one last pic before we say goodbye. he's leaving home for vancouver in an hour and they're not yet out the door, but already i know i'll be missing, for two weeks, the sight of his scrunched up nose; he does that when he grins or is laughing. born a monkey, always a monkey. i think singapore has been hard on him. new surroundings, new environment ... and always perpetually hot! but he handles it well. as well as a baby would. after all, how much can one explain such things to an eighteen month old? in a few years, one wonders how much he would retain in his childhood memories of his international trips with his parents. the first trip that i remember - i do that by the skin of my teeth, and the flashes of memories come in bits and pieces, chunks if i'm lucky. a few stolen words from the treasure trove long put aside as the daily passages of life consume us and age becomes us. it's odd what we choose to remember. to steal a few words from john irving - what we remember at [an] early age is very selective or incomplete, or even false. i can still remember the way my feet were placed together as i looked up at the smiling face, peering through the crack of the slightly opened door. the heaviness of the musty air in the hotel corridor. the way my brain processed her reply to my innocent question, can she come out and play now? how i remembered thinking how creative the answer was. how inappropriate yet so innocent. who knew that i would remember the words nay, she's bombing tokyo right now so clearly?