ONE

Mark wasn't surprised that Ginger was quick to learn how to walk. She'd wiggled and crawled through the first year of her life, so not long after her first birthday, she was ready to start hoisting herself up on the furniture and attempting wobbly journeys to different parts of the room. She fell on her bottom a lot, but didn't cry or fuss about it. She just sat still for a few moments, as if considering her new plan of attack, and then got right back up and tried again. It wasn't much longer before she could walk from Jinyoung's arms to Mark's, delighting in the congratulatory kisses they covered her with when she succeeded.

But now, Mark wouldn't have minded her slowing down a little. He was watching her in the morning while Jinyoung was at work, and thus far she'd spent the day restlessly going back and forth between her plushie pile and her Old MacDonald and His Noisy Farm audio picture book across the room, Mark trailing after her to help her stay entertained. Now she was toddling around her playroom, making noises which sounded like attempts to mimic the farm animal noises she was learning from her picture book and not really committing to anything but going in circles around the room.

Mark picked her up in his arms and took her over to the little blackboard Allison had gotten her for her birthday. “Let's try drawing today, Ginger,” he said, plopping her down in front of it. He offered her a thick piece of chalk, which she clenched in her little fist. Her coordination was getting better with every day, and she was good at mimicking what she saw Mark doing. She watched him draw a cat on the blackboard, then tried moving the chalk on it herself, forming a yellow scribble beside his drawing.

“What are you drawing?” he asked her. She didn't know a lot of words yet, but she was getting good at imitating the sound of language at least. She could make questioning noises and use different tones of voice when she was babbling.

“Dada,” she said. That was one of four words she had mastered—she could clearly say Dada, Papa, Lou, and Ow, the name for her favorite stuffed owl.

“Oh, that's me!” Mark said in a dramatic voice. “What a pretty picture!”

“Dada,” Ginger repeated, drawing another scribble.

Mark drew his best picture of Sammy on the blackboard. “Who is that?” he asked.

“Ish!” she said, pointing excitedly. She was getting close to mastering her fifth word, which she'd been learning due to her fascination with the family angelfish.  “Ish!”

Mark drew an owl next to it. “And who is this?”

“Ow!”

“And what is this animal?” He drew a cow. Ginger hadn't started using the word yet, but it was always good to test her all the same. “It's a cow! Do you know what a cow says?”

Ginger looked at him blankly.

“Moooooooooo!” Mark said, just like the farm cow in her audio picture book.

His daughter giggled, clapping her hands. “Ooooooooo!” she tried. It was close enough, so he gave her the congratulatory high-and-squeaky “YAY GINGER!” he and Jinyoung did whenever she did something well. She responded well to high tones and seemed to recognize that it was associated with good things.

Mark always felt a strange mixture of emotions whenever Jinyoung came home from his kindergarten lesson and Mark had to head over to his office. Of course, there was never a moment in his life when he wasn't happy to see Jinyoung, and he was more than happy to let Jinyoung have special time with their daughter so he wasn't hoarding it all to himself. He just hated having the two of them there right in front of him and having to go somewhere else. He wished every day could just be them all together with no one having to spend time anywhere else.

“You two are drawing?” Jinyoung asked, crouching down beside them, still in his teacher gear. “It's so pretty! Did Dada draw that beautiful picture of Ow?”

“Dada!” Ginger said in her own high-squeaky voice.

“Let's show Papa our new trick, Ginger,” Mark said. “Can we moo like a cow together? Moooooooo!”

“Oooooooooo!” Ginger echoed before being overcome by giggles.

“Wow,” Jinyoung said, impressed. “Did this house turn into a farm while I was away?”

When Mark was heading out the door, Jinyoung popped downstairs carrying Ginger. “Not leaving without your goodbye kiss, I hope?” he asked. He leaned in and pecked Mark's lips. “Ginger and I also have a trick to show you. Ginger, can you do the hand kissy?” He placed his free hand over his lips. Ginger imitated him, then moved her palm flat like she was blowing a kiss to him. Mark dramatically pretended to catch it.

