Erie Co., Pop. 921,390...plus 2

Yesterday morning I woke to the sound of muffled phone calls and an air of urgency and steadiness. From my room I heard my sister-in-law say, “…hospital…” and I knew: the baby was on the way. I woke up and was pulling on my pants when she rapped on my bedroom door. “You are a lifesaver…I mean, light sleeper,” she said, laughing. (I savored that little slip-of-the-tongue; Light Sleepers is the title of my novel.) “My mom’s on her way,” she added. “Nina may or may not go to school.” Overhead, I heard my brother’s footsteps. Nina was on the couch, watching DVR recordings of “Arthur.” She was sniffling, which meant she’d been crying. She’s funny, with moods that swing like a weathervane in March, so I ignored her. Bill came downstairs, followed by Camille, who was being cranky in her own way, and off the parents went for the birth of their first son. The girls and I watched “Arthur” together for a little while, then I read them an “Arthur” book. Susie’s mother arrived around half-past seven and I had a chance to try to get a bit more sleep. But the phone kept ringing: Bill, from the hospital, reminding me to drive Camille to preschool; Bill, again, reminding me to pick Camille up; Bill a third time, telling us that the baby was definitely coming.

At 10:45 the other phone rang: Susie, bright and chipper. “He’s here. Nine pounds, six ounces.” “Is he ‘wahee’?” I asked. “No,” she said, laughing again. I carried the phone upstairs to her mother. Bill’s skin the color of caramel that’s been allowed to darken about a minute more than necessary. Susie’s skin is really pale, and “wahee” is my brother’s old joke-Pidgin for “whitey”. (Susie’s vanity plates say “WAHEE”) Nina is pale, thought not as pale as her mother, and Camille gives indications that she will someday be a "brownie" like her father, though maybe not as dark. We’ll have to see how “the boy,” as we’ve been calling him, will turn out.

About 11, Bill called to say he was picking Camille up himself. He called back a few minutes later to ask me if I wanted to go see the baby; we picked up Nina on the way. The girls were super-excited, and I was as excited as they were. Standing in front of the nursery window, I watched as two nurses hovered over my nephew. Ian Joseph still had that purplish hue newborns have. An hour old! I’ve never seen a baby that newborn! Nine pounds, six ounces, and he’s already got quite a thatch of dark hair. I stared and stared. I watched the rapid flutter of Ian’s little belly as he breathed his first living breaths and thought about how much new information his body was being exposed to, second by second by second. I was reminded of standing at the window of San Francisco International, waiting for a PanAm flight from Seoul, South Korea, that was bringing my new sister. I thought of myself having been an hour old once. I thought of my birth mother. I thought of the toast I made when Bill and Susie were married, about family and the odd ways and means through which families grow. I found myself wanting to cry. I find myself wanting to cry even writing this. Nina and Camille had to be lifted and balanced on the railing. The nurses kept glancing up and smiling; my nieces, with their Amerasian looks, have that affect on some people.

We looked and looked and chattered and laughed, and my brother took a few pictures of us looking, and then we went to see Susie. For someone so recently in childbirth, she was in good shape, but tired, natch. My brother and I and the girls went to the cafeteria for lunch, passing the nursery on the way. I saw that Ian’s skin was already warming from purple to red-pink. By the time we returned to the nursery window after lunch, his skin had lost its reddish flush. Ian was looking even warmer and rosier, a healthy, hammy pink. We left the hospital reluctantly, going home to rest and nap and leaving Ian and his mother to do the same.

