Goodbye Nanjing

Another wake up to gray film filtering the sun into a mutant moon. Though it's morning, the sky is dusk and the bland white disk that should be yellow and glaring floats like a Neco wafer: benign and insignificant. What it must be like to not see the sun in all its glory. For it to be so irrelevant. Here it sits like a forgotten cousin but the effect is malignant and must damage more than just the earth but the psyche as well.

The answer is to wear masks and mop the grit from doorways each morning. I was so mistaken those first days when I saw the sky. At breakfast I chatted with a man from Arizona who just learned he has to stay here through the holidays. He told me I'm lucky it's not summer. That he went three months and saw the sun twice between the rain and the pollution.

Our last day in Jiangsu Province.

The girls and I strolled again to the Hunan Road for some gifts. We stopped in Starbucks and sang Christmas songs to each other lounging on those comfy blue chairs. Lila knows Jingle Bells. I pause and think of the kids who did not leave with Lila, still in Wuxi singing Jingle Bells in that classroom with the fish art on the bulletin board.

We've now come in and out of the Ramada so many times that Lila knows when to press up or down; 1st floor or 26th floor. She knows the breakfast buffet by heart. Wait till she sees the White Swan's offering!

Four women and six children shared two cabs and trekked to Ming Tomb this afternoon which offered not only history but wide open space for our children to run freely. Between the paths, steps up and down and driveways the kids had a proper workout. We posed in front of the huge rock-carved animals and hopped another two cabs back to meet our guide for receipt of our daughter's passport that allows us to leave the province tomorrow morning. With the passing of that passport our business with Jiangsu Province has officially ended.

Our guide, Sandra, took us for a celebratory meal. Breeda was much more adventurous than me. Lila kept turning the lazy-Susan and taking from every option until there was no room left on any of her plates!

The girls are just beginning to doze. It is morning in the U.S. Night here. Tomorrow we say goodbye to Nanjing, goodbye Wuxi, goodbye Jiangsu, our daughter's birthplace which will forever connect us to here.