“Thank you, sweetie,” he said, kissing Ginger's soft cheek. “Dada will be home soon.”

Both Ginger and Jinyoung waved. That was always the sight that carried him through the rest of the day. The two of them side-by-side, holding on to the promise of his return.

0

“Daddy, I finished my homework, can I do something now?” Lou whined. Somehow, eleven year olds had a special way of using a tone of voice that sounded constantly peevish. But Mark was counting his blessings—at least puberty hadn't hit yet.

“We're going up to the farm park,” Mark said. “Is that a good enough reward for suffering through math homework?”

“What, are there sheep and pigs there?”

“And cows,” Jinyoung added. “And tractors.”

That was the magic word for Lou. Anything that ran on an engine was of automatic interest to him. “OK.”

Jinyoung had come up with the idea as Ginger started mastering some of the sounds in her farm book. She could now do a very convincing cow and pig imitation, but her specialty was owl sounds. “Whooowhooo.” They thought it would be fun for her to see some of the animals in person and to practice “talking” to the animals she was learning about.

After getting Ginger in her shoes, the four of them got in Mark's car. Ginger was obsessed with one of her kiddie song CDs and wouldn't let them listen to anything else without fussing, which Lou endured with minimal grumbling. In spite of how much he'd wanted a brother, he had a massive soft spot for his sisters. Brendan was someone he wanted to morph into his mini-me, but he let both Regina and Ginger do as they pleased without protesting.

“Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O,” Jinyoung sang along to Ginger's CD (he seemed to be the only one not sick to death of it at this point), and Ginger repeated after him at twice the volume. “E-I-E-I-O!” She got all the sounds mostly right, which earned her a “YAY GINGER!”

After a rousing chorus of “The Wheels on the Bus” and the family favorite “Skip to my Lou,” they arrived at the farm park. It seemed like there was an exciting schedule planned for the day—free cow milking lessons, a tractor ride, sheep shearing, and a petting zoo.

Lou wanted the tractor ride first. “So we can see the whole farm,” he said, but Mark was hardly surprised when he immediately made a beeline for the tractor driver and wanted to know everything he could about how much it could haul and which brand the farmer thought was the best. As Allison often joked, “If there's a vehicle in east, he'll be there. If there's a vehicle in the west, he'll be there too.”

The tractor ride was slow and leisurely, and they got a full view of the farm. They passed a pig pen where a heavy sow was feeding her piglets. They saw a market stand selling apples and corn set up near an artificial lake. They passed the petting zoo area and several of the barns where the cows and horses were kept. And, to both Ginger and Lou's delight, there was a playground situated near the visitor's center where several kids were already playing.

“We'll go there later,” Mark said. “We don't want to miss milking lessons.”

Ginger was almost beside herself with joy when she saw the cow set up at the milking station. “Ooooo!” she cried, pointing at it. “Ooooooo!”

“Yes, Ginger!” Mark said, pleased that she had recognized it. “It's a cow!”

The cow handler came out after a few minutes and gave a little lecture to the children about how many cows were at the farm park and how often they had to be milked, as well as the benefits of drinking milk to grow up big and strong. He asked for two volunteers between the ages of five and thirteen to help him milk the cow he had with him today, and Lou was chosen along with a five or six year old girl who was wearing a cow print headband.

Lou went first. Guided by the cow handler, he gently moved his hands down the udder until milk shot into the pail underneath the cow.

“Wow, isn't your brother so cool?” Jinyoung asked Ginger.

“Lou!” she said.

The cow handler and Lou filled the pail halfway up, then moved to the other side of the cow where the little girl took over for Lou. Before they left to watch the sheep shearing, the cow gave a little moo as the handler unharnessed it from the milking station, which made Ginger giggle giddily.

