Children

The little girl I visited this weekend, Evi's godchild, suffers from congenital muscular dystrophy. She was born with dysfunctional muscles, all of them, from the ones she can control, like the ones on her arms, to the ones she can't, like stomach. And of course, there's also the diaphragm that you can sort of control. She was born unable to breathe because the diaphragm did not work enough to catch the first breath. She was attached to a machine for months.

I wonder how parents deal with their children born with enormous challenges, for the children as well as for the parents. This little girl's parents work full time outside their full time job to keep her alive and afford her the best care possible. While her muscles are improving, they will soon begin to deteriorate inexorably. I am not only thinking about the value of life, but also about being a parent. I see my nephew running around being unruly or uncontrollable, at least for me, not sure about the his parents. And I see that at least he's a normal child with normal challenges for parents and for himself.

I watched the little girl swing her little arms and legs. She started to smile, a behavior requiring facial muscular movement. She will have trouble speaking, and learning to speak. There is a tube attached to her trachea as if she was some patient suffering from lung disease after a life-time of smoking. She was still a little child, having spent first half her life so far in the hospital. I looked at the mother, and I saw no room left for grief or worry, just constant flow of tasks to keep her baby alive and in the best condition possible. What does it mean to be a parent? Is it really for the process? Or is it also for hopes and goals, goals of bringing a human being into a normal, fruitful life. Perhaps, not normal.

That was the preoccupation of my weekend in New Haven. And they were also seeds of thoughts. I haven't really let them grow into anything concrete. It was also a long weekend spent with Evi, nurturing that sapling called our relationship, building a connection that is just starting. The exception was a couple of hours in my old tango haunt, the place here I spent most of my Sunday evenings until I started driving down to New York City to dance that day of the week. Most faces were new but a few ghosts stubbornly clung to the tree of time. But there were really just two friends, one was the Indian man I had mentioned a few times, the man who stopped talking to me because I dated his ex-girlfriend without telling him. The other was a woman I went to Montreal once in her car; we also went often to New York City to dance. I caught up with both of them for a bit. I sat most of the time on those familiar steps that divided the dance section from the section where food and water was available and people gathered. I was the one who baked goods and wowed people for a few years. I was the one sitting there being too afraid to ask a better dancer to dance with me. I was somewhere around being upset amidst some drama with some tango dancer. I was everywhere in so many moments of those five years of dancing in this hall.

A Brief Return

I just missed the diesel train. I haven't been on that diesel train for nearly a year. Ten months. Since April. The diesel train between Stamford and Old Saybrook, passing by my Pink House. It's the train I took to work and sometimes back from work when I was still living in New Haven. I started taking that train, going on that route, after starting my transition toward New York.

I remember writing my blog on the way home, passing Bridgeport, watching the cars whose existence was indicated only by their taillights. There is the big factory with tall chimneys that bellowed out white clouds in the chilly morning sky. Now, as I pass them by, they are quiet giants falling into sleep along with the sky. A drop of nostalgia, perhaps? But I don't miss that commute, and I don't miss the town I had stayed in for so long. It was never a "home"; it was more like a Hotel California, a temporary place that you can get stuck in permanently, a middle point that can become the end point. There are memories in that Hotel California, memories that shaped my journey, but there's nothing to return to. Not like New York, which is at once forever changing and forever the same.

Now I am looking for a job again. Another move closer to New York. I moved my home to New York, but the job was stuck halfway. I am going through the whole recruiting process again, trying to show off how smart I am while discovering where my limitations are, and in those limitations I learn where I want to go next. It's been more than a year since I was going through my first job application in nearly nine years. Now looking back, that one year in this job, compressed, seems so brief and short. But like New Haven, it is just a stop, and a stop I refused to allow to extend further. That is why I am searching for another job. It's because, yes, I am tired of the commute. But also, there's a strong desire for motion after nearly nine years of stagnation. New York was going to be an endpoint, but then life opens finally the door of romance to me and now I don't know how long I will be in New York. I don't feel that obsessive attachment to it that would make me feel sad to leave. But the feeling of constant motion is made even stronger now that I am not sure how long I will be in the place I didn't think was another Hotel California, but a home.

The recruiters are interesting. I never saw them in this way before. What I mean is, somehow with some deeper sagacity, I can see how their words and persuasions are tailored with one goal in common: getting me a job so they get their commission from the hiring firm. They won't declare this intention, of course, but they never sugarcoated anything to make themselves sound like they are doing me a favor. The less experienced ones just want to throw me as many opportunities as possible, even if they are not so relevant. I have learned to set limits, be assertive in what I want and not tolerate compromises. There are the more experienced recruiters who is more discerning of what I can do and where I would fit, and they try to get me the right jobs while doing their best to convince me to follow their path.

I am likely to get two offers soon. Already the HR managers of the two companies have spoken to me about compensation. I am learning the art of negotiating, if just a little bit. A year ago I was willing to settle for whatever that would help me get out of New Haven and get a pay raise. Now I want to be more discerning myself. When I listen to recruiters speak, to HR people speak, to interviewers speak, I hear more than just the words they utter; I start to see their intentions, understand their private motives, and then, hopefully, I have a better idea how I should go about getting my own goals. In that way, perhaps, I have grown up a little bit this past year. And I see my own limitations, I sense them. I don't mean the technical limitations. I mean personalities that impede me from getting the best offer in the best place. Worries, ego, uncertainty, self-esteem.

But what is the best offer, the best place to work. The two places that are ready to give me an offer are on diametric ends of many spectra. A bank that would offer more money but has had a worsening reputation for the past many years. A young company with young developers that are serious about building software for educating school children. But it's not so simple, as I am learning more. Nothing is so black and white. The bad bank is so large that it's difficult to judge any part of it for the misdeeds of a few sections. The young company is young also in a bad way, or possibly, like poor management, unrealistic about compensation, chaos. Besides all this, I don't really know what I want, and am afraid to do what I had done in the past: pick something and go with the flow. This is likely my last job in this country and after that I will be away for some indefinite amount of time. I feel I need to be careful what I choose, not only for current aims but for later, for starting a family, in terms of salary, skill set building, and other factors about my career.

I guess I need to write down the pros a

And so fast, this year has indeed flown by. I wonder what the next year will be….