Erie Co., Pop. 921,390...plus 1

In California, whenever I didn’t know what else to do, I could always go for a drive. I like driving two-lane highways, and I like driving alone in small cars. When I was a little boy, I frequently took off on my bicycle for hours. Yesterday, hand-delivering promotional materials for the ballet school, I had my first real opportunity to drive around this part of the state. It was a hot late-summer day, and you could feel that it was going to be one of the last for a while.
Once you get out of Buffalo and the actual suburbs, Erie County becomes rural fairly quickly. It is like New York City in that way; within a surprisingly short drive of a major metropolitan area, you can find cornfields and pastureland. As a whole, this part of the state is flat. You can feel how the glaciers during the Ice Age really did their work. The region is so flat that it took me a long while to learn which way was north, and I always thought I had a pretty good sense of direction. I’ve since noticed that weather patterns pretty consistently sweep west-to-east, off the lake, so I’ve learned to watch for that. But I’ve also gotten a feel for the position of the sun and the light and such. I imagine that will all change with the onset of winter weather; I can already see how gray skies and snow could be disorienting, not to mention darkness.
The terrain in the southeastern part of the county rolls a bit more than in the north. Not much more, but some. I stopped at a number of Catholic schools on a list my brother had given me. I was not surprised to see that schools even that far out in the country have to take security precautions. Every school had a camera and a buzzer-operated door at its entrance, and in one case the principal himself came out to meet me. He and the man at the Elma Boys and Girls Club were the only men I had any contact with. Otherwise, it was a day of showing up in offices staffed by women, sometimes several women. The church office at St. Catherine of Siena in West Seneca. The school office at Annuciation in Elma. The library in East Aurora. The Boys and Girls Club in the same town. I paid a surprise visit to the offices of one of the papers that advertises the ballet school; it was also staffed by women, and while waiting to introduce myself to the woman on our account, I couldn’t help feeling the effect of being a man, and a stranger at that. In fact, several times during the course of the day I was aware of being appraised as a male animal by my female counterpart. This isn’t altogether new to me, of course; it’s just not entirely familiar, especially coming from a city like New York.
For several hours I criss-crossed that part of the county, doing my drop-offs, getting a fuller and fuller picture of Western New York. I even drove into Lackawanna, the city on the shore of Lake Erie just south of Buffalo. Lackawanna is depressing. I wouldn’t even say “in decline”—the phrase implies some kind of process. Lackawanna feels beyond process. On the very same street I passed several Catholic churches within walking distance of each other—St. Barbara’s, St. Hyacinth, St. Anthony’s—and wondered when the city ever had need for so many of them. The city of Lackawanna also has an enormous and impressive Catholic basilica, Our Lady of Victory. It is a huge church, and I wanted to stop and check out the interior, but there was a wedding in progress. The bride wore white with the traditional veil, but the groom and his ushers were wearing black suits, bright red shirts, and black cowboy hats, which they respectfully removed before they entered the church proper.

In Search of Marley

Last night my brother and I went to his new ballet studio in Orchard Park, New York, to do some more finishing work. After installing the flooring, he realized he should have put foam underneath, which gives the floor more spring and more cushion. It’s better for the dancers’ bodies. So we went back and rolled up the vinyl flooring that he refers to as Marley flooring, although he just calls it the “Marley.” It’s like a roll of rubber mat, black on one side, grey on the other.
We’ve already reset the Marleys in my brother’s first two studios, and now we’ve set the Marley in the new studio twice. He also has a portable Marley for his off-site performances, and it’s a heavier grade than the kind he uses in his studios. Dealing with Marley flooring is a hell of a job, but it goes with the territory of dance and dance studios and dance performances. You have to make sure there are no air bubbles or pockets, and you have to make sure the seams are as aligned as you can get them before you start taping them together. You use a special kind of tape that usually matches the color of your Marley. A dancer could slip or trip on a loose flap or a bulge and hurt herself. Since I’ve been here in Buffalo I’ve now dealt with more Marleys than I can keep track of. Last night, on my hands and knees for what felt like the umpteenth time and again putting down a Marley floor, I thought, Who or what the hell is Marley anyway? And what the heck is it?
It is calendered vinyl, as it turns out. To calender something means to feed it through heated rollers in order to give it a smooth and glossy finish. Calender is a corruption of the word cylinder, which comes from the Greek kylindros, which itself comes from kyklos, or "cycle; wheel. " You can get calendered silk and calendered cotton. I picture a kind of huge pasta machine, and also imagine that taffy and marzipan can be calendered. As for Marley, the name refers to the original manufacturing firm, which started in 1948 in Kent, England, and was later merged with another textiles company. I'm guessing that it was started by someone named Marley; there was no further information on the Marley company website.