The sheep shearing was even more fun, since Mark had never seen one before. It was amazing to see the sheep go from being covered in pounds of wool to being slender and bare, looking a little more like a large goat than a sheep. There was plenty of “baaa”ing for Ginger to enjoy, and Lou, who was still a little smug from his successful cow milking debut, also said that he thought it was super cool.

Finally, they went to the petting zoo. Under Mark and Jinyoung's careful supervision, Ginger got the pet the muzzles of a goat, an un-sheared sheep, a pony, and, her personal favorite, a llama. Lou wanted to know if there was a pony riding event, but it was scheduled a few months later—they'd have to come back then.

They ended the day at the playground. Lou immediately ran for the monkey bars, and Jinyoung and Mark helped Ginger on to the smaller of two slides so she could take turns with the other kids going down.

“You know, ever since we had a kid, our level of date entertainment has just skyrocketed,” Jinyoung said. “I love this kind of thing.”

“Great, I'll cancel our dinner reservation for our anniversary this year and take you to Chuck E Cheese.”

“Hey, I love Chuck E Cheese. Let's keep our dinner reservation and take the kids there next week. The best of both worlds.”

“Tsk. How are you a parent and still this greedy?”

“Because you let me get away with it.” He caught Ginger as she went down the slide and lifted her up in his arms. “Hey, sweetie, what does a cow say?”

“Ooooooooo!”

“And what does Dada say?”

Ginger thought for a moment. “Baaaaaaa.”

“Why do you always encourage our children to make fun of me?” Mark wondered.

“Because it's fun,” Jinyoung said. “And doing it together is better than doing it alone.”

TWO

“Okay, Ginge,” Mark said, holding up two of Mei Hui's old dresses. “Cherries or watermelons?”

Ginger pointed to the left. Watermelons it was.

“Lift your arms up up!” he instructed. She lifted them high over her head, and he slid the dress onto her. Cute as a button as always. Her hair had grown long over the past few months, down to her shoulders and curly. It was like Jai's hair, which Mark remembered from one of Mei Hui's wedding pictures, rather than Mei Hui's straight and thin hair.

She was a beautiful little girl. It struck him sometimes that she looked like she could be a catalog baby, modeling the latest jumpers and onesies with a constant delighted smile on her face. She could still be as fussy as she had been as a newborn, but when she was good, she was a downright angel. She didn't particularly look in any way like him or Jinyoung, but it didn't bother Mark. She was perfect the way she was, and lovely in her own individual way.

Mark helped Ginger into a pair of pretty pink sandals to match her dress. “So, are we going to take our stroller today, or are you going to make Daddy carry you?” he asked.

“Stowa,” Ginger said. She'd gotten so attached to her stroller that it had become one of the words in her limited vocabulary.

“Your wish is my command.” Mark grabbed her stroller, along with a loaf of Wonder Bread, as they headed out the door. Ginger plopped right down into the seat, putting her feet up on the foot rest. “Let's go!”

It was a quiet morning. School had just recently started again, so the young voices that had filled the air in the summer were missing. But Mark liked it this way, all still and serene. The weather was still warm, so he and Ginger could continue to do summer things without having to put up with the crowds of children over five. The toddler crowds were still around, but it was much more manageable dealing with just them.

Mark pushed Ginger in her stroller to Lake Park, where they were going for their weekly tradition of feeding the ducks. It was also a beautiful place to go on walks. The flowers were in bloom, and the gazebo was always busy with the senior citizen crowd, who held one-on-one chess there on Mondays, and dance socials on Wednesdays. Today was a dance day, and the older couples inside were swaying to the tune of Glenn Miller, showing that age wasn't keeping them from being spry. Ginger tapped her sandals in time on the foot rest.

