The Bright Survivor: Let Me Tell You Your Story

Copyright © 2024 Sharon Shih.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-5880-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5881-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023923861

iUniverse rev. date:  12/28/2023

To my mother, a Chinese housewife, who devoted herself to

her husband and took care of her own and others’ children.

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

BOOK 1: BABY, TODDLER, PRESCHOOLER

The Baby

Your Birth

First Day

Suture

Your First Medical Treatment

Going Home

The First Sixteen Months

Your First Home

Second Round to the Hospital

Dr. Spock and Your First 100 Days

Home Care

The Little Canadian

My Two Part-Time Jobs

Preschool Years

1800 Baseline Road

Nanny and Toddler

Family of Three

Home Cares

Daycare

Junior Kindergarten

Family of Two

Transition to a New Phase

Cuckoo and Santa

A Distant Father

Mind and Temper of a Toddler

Eva, Bryce and Ranran

Chinese Nannies

Qin Nainai

Luo Nainai

Sun Nainai

Wang Nainai

BOOK 2: PRETEEN, TEENAGER, COLLEGE AND BEYOND

Preteen School Years

Senior Kindergarten

Early French Immersion

Grade Four

Grade Five

Grade Six

Chinese School

Kumon and French

After-School Care

Summer Camps

Friends

Charity and Donations

Plan for Junior High

Gifted Identification

Chronology of Gifted Identification

Why Gifted Identification?

Gifted Criteria and Your Scores

Association for Bright Children

At Odds with the System

End of the Journey

Teenage Years

Public Transit

Road College

Handle Defeat

Knowledge and Exposures

Ready for High School

Colonel By Secondary School

IB Program

Routine of the Family

Choice of University

Girlfriend

Friends of Colonel By

Away from Home

Ready for University

Parents of a University Student

Learning at the School

Co-op Terms

Graduation and the Job

Girlfriends

Hobbies

When You Were Little

Karate

Piano

Other Musical Instruments

Badminton

Other Sports

Magic

Electronic Games

Pets and Plants

BOOK 3: FAMILY TRIPS

Travel to China

Beijing, Summer 1994

Home Village in Zhejiang, Summer 1998

Great Wall and Imperial Parks

Journey to Home Village

Homecoming

Little Foreign Boy

Terracotta and Shaolin, Winter 2003

Xi’an

Terracotta and Tombs

Buddha Statues and Luoyang

Shaolin and Taoism Temple

Country Bus and Train in Zhengzhou

Dinner in the Best

Tours in Southern China, Summer 2009

Nanjing

Suzhou

Shanghai

Your Trip to Home Village

Beijing, Summer 2011

Trip with Lili and Andy

Wishes of Your Aunt

Tourists in Beijing

The Dinner for the Older

Travel in North America

Florida, USA, Winter 2001

Disney World

Kennedy Space Center and Disney Quest

Homebound

Friends and Relatives

The Maritimes, Canada, Summer 2003

New Brunswick

Prince Edward Island

Nova Scotia

From Fredericton to Quebec City

Rockies, Summer 2004

Edmonton

Canadian Rockies

Portland, Oregon

Vancouver

From Vancouver to Calgary

Friends and Relatives

Palm Desert and San Francisco, Summer 2007

Palm Desert to Los Angeles

Sequoia National Park

Yosemite

San Francisco

Friends and Relatives

Hawaii, Winter 2008

Honolulu

Cruise

Volcanoes and Volcanic fields

Tropical Greens

Culture: The Night with the Natives

Los Angeles, USA, Thanksgiving 2010

Tours

Relatives

Travel Other Places

Cuba, Winter 2000

Life of All Inclusive

Havana

Europe, Summer 2006

Rome

The Vatican

Venice

Visit in Switzerland

Paris

London

Mexico City, Winter 2011

Mexico City

Excursions

Peru, Winter 2012

Prior to Lima

Lima

Cusco

Machu Picchu

Visit by Jimmy’s Family

Lima: Homebound

Epilogue

Introduction

Shortly after the birth of her son, she applied to immigrate to Canada. A few months later, she and her husband were called to the Consulate General of Canada in New York City for the immigration interview. At the end of their interview, the immigration officer said, You have a son who is Canadian. Make sure that he gets all that a Canadian deserves. The family of three settled in Canada.

The Bright Survivor is about the parents and their Canadian-born son. Its narrator is the mother who accompanied him for nearly twenty years. The boy was born in Toronto, grew up in Ottawa, graduated from Waterloo, and started his career in Toronto. His parents, who were new to Canada, spent two decades building their careers and bringing up their Canadian-born child. The book contains every aspect of life related to their son as he grew from infancy to a young professional.

