasn’t that long ago that it would have been hard for me to imagine being here, settling down, raising a family.

In my sophomore year of college, I decided to do something a little different and signed up to take Chinese classes. To be completely honest, to this day, I’m really not sure why I did it, but it turned out to be one of the most significant inflection points in my life.

I spent the following summer in Tianjin, China, and things sort of took off from there. I came and went for several summers, always yearning to go back. After college, I got my wish, and moved to Beijing to take my first “big job.”

China ignited something inside me. I missed home, sure, but in China, I found a new identity, and new possibilities for who I could be in life. Living and working as an American expat in Beijing, I found myself in the middle of the contemporary “great power struggle” between the U.S. and China. I traveled the country, using my Chinese to build relationships, do business, and simply explore. It was a unique life to have as a young 20 something. I wrote about it often, and got published regularly, sharing my journey with others. I slept very little. Life was this amazing adventure – to wake up every day as a foreigner in a foreign land.

And then, all of a sudden, I looked around, and seven years had gone by. I’d effectively spent my 20’s in China. For awhile there, it seemed like the adventure was never going to end. But after seven wonderful, crazy, wild, fulfilling years, I decided it was time to go home.

It’s now been over six years since I left China. I sometimes think about that decision; not with regret, but a mix of other things. Nostalgia, for sure. And there is always this element that comes and goes of “did I do with it what I should have?” What I did, moving to China, is quite a rare thing to do for a middle class boy from the Midwest. I know I enjoyed that dynamic. I always had a good story and a captive audience. People are always interested to hear about China. Even today, I still get questions, “Didn’t you live in China? What was that like?”

I guess what I’m trying to say is, China always felt like this big, colossal thing in my life, and maybe there is this part of me that feels weird that it’s not this big, colossal thing anymore. Like, perhaps I didn’t take advantage of this big, colossal opportunity. Perhaps it’s a silly thought, but it’s easy to second guess yourself.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned to appreciate the true value of my time in China. In life, we can do what seem to be these big, colossal things, but they don’t have to last forever, and they don’t have to define us. They can just be something formative that you did one time, that will stay with you forever, both as a memory and as a true part of who you are and how you carry yourself in this world. Spending my 20s in China expanded my worldview, and gave me a multitude of good friends that I still get to keep in my life. I can treasure the China chapter of my life and acknowledge it for these things alone.

As you’ve come into the world, I still think about my time in China frequently. How can I not? There are constant reminders, as the “great power struggle” rages on, more fiercely than ever. I feel oddly removed from it, and that’s ok. We’ve got more important things going on here at home.

Being your Dad has given me the opportunity to look back on this circuitous journey. It’s funny to think I spent so many years in a place so far away, only to come right back to basically where it all began. In some ways that seems counterintuitive, and then again, it also makes perfect sense.

Ultimately, I believe God’s plan was at work all along. I believe that the sum of all of these moments in my life, all of these places I’ve been, all that time I spent in China, was not some big business deal or historic breakthrough, but that they all came together to make way for you. The purpose of all these experiences was simply to become the person I am now, which is, Dad.

Anyways, the story is still being written. Maybe China will re-emerge as a bigger part of my life someday, who knows. But whatever happens, it will never take the place of the biggest, most colossal thing of being your Dad.

When you get older, I’ll take you to the Hunan Restaurant in Saginaw and show you how to order off the “real Chinese menu,” and we can talk all about it.

Love,

Dad