In my search for more information about Marley Ltd. I also found a website called flooradvice.com. Flooradvice.com is a product information website, and according to its FAQs page, “dance surface floors made from vinyl and linoleum are often referred to as ‘Marley’ floors; this is the same as referring to all tissue as ‘Kleenex’ or referring to all sodas as ‘Coke.’ Actually, the original vinyl surface floor made by Marley for the entertainment industry stopped being produced around 1978, so it is truly doubtful that anyone is dancing on a ‘true Marley floor’ at this point in time.”
Flooradvice.com also has a page about a Marley-type floor called Primafloor, as in prima ballerina. “The most durable dance vinyl available,” Primafloor is “dimensionally stable.” My recent experience with vinyl floors leads me to believe that this means that Primafloor is less vulnerable to stretching or buckling or bubbling. Whether I'd be able to install a Primafloor remains to be seen, but I’m most interested in the product on flooradvice.com called "Divafloor." I clicked the link, but the product information on Divafloor isn't available and is "coming soon.” Just like a diva, to be coming soon, and probably also not dimensionally stable.

Border Crossing

The customs official on the American side of the Peace Bridge asked my brother where he was born.
“Saigon, Vietnam,” Bill answered.
The official craned his neck back and looked at me. “And you?”
“San Jose, California.”
The official, much friendlier than the one who had admitted us all into Canada earlier that day, shuffled our identification papers and driver’s licenses. “And how do you all know each other?” he asked. In his tone, I thought for a split-second that there was something more than mere formality; I thought I’d heard genuine puzzlement. Or curiosity.
Well, sir…officer, I imagined myself saying. My brother came to America when he was eleven years old. He and his wheelchair-bound father escaped Vietnam by boat. They left behind the rest of their family, my brother’s mother and two sisters. Apparently my brother’s father couldn’t convince them to leave. Another man, some kind of uncle, maybe someone not even related by blood, got them passage on a ship leaving the country under cover of night. The boat took them to Malaysia, to a refugee camp which in comparison to life in Saigon my brother would remember as a paradise of palm trees, white beaches, and turquoise waters. They didn’t stay there long. Along with others in that steady flow of refugees from Southeast Asia to the United States, my brother and his father were processed for admittance. They ended up in San Jose, California, where a Protestant church sponsored them, setting the father and son up with a place to live and a job for the father repairing bicycles, which he could do despite his handicap. Within the year, however, my brother’s father died, quietly passing away in the middle of the night. A family belonging to the church offered themselves as a foster family for my future brother, a family my parents knew because they too had adopted and fostered several children. So on Memorial Day weekend 1977, Bill came with my family on a camping trip, and a few days later, came to live with us for good. He was eventually adopted and naturalized as an American citizen. He became a professional ballet dancer, and in one of the many companies he danced with, met his future wife, Susie. They were married in 2000—I was the best man, Officer—and in 2001 their first daughter, Nina, was born. Tomorrow she’ll be six. Camille, the other one, was born in 2004, and as you can see, they are expecting another child any second. As for me, well, I am American Indian, and was adopted at birth by the couple who later adopted him. And that, sir, is how we all know each other.
Fortunately for everyone, I wasn't the one answering the questions. And was wrong about the note of curiosity I thought I heard. The official was just doing his job. Maybe, just maybe, however, he did really wonder. After all, there was a human being behind those aviator glasses and uniform.
“He’s my brother,” said Bill, “and the others are my wife and my daughters.”
“And what brought you to Canada?”
“We went shopping at Ikea. In Burlington.”
“And that’s the merchandise in the trailer?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s its value?” My brother had the figure at the ready. The official walked back, checked out the trailer, and came back to Bill’s window. He handed our passports and driver’s licenses and birth certificates back and said, “Have a nice day.”
“Same to you,” said my brother. With that, we were back, in America, on our way home.