Six chapters of the book present the life of the boy in a sequence: infant, toddler, preschooler, preteen, teenager, and college student. When he was an infant, he stayed with home care while his mother worked two part-time jobs in different countries. As a toddler, he stayed with the live-in nanny when his mother went on business trips. During his elementary school years, his parents tried their best to find him an environment where he could focus on his schoolwork. As a teenager, he traveled across town to attend a year of private school and four years of high school. The International Baccalaureate program at his high school turned out to be the best fit for him. He then moved on to the co-op program for his university education. Each chapter contains the boy’s behavior, family life, his friends, and (whenever applicable) his caretakers.

Three chapters are on specific topics: Chinese nannies, gifted identification, and hobbies. Stories about different Chinese nannies provide a glimpse of the families of the Chinese immigrants in Ottawa. Identifying the boy as gifted details a case that was known to the respective school board and the Ontario Special Education Tribunal. Stories on nurturing hobbies reflect the effort, both physical and financial, that a family made over the years.

The last three chapters are about family trips that his mother remembered the most. They traveled to China to meet relatives, pay respects to ancestors, and tour historical landmarks. In North America, the family flew or drove long distances to visit relatives and friends, and to explore nature and the people of the land they call home. The family also took a few pre-arranged vacations to see the world outside their old and new home countries. Although away from home, these were the precious time periods when the family stayed mostly in the same room or car tightly together.

The chapters are augmented by a Prologue and an Epilogue in the setting before the child was born and after the young man left home. In the Prologue, his mother moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to Toronto to be close to her husband, who was in Buffalo, New York. Her pregnancy started as a surprise and was followed by months of uncertainty. In the Epilogue, to be close to their son in downtown Toronto, his parents sold their house in Ottawa and moved into a condo in Scarborough for their retirement.

The book is a case study of the new generation of Chinese immigrants in Canada. Instead of making a life in Chinatown, they left China for North America to complete their education. Instead of going back to China like the Chinese scholars a century ago, they opted for a peaceful life in Canada. They worked among immigrants from other countries. Many of them eventually became middle class and technology oriented. With both parents working full time and lacking relatives, their children grew up in home care, daycare, after-school programs, and camps. To be integrated and excel, they sent their children to extracurricular classes and programs. Feeling homebound or obligated, the families travel to China to maintain the connection. Being first-generation immigrants, they traveled to see the world, especially North America, their new home.

The book reflects the learning curves and the mindset to learn (all the time) of the parents. New to the country, they did not have the basic background of Canada nor help from families in China. The parents learned to raise their Canadian-born child along the way and sometimes wondered if it could have been handled differently. There is ample literature in various media about immigrants, family conflicts, and growing pains. However, the intent of the book is to cover every timeline of a small family when raising a child. The book contains a lot of facts and occasional afterthoughts on specific matters. However, the pros and cons are left for the readers to discover when they find similarities in the content of a specific age or environment.

In the years of the latest pandemic, young Asian or Chinese descendants have become more conscientious about their ethnicity. They feel a kind of belonging to a specific branch in our multiculturalism. They are college students and young professionals who have excelled because of their diligence, endurance, and tolerance learned while growing up with their parents. The author hopes to reconnect them to the pieces of happy, sad, and annoying moments they remembered when they were toddlers, preteens, teenagers, or youths. Some stories, hopefully, will fill the gap between them and their parents, who raised them as Canadians, but were often thought to be very Chinese.

Sharon Shih, Fall of 2023

You have a son who is Canadian. Make sure that he gets all that a Canadian deserves.

— Immigration officer at the Consulate

General of Canada in New York

Prologue

In the winter of 1991, I moved from Madison, Wisconsin, USA, to Toronto, Canada. Leaving the country where I had all of my academic accomplishments, I became a postdoctoral researcher in the department of physics at the University of Toronto (U of T). Ying, my husband, was working on his doctoral degree at the State University of New York - Buffalo. Ying and I had been married for over four years and had no children. We were in our forties. I said once, We can have a grandchild, skipping a level. We just laughed. Being almost 700 miles apart, we tried to avoid the action.

My decision to move put a temporary stop on my job hunting. Instead of a potential position with an oil company in Houston, Texas, the research position at U of T was closer to Buffalo, although it is in a different country. Before leaving Madison, I was informed that my proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) went through. It was good news but came too late. I told my professor that I would join the research after the grant arrived. Ying and I left Madison, the beautiful state capital with government offices, the university, and the lakes.