On their way to the lake, they passed the walking paths where the early morning joggers and league of mommies with toddlers were enjoying the morning air. Mark usually waited until the paths cleared out a little before taking Ginger down them. Falling in love with Jinyoung had changed him in many ways, but hadn't made him any fonder of making small talk with people he didn't know. Or worse, people he did know. They had a few friends around town, mostly people Jinyoung had used to know from college who now had families of their own or co-workers of Mark's, but there was a fair number of people who knew of them, the neighborhood gay couple, and went out of their way to either avoid them when they were out with Lou or Ginger or to make the atmosphere unbearably awkward. It always flustered Mark with how he sometimes heard his family talked about. He was the guy who had run out on his wife for a man—and who had let such an irresponsible guy adopt a child on top of it? What kind of unholy environment were these children being raised in?

It wasn't true, but it still rankled. The worst was when these parents got anxious if their children played with Lou whenever he tagged along to the park, but didn't mind if their children played with Regina, who was being properly raised by just two opposite- parents. Lou rarely seemed to notice or care—as long as he had Kit, other friends were just back ups of limited importance—but it got under Mark's skin a lot, that his children were being judged for his choices.

So he usually avoided those walking paths during the busy hours to spare himself from the less friendly presences. He was just about to do the same today when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder, bringing him to a halt.

“Hiya!” a ponytail sporting brunette in yoga pants and t-shirt which read “SUPER MOM” across the chest said in a chipper voice. “I'm Brittany.” There were three other women with her, wearing identical outfits and pushing toddlers in identical strollers. “We're part of a single mother support group who goes walking here every Wednesday morning. We see you here a lot, so we thought we'd introduce ourselves.”

“I'm Danielle,” one of the Super Moms said with a wave. “All the members of are group are mommies, but we wouldn't say no to a single daddy joining our team if you'd like.”

“I'm-” Mark started to say to clear up the issue about actually being a single father, but was interrupted by a blonde Super Mom crouching down in front of Ginger's stroller.

“Your toddler is so ethnic looking,” she said, studying Ginger's face. “Which country is she from?”

Strike one, Mark thought. It was a rude enough question to ask an adult, but a two-year-old? “She's from America,” he said flatly.

“Sorry,” Brittany said, rolling her eyes. “Alexa's a little bit slow. She meant to ask what her ethnic ancestry was, not what country she's from.”

Mark didn't particularly want to continue the conversation, but wasn't rude enough to just shut it down. “She's Chinese and Indian.”

“Ah, I had no idea you were Chinese,” the Super Mom who hadn't introduced herself yet said. “You don't look like it. I mean, you're just so handsome!”

Strike two. Mark was genuinely curious if she actually thought acting surprised that a Chinese man could be handsome was supposed to flatter him.

“Well, she's a bit different from the other kids, but I'm sure they would have no problem making friends with her if you joined the walking team,” Super Mom Danielle said.

Strike three. Mark felt livid. It was one thing of them to say it right to his face, but another to say it to his daughter's, who was learning about the world through the things adults said. His daughter was a bit different from their row of ethnic majority babies, and that went into her judgment of whether they'd be able to make friends with her or not? Just because her eyes and skin tone were different, she had to specially specify it wouldn't be a problem? Were they looking at the same child he was? Ginger was beautiful and sweet and kind, and of course she could make friends with other kids. Her being Chinese or Indian or both had absolutely nothing to do with it.

They'd struck out within five minutes, so Mark was going to show them the amped up politeness they seemed to lack. “Thanks for inviting me, but I'm actually not a single parent,” he said, smiling at them. “My husband usually has to work in the mornings, so that's probably why you haven't seen him, but he comes here a lot in the late afternoons by time you've gone home.”

“H-Husband?” the unnamed Super Mom stammered.

“Yup. But even if I don't qualify for the team, it's fine if our kids want to play at the playground together. But I hope you won't look down on Ginger for being different. She's a two year old, the same as your two year olds. She's learning how to talk. She likes owls. Her favorite Disney princess is Jasmine, and she likes chocolate chip cookies. She's not exotic. She's just a baby.” He waved his hand. “And right now, she wants to go see the ducks. So I'll see you around.”

