All in a day's work

At some intersections around here, you might get the idea that a big concert or sporting event had just let out; people are pouring across the road weaving through cars awkwardly crammed onto the street as if lanes were an afterthought. Sometimes this disregard of the road rules infuriates me. It feels like one huge game of Chicken. Everyone is out for himself. Those of us with a little less nerve will move and accommodate at the last moment. You might call us considerate or maybe just cautious.

I don’t often see road-rage around here, its more of a road-recalcitrance. On a fellow commuter, what may look like a smile that says, Beautiful day, huh? is really an apathetic smirk that says, Oh, am I in your way? Did I just cut you off? Sorry, sucker!

But sometimes I see things differently. Sometimes I see this beautiful ebb and flow of cars and bikes and people, a symphony of constant motion, maybe even an unspoken cooperation between all of us.

Work was kind of like that today too. At first I couldn’t see beyond my bad mood, but eventually I came around.
Last week I was sick and had to cancel my English class with the kindergarteners. My contact at the school laid the guilt on me pretty thick for canceling. Today, all I could remember was how upset I was over the guilt trip and how hyperactive the kindergartners were. So after a long morning of teaching at the Medical school, I was dreading the kindergarten class.
But when I knelt down and twenty Chinese six-year-olds surrounded me, I felt my bad mood loosen its grip. We sang and solved riddles. Mostly we laughed the six-year-old laugh that starts in your belly and reverberates all through your body until your head tilts back, your lips are stretched wide, and sound is bursting up and out of you. They laughed at my animal impressions and I laughed at their six-year-old laughs.

On the way home, the five o’clock traffic was in harmony. Through heavy smog and pollution, the sun cast a reddish glow. I thought everything looked beautiful. Even the litter in the gutters was gently rippling, almost dancing like the plastic bag in American Beauty. I gazed at couples doubled up on bicycles. I saw a mother and son eating ice cream on a stick and guessed that it was her idea to throw out the rules and have ice cream before dinner. I imagined the two of them ten minutes before and I could see his light up when she said, How about some ice cream?
I love China, I love China kept circling through my mind and every time I exhaled the words would tickle my lips, itching to be spoken-----like when you want to say something so badly that it swells up and repeats in your head until you can’t concentrate on anything but those words. In the end I just swallowed them back down and let the thought take its time to bleed out of my head. And before I knew it, a new thought had worked its way in and taken over, What’s for dinner, what’s for dinner?