Our journey to Toronto was a two-day drive with a pair of walkie-talkies between my car and Ying’s U-Haul. After Chicago and Detroit, we had our first lesson in driving separate vehicles in a snowstorm. On the long stretch of Highway 401, we passed Windsor and London towards Toronto downtown. Luckily, there was not a lot of traffic. I could see the lanes by alternating low and high beams, and Ying just followed the taillight of my car. My comment for the major Canadian highway afterwards was that there should be some real lights besides reflectors.

Toronto was full of lights. With me in Toronto, Ying and I were finally less than 100 miles apart. In a few days, I fell in love with the big city, although I had to move from a room downtown to a cleaner apartment in Scarborough. Toronto was peaceful compared to other metropolises like Chicago or New York. The beef short ribs from the European Meat Market and the Vancouver crabs flown in on the same day were very welcoming. The daily commute between U-of-T downtown campus and Scarborough was a bit of a pain, but I was just one among thousands of commuters. Navigating downtown, I soon learned a few hand gestures to either notify my intention or show my appreciation.

One night in early spring of 1992, I noticed a hard lump in my lower abdomen when I was in bed. It was not painful but was not going away. Being in good health most of my life without a family physician, I became concerned. After monitoring it for a few days, I thought that a tumor in my abdomen would merit a visit to any hospital. I walked into the Toronto General Hospital during my lunch break. I told the receptionist that I had a lump and needed to see a doctor. Although not really an emergency, my case was handled promptly, including a basic checkup, blood test, and even an ultrasound (after liters of water!). By late afternoon, I was met by the doctor, who had assessed me when I checked in. She congratulated me because I was pregnant. Really? That was all I said. She then continued her explanation of my case. The ultrasound showed that the fetus (tiny-you) was growing with fibroids in my uterus. Because of my age and the complications, I was immediately referred to an obstetrician, Dr. Morris.

In the months that followed, I got to know Dr. Heather Morris of the Women’s College Hospital through my monthly ultrasound and many bi-weekly visits. In the second trimester, she told me that the fibroids would grow and get softened because of the changing hormones. I could take as much Tylenol as I needed, but not any other painkillers. Indeed, I had to take plenty of. Besides the pain, I did not have serious morning sickness. I happily worked as usual. Ying came over from Buffalo on the weekends so that we could cook or go for big meals to satisfy my growing appetite.

Soon the amino synthesis showed that the fetus was normal and that tiny-you was an XY boy. However, the fibroids were also growing. The diameter of the two large ones was several centimeters. Going to any prenatal class never crossed my mind. Instead, my focus was on being ready for something bad to happen. It was more like, how far can I go with the baby and the fibroids? My peers at work always had the ear to listen during our many walks along St. George Street or Spadina Avenue. For Dr. Morris, I was an older female with complications. She showed me and my fibroids to her students during some of my visits. She was attentive to any symptoms I reported and explained and treated them patiently. On the walls in her office, there were many baby pictures. I was never bored while waiting for her.

In early May, six months into my pregnancy, Dr. Morris happily updated the status of tiny-you: the baby had become a complete human; he would live if he wanted to come out earlier than expected. It was the second milestone in your life while the first, my inception, went unnoticed and likely happened in the country on the other side of the border. Ying announced my pregnancy to his family in China. His mother wanted to help. She applied to come over. She went shopping for baby clothes and sewed several baby-sized blankets and comforters. Ying passed the news to his peers in Buffalo, too. Some of them immediately promised to provide different baby furniture. We started preparing the baby room.

Dr. Morris scheduled the date of birth to be a week before the expected date. I secured a month of maternity leave with my boss. In the weeks before my operation, Dr. Morris asked me to inform the ambulance, if it was needed, that the baby did not go down. Luckily, the ambulance was never called. Tiny-you by then was diagonally between two 6- and 8-cm fibroids in my womb. My bulging belly was visibly higher than any woman in the late stage of pregnancy. The top of the bulge contained one fibroid on the left side and your feet and legs on the right. Under the tight skin, the left side was hard solid while the right side was active, especially when I was steady, trying to rest at night. The poking and kicking sent wonderful messages that you were alive. It must have been hard for tiny-you to get around from time to time.

This is the beginning of the story about you before you were born. You came and grew while I had to feed both you and the fibroids while working full time on my research projects. In the end, you survived and won. Like Dr. Morris said, The human body is a mystery.