The Super Moms remained dumbfounded as he steered the stroller to the lake. He was still seething. And sad. Mei Hui had warned them this would be one of the challenges they faced, but he'd tried to be more optimistic about the world than that. He knew he and Jinyoung would inevitably cause judgments, but it didn't seem fair that Ginger also wasn't free of being judged at the age of two.

The one fortunate thing was that Ginger didn't seem to understand what happened. She simply got to work breaking up pieces of bread for the ducks and happily imitating their honks. “Quack, quack, quack.” He was happy to see that her world was as simple and beautiful as it always was. He wished he could always keep it that way for her. He wished sometimes he could keep it that way for himself.

0

He told Jinyoung about it when he got home. Mark didn't like troubling him, but thought it would be better to warn him, in case he had his own encounter with the Super Moms. Jinyoung had reacted to it solemnly, with clenched fists. “I guess it's true, what they say,” he said in a tight voice. “That when people are hurtful to your kid, it's worse than when they're hurtful to you.”

Mark nodded. “Do you think I handled it right?”

Jinyoung nodded. “What's that Michelle Obama quote? When they go low, you go high? I think you said what you could without sinking to their level of rudeness.” He sighed to himself. “I wish we could do more, though. It's hard to cure other people's ignorance.”

“I guess what we can do is make her thoughts of herself stronger than other peoples' thoughts of her,” Mark said. “By letting her know everyday the strong and special girl she already is and is becoming.”

That brought a smile to Jinyoung's face. “I like that idea. Praising our daughter is something I already love to do, so it's like second nature.” He paused. “But do you really have to let her play with the Super Moms' kids? That is, if the Super Moms are brave enough to get within 12 feet of you again.”

“We should always give kids the shot to be better than their parents, so yeah.”  Mark paused for a moment, his forehead wrinkling. “Speaking of the matter of people being hurtful to our kids, this whole thing made me remember your parents' warning about Lou's classmates potentially bullying him. As far as you know, that hasn't happened to him yet, has it? He's twelve, so basically right at the age where the jerk pre-pubescent instincts of his classmates would be intensifying.”

“Ah, that's right, you had to miss the last parent-teacher conference, so you wouldn't know. His teacher talked with me about it, then. There had been a few isolated incidents of bullying, but it stopped pretty quickly. Apparently, Lou refused to rise to the bait, and told them something along the lines of 'I don't care what dumb monkeys think of my family'.”

Mark beamed. “That's my boy!”

“On top of that, when BamBam came back from his own parent-teacher conference, he told me that Kit apparently had a less diplomatic response. He used his upperclassman prestige to scare them off of ever doing it again. And earned himself a detention in the process.”

“Really? Kit's not particularly intimidating is he?”

Jinyoung shrugged. “That may be because we've never really seen him mad before. According to BamBam, he gets a bit scary when you press one of his beserk buttons, but I'm sure BamBam is usually the only one who manages that regularly, anyways.” He smiled slightly. “The important thing is that Lou knows himself and the people who love him well enough not to get pulled down by people who don't matter. If you were able to raise one kid like that, I'm sure we'll do just fine raising another.”

“Don't sell yourself short, hun. You raised Lou, too. You're as much a part of his strength as any of us.”

“I know. He just told me the other day that he doesn't even remember a time in his life when I wasn't there, so that's already fresh in my mind.” Jinyoung folded his arms across his chest. “But there's one more thing that's bothering me: haven't I warned you several times already to stay away from single mothers?”

“Hey, they were the ones who came up to me,” Mark said, lifting his hands. “I never asked for it.”

“Still, you seem to be a magnet for them. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to ban you from taking Ginger out while I'm not there.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “How are we supposed to teach Ginger not to be bothered by the little things if you still insist on blowing minor things out of proportion?”

“Shouldn't we always give children the shot to be better than their parents?” Jinyoung reminded him.

Mark simply laughed. He liked that thought, but still wondered how his heart would manage someone even better than his beautiful, stubborn husband in his life.