Law, Partially

In the year before Christine started school, we passed several long and (usually) enjoyable weekends in various European cities. The list of desired destinations was, and still is, long. Moscow didn't make the first cut. But a Russian made us an offer we couldn't refuse. I was excited to return to Moscow, having visited once before, in January 2004. While the president is the same, I'd heard that a lot else has changed. Namely, the Russian state became a lot wealthier after 2004 with the price of exported Russian oil reaching a long-sustained higher average price. We found that the Moscow mayor has invested a lot to enhance the city's livability. When I visited before, I stayed in a gigantic hotel next to the Kremlin designed to house thousands of partisans for the erstwhile party conferences of the 20th century. That brutal concrete hulk met the wrecking ball since then and is now a park with paths through planted native fauna up a hill that offers views of St. Basil...

Like Bobby careening deeper into a train museum, while Baba reads a wall display, family life has been running away. Our attempts to maintain order have sometimes felt like this traffic jam ("taf-fick jamp"), displayed here in an art installation constructed by our resident abstract expressionist, Bobby. This taf-fick jamp  looks orderly at first, but upon closer look, we have cars piggy backing, cars turned the wrong way, etc. Life has indeed been lived on the run amidst much family travel of late and more on the way. Nainai came to stay with us in London. Baba spent a few nights in Brussels and then returned home to take Bobby and Nainai to the Netherlands on the next day. After seeing Nainai off at Heathrow, the London Linges decamped to Singapore for two weeks with a few additional days in Malaysia. Bobby and Baba visited York, and then a few weeks later, Bobby, Baba, plus Mummy, went to Cardiff. On several of those trips, I was worried whether I'd be adm...

As a northern hemispheric country, just as in the U.S., summer's heat wears away and leaves change color as fall arrives in the U.K. In my years abroad I've learned how memories of time and place attach to seasons, with seasons becoming markers on the timeline. Your perception of seasonal change is shaped by where you've spent most of your years, especially where you grew up. Shaped by the American Midwest, the autumnal months remind me of baseball season's end, football season's start, school terms commencing, green leaves becoming red and orange, Thanksgiving, and Christmas shopping. We find some parallels between the U.S. and London. Fall brings cooler temperatures, although summers are never as hot and winters never as cold here as we'd get in Iowa. This year, fall brought Christine's return to school, this time at the London School of Economics, alma mater of Mick Jagger and JFK, both of whom didn't earn degrees there (hopefully Christine will be...

This summer, Bobby made his second trip to the Tate Modern. The occasion was to view a biographical exhibit of Picasso's works from 1932. Bobby, in this year, Picasso was painting to stay relevant after having already achieved fame but also dealing with the dissolution of his marriage (caused, of course, by his infidelity) -- why is this not resonating more with you?! Turns out, the day became not so much about a series of paintings as the timeline of life, including Picasso's and our own, as well as everyday lessons in parenting. Successful adventures with our young boy require us to get right the timings of naps, meals, and snacks. This particular Sunday, we messed it up. The ideal museum trip -- at least when you want to meaningfully observe the works and read the descriptions -- requires the boy to sleep in the Ergo Baby carrier while Baba soaks in the museum. Otherwise, the boy would prefer to run through the museum, or if he's super tired and irritable, just throw a...