BOOK ONE

Baby, toddler, preschooler

The Baby

W e watched the Disney movie Dumbo many times after you started watching TV. In the movie, Mrs. Jumbo, the veteran elephant of a circus, waited anxiously. A flock of storks was delivering babies. A little bundle strung to a parachute was flying to each expecting mother. At last, a stork flew over her railway cart and delivered her bundle. Mrs. Jumbo opened the bundle and loved her baby, big ears and all, with her whole heart. Here is how you came to the world and started your real life.

Your Birth

Your birthday was to be August 24, 1992. In the afternoon of the 23rd (Sunday), I did the finishing touch on the poster for a conference. When leaving the office, I met a professor in the elevator. He smiled at my condition and knowingly said, Still working because of her? I proudly replied, Baby boy and his birthday is tomorrow.

Before 8 o’clock on the 24th, Ying and I arrived at the hospital. I checked in, and it was a room with four beds in the maternity section. The nurse came with the gown. She asked a few questions and took my temperature and blood pressure. As instructed, I was soon changed and got wheeled into the operating room, which was as spacious as I had seen in the TV shows. Dr. Morris came by with her usual smile. For six months, I was a patient at the Women’s College Hospital. Dr. Morris was on top of my case after I was diagnosed as an older pregnant woman with multiple fibroids. A few of her students, whom I had met on my previous visits, were also in the room. They were there to do the chores because my surgery was just one of the few on Dr. Morris’ list for the day. As she explained a few times already, the operation was a C-section, and anesthesia was epidural. In simple terms, the baby would come out through an incision in my lower abdomen, and I should remain awake during the surgery. According to the form I had signed, my uterus (with the fibroids) would be removed if serious hemorrhaging occurred during the operation.

The operation bed was very flat and hard. A divider was installed to block my view of the area beyond my chest. People were arriving and bustling around on the other side of the divider. Ying stood next to me on this side. I looked at the ceiling, wishing it had some pictures, like those in a dental office. The air conditioning was strong. A few minutes later, the intravenous was connected, and I was told to roll over onto my side. An injection was administered to my lower back. It was to numb the local area on my back enough for the larger needle of the epidural. The big needle, the real anesthesia to last for my entire operation, came as a big push, and I was told to curl up a bit and relax. The needle then went in and found the right location between the two vertebrae in my spine. That was the end of the preparation. I should be awake during the operation. Strangely, I felt my response, especially in English, was fading when I tried to refresh my memory of the procedure that was underway. People were moving around, and Ying was eager to get a view of the operation on the other side of the divider.

The operation started. I felt a few dull cuts. As I later learned, it was a horizontal incision across my lower abdomen. Because of the baby’s position, the cut was a little higher than normal, above the bikini line. The doctors cut through layers of skin and muscles to expose the uterus. The incision then opened the uterus. In my case, Dr. Morris’s expertise was to reach up to find the baby among all the blobs and water without breaking or bruising anything. I was quite alert at the time because my uterus was on the line. The serious hemorrhaging did not happen, and my uterus remained. The doctors hoped the hormone changes after the birth would do magic to shrink the fibroids so that I would be back to normal. It did not take long before Dr. Morris pulled out the baby. She patted the baby twice, and the latter cries came out. You were out and alive! A baby in Chinese culture is a year old when he is born. In that way, your age would include tiny-you doing all the struggles inside me. Here you were out at age zero and started counting… Figuratively, your age only started when you cried to announce your arrival.

I overheard that everything about you was normal. Ying and I had worried about whether your arms, legs, neck, or even fingers might not have enough space to grow among the fibroids. Everything was fine. I was hugely relieved and fell asleep before any pain kicked in.

First Day

I woke up and found that the other beds in the room were occupied. Ying was around. I was still connected with the needles and catheter. There was dull pain, and I could feel the flatness of my abdomen. However, the muscles that had been working together did not cooperate when I tried to raise my head. Finally, tiny-you and its world were gone; maybe I would miss the time when I could feel your heart beating and see your foot poking.

In a tray on the cart next to my bed, you were wrapped tightly in a light blue sheet. After being soaked in the liquid inside my womb for months, your face was reddish and puffy, and the skin of your hands was wrinkled. Although not pretty, you had plenty of hair on your head, and it was very black. You weighed less than seven pounds and were approximately seventeen inches long. There was a band on your left wrist, saying Shih, no name, an implication of how unprepared your parents were. Ying and I worked on your name. He gave you a Chinese name, Jiyun, meaning the clouds on the horizon. He wanted you to be free. Your English name is James, following the pronunciation of your Chinese name. Before the end of the day, we filled out the application for your birth certificate.

