That's a Big-Ass Wall

For some reason, my Dad was a little chagrined by the photo I posted of him the other day.  I really should be a little more careful playing with people’s vanity.  Turnabout being fair play, Dad, here’s a less than flattering shot of me at The Great Wall today. 

This was taken at the tail end of a climb and descent of a section of the Wall at Ju Fong pass, on the far northern outskirts of Beijing municipality.  Although it was hardly an overwhelming climb, note that I am sweating like a menopausal woman in the middle of Death Valley on a hot summer’s day.  Partly due to the 90-degree heat and 3000% humidity, it could be more accurately attributed to my tendency to perspire at a ridiculous rate when I do anything physically more difficult than, say, picking up a doughnut.  Also note that with the way that t-shirt is clinging for dear life to my less than flattering physique, it looks like I might actually benefit from the use of a training bra (or “bro,” as Kramer would say).  Purely an optical illusion, of course.

We all have our moments.

Except my beatific and photogenic children, of course.  Ther’s a shot of them at the base of that section of the Wall after the jump. 

Cute.  In the background, you can see the beginning of the climb I mentioned earlier.

As I said in the title of this post, and at the risk of sounding flip about one of the great wonders of the world, there’s no getting around the fact that that is just one big-ass wall.  It’s difficult to come away with any deeper sense of its magnificence, of the sheer magnitude of its construction over thousands of years, when you are just parachuted in for a couple of hours and scramble around on one small, well-traveled section of it.  To get a true sense of its scope, I think you’d be better off backpacking it for a couple of weeks, taking in all the rises and drops over a good distance, noting the crumbling as well as the maintained sections, and standing atop guard towers alone and uninterrupted as opposed to surrounded by hordes of tourists.  And then, having done that, realize that it would take you months more to walk its entire 5,000 kilometer length, if you could ever even manage it at all.  Then you might have earned some real sense of the Greatness of the Wall.  I can imagine that, but I don’t know if I can say I really experienced it today.

Still fun, and very worth it.  We also visited the Summer Palace.

We are two days from Lei XinXing, from Eli, from our son, from the Boy Who Knows Us Not.   We are really feeling it now.  The ache of not knowing what he is doing at this moment, how he is or is not being prepared for this event, whether he understands or cares.  Then there’s the weight of the moment itself, how we should and will prepare ourselves.   What questions will we ask the caregiver?  How will we juggle a possibly screaming, resistant toddler along with our other two children and Allison’s parents and a guide and a translator and caregiver and still manage to say and ask everything we need to, through tears and a welter of emotions and a cacophony of noise?  Will we make a connection with him immediately, or will he be catatonic and unresponsive, overwhelmed and unable to process what is happening beyond a great sense of loss?  Will he go with us willingly when the time comes?  How will we record this moment, for his and for our future selves?  Should we let anyone else hold him – for example, his grandparents, who will be dying to do so – or follow the advice of many, which is to guard his attention and contact jealously so that if he forms an attachment with anyone, it’s with his parents and nuclear family and not with his grandparents, or the guide, or the hotel staff, or some other stranger – like his parents – that he’s only just met.

There will be additional external and not unwelcome distractions today, the Forbidden City, Chinese acrobats, etc.  But our focus is now inexorably turning inward, shutting everything else out, as we gather ourselves as best we can for the real purpose of this trip. 

 

The waiting has never been more interminable.