A nurse brought a small, half-filled bottle of infant formula, an imitation of human milk. She also asked me to put you on my nipples so you could be familiar with them. You suckled at my nipple! However, my milk would not come soon. The C-section, instead of natural birth, did not provide the mother with the required stimulation for the next step of feeding the offspring. According to her, a newborn won’t be hungry in the first 24 hours, and you would likely lose some weight to get rid of the puffiness. The nurse then showed us how to feed you. An important training for us was to help you burp. The reason was that a newborn does not have enough muscle or proper coordination to expel the air out for the milk to go down. Evolution from tube feeding inside the womb to a normal human digestive process required a bit of help at the beginning, I thought. Help in burping included standing you straight against the adult and patting your back lightly until the air (and sometimes milk) came out of you. Ying soon became an expert in burping. He also learned to put a piece of soft towel between your chin and his shirt as a cushion and a sputum collector.

Since we did not attend any prenatal class, the nurse gave us the first lesson on how to change diapers. The naked you in front of me showed more hair on your head, neck, and back. Ying seemed calmer than me on these things because he has a younger sister and a nephew. He was familiar with the scene and the smell. The diaper was disposable. It could be cloth, as we learned later. However, our first lesson was with the disposable diaper and baby wipe. The smallest diaper fitted you well, and the tape at its two ends made the operation safe and easy. You were quite comfortable after being wiped clean. We learned soon that you would certainly let us know if the diaper was soiled.

Throughout the day when you were available, we tried feeding and changing diapers. Once or twice, I felt your skull under the thick hairs. As said in the book, I could identify the pieces of bones and sutures, the most fragile part of an infant. It would take a long time for the shell of human intelligence to close tight. My busy work and advanced age did not create a big baby, but the good food and a lot of walking to get the good food made every part of you fully functional. Your abnormally large amount of hair, Ying believed, had something to do with the many beef short ribs from the European meat market, one of my favorite meats. I fully agreed. Other than the pain and complications of my pregnancy, I really enjoyed the months of my life in Toronto.

For the night, you were sent back to the nursery because I could not yet get out of bed without a lot of pain. By then, the catheter and related tubes were pulled out, but I still needed to spend the night with the intravenous pain killer and antibiotics. Obviously, my focus was to make safe rounds with the rack to any place, such as the washroom. My appetite was back. I could finish everything on the tray at mealtimes. Ying went to the hospital cafeteria to have a bite and eventually went home when he was asked to leave. I was tired and slept through the night. Still, I remembered that my attempts to turn were held back by the rack and wires and that people were in and out often, but as quiet as possible.

Suture

Dr. Morris came by the next morning during her daily rounds. She was happy that I had no fever and, hence, no implications for infection. In contrast to the mothers who went through the normal birth, I had to stay at the hospital for a week to wait for the wound to heal. Dr. Morris or other doctors making the daily rounds checked my chart and the suture of the C-section every time.

The nurse on duty changed the gauze from time to time. She came by, removed the soiled one, and went to her next patient. Instead of applying the fresh gauze immediately, she seemed to believe in healing in fresh air. The wound stayed open longer and longer each day. She also asked me to take showers to wash, wash, and wash it clean. She helped me to the shower room for the first time and showed me the trick of showering with the least pain. So, I took a shower every day. Since I don’t swim, those were almost all the cold or lukewarm showers I had in my whole life. After the shower, I would lie in the bed and leave the wound open until she came around to put the clean gauze on.

I had ample opportunities to examine the suture while waiting for a new gauze. It was an approximately five-inch horizontal cut. It was closed tight, and, as far as I could see, stapled together, zigzagging whenever necessary. I was told that there were two layers of closure. The inner one to close the uterus was by surgical thread, and the thread would be absorbed and eventually disappear. The outer one for my tummy was stapled, and the staples would be removed when no longer needed. On the day you were born, the doctors doing the chores for Dr. Morris had to work on the layers of skin, fat, and muscles covering a big void after you were out. Therefore, the closure was not a piece of fine work. The compilation was likely done by one person squeezing the layers tightly together and the other pressing the stabler along. Some staples were holding three layers together, while the others were holding two or four. The new skin or muscle would grow and replace the old ones, I thought. I wondered whether the final product would be a smooth line when it was completely healed. At least, the length of the visible scar should be shorter.

I had doubts about leaving the wound open. The air was not germ free, although the ward was cleaned diligently. I also had doubts about the shower policy. In the back of my mind, the old Chinese tradition told me that a mom with a newborn should not touch cold water or go out for the first thirty days. However, there was nothing in my mind about what would be done if the mother had a C-section. An applicable old Chinese saying is that it takes one hundred days to heal bone or muscle injuries. Amazingly, my body (probably