My Life as a Person

My Life as a Person

By Xiaohan Brunton

Dedicated to my mom

Maple Leaf Writing Project

Brattleboro, VT

2017

1 being a baby

What do you do if you you’re the smallest person in your family and think you will forever be? Answer: Keep going on with life and chances are you won’t continue down this unhappy path. So don’t collapse on your bed and groan, just keep making your way through life. When I was younger I was the smallest person in my family. But as I got older I got more cousins. This made me no longer the youngest in my relatives.

My story goes like this. I was born in China and my name is Xiaohan (show- hawn). My parents Jennifer and Peter on the other side of the world wanted a child and my brother Ernie wanted a sister so they asked an orphanage from china for a daughter.

China had them write to them and send pictures of them and tell them all about themselves and get passports and do all sorts of stuff to get me. then they waited and waited and waited and I waited for parents. I had had a belly mother but she could not keep me because she had another child already and the law was that you could not have more than one child not a very nice law right?

Anyway mom wanted a child from china so she tried to get one and as you can see she has a child two to make it exact but trying to get me was hard since there was a bunch of delays. Finally they got a picture of me and in the picture I had a happy and blank face you can tell by my face blank, happy, and pudgy. Mom was so so so so happy to get this picture and she gave it to all of my family. A while after that maybe a month mom and brother and aunt, (who wanted to come) finally got to come to china the reason my dad didn’t come is because he wanted to stay home to take care of the yoga studio that my mom and dad owned.

On the way there it turned out that my brother had gotten a huge spider bite on the plane his neck was totally swelled up and he had to find doctors on the plane and people prayed because they thought that he was going to die but it ended up that he was fine after all.

When they got to the hotel it was really hot out and they were walking around a lot and being tourists and checking out the place they staying. The next day Ernie mom and my aunt were really excited to see me and so happy there was also bunch of other families getting their children.

I was first percentile when I was a baby and that is really small. I stayed small for along time and I even am small now but I'm not first percentile right now but I´ll be small for a long time not the smallest person in my orphanage or life though. Anyway my brother and mom and my aunt came to see me downstairs at the hotel they were staying at and when my mom came to see me she was crying and when she was holding me she was crying and I was blank just blank.

My name means dawn cool the Xiao in my name means dawn and the Han means cool. There are other meanings to my name but the orphanage found me in the fall when it was cool (it is usually very hot ) and they found me at dawn or around that time. The other meaning to my name is little, well only to the xiao part. When the orphanage found me they found me on a cool morning outside their place in a basket on September 27 and they guessed that I was a day old. My name in the orphanage was fu xiaohan. But now as you can see my name is Xiaohan, this name is usually very hard for people to pronounce at first and I only have heard few people say it correctly which the first time I was very very surprised.

After my mom got me she brought me to a restaurant I don’t know what I ate but mom tells me that I ate a whole lot and it continued like this for as long as I was in china which was a few more days my schedule every day for a while was

-6ish wake up have formula bottle

-7 breakfast

-9-10 rice cereal

-12 lunch

-12:30-1 bottle and nap

-3:30 rice cereal

-5:30 dinner

-6:30 bottle

-7 bed

One of the days in China my family and I (in moms words) had the hottest most grueling tour of the forbidden city she says it was amazingly beautiful but really hard with a stroller and of course we wanted to see you. All of this is in my mom’s words because I don’t remember being little at all this might seem sad but I can just ask my mom what I was like though that is not the best thing. I was the type of little kid who, I’m embarrassed to say but I was a little kid who had tantrums every day for a long time not for an extremely long time though and over the lamest things and not just cry for a while and get over tantrums but cry for a long time and scream then my mom would count down and you’d never want to find out what would happen so then I would stop screaming not crying though but now I’m happy to say I do not ever have tantrums mom says it’s because it’s because I had anger inside me and needed to get it out which I did.

On the way home from china which was on a the plane we slept and ate and slept maybe not my mom though you know taking care of children on a plane for hours on end this was a fine experience for me of course I don’t remember anything from being little although my mom does of course remember everything that happened, for example a tantrum moment was when I was upset about something who knows what, and mom who was getting a headache leaned over into the back seat and very quietly explained that she was getting a headache well since I was mad guess what I did? Well I leaned over and screamed directly in her ear like this SSSSSSCCCCCCRRRRREEEEEEEEAMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not the best moment of mine as you can tell. On the way home anyways sleeping and eating was the main thing to do and possibly crying.

2 Being A Not So Baby a toddler

As I was growing up my parents helped me with my mad problem and now I don’t have tantrums I do get upset about 5 times a year and not full blown tantrums also not 365 days a year but other things were going on in my life besides tantrums. When I was three or older my dad peter and mom were getting in a divorce their divorce was not pretty at all my dad was very very angry and he has a bad temper when he is mad. He was very angry but he still loved us so after the divorce he saw us sometimes. From this divorce is one thing I remember from being little and there is one specific day I remember. That day was when my mom came to pick me up (Ernie was at preschool thirty seconds down the road) and when she got there dad started yelling at her outside she sent me upstairs to Ernie’s room at the time and told me to wait there until she came inside to get me so I went upstairs and from the window I saw dad just standing there yelling from the window and mom was arguing back this moment is the main moment I remember and the saddest.

My dad is a kind person and caring and generous and happy person at times. But when I was little and I saw my dad swear and I saw him mad just being a little kid i was scared after that when I went over to his house I let Ernie talk to him and I had Ernie ask him things for me but this was because to me he was this towering person so at that time I was afraid to talk to him and even to call him dad or to hug him because I thought he was going to hurt me which I know is a reasonable thing since he has hurt me and my brother and mom and other people. My being scared of my dad has gone on forever and even now I’m still intimidated by him though I don’t see him now.

Other things that had been going on are things like preschool and first grade and second and a move in fact a lot of moving. First moving to my grandparents they live in Connecticut (SONO aka south norwalk) after the divorce and spending our summers in Maine. During the year my brother went to norwalk for school when he was little everyday we would walk to his school or almost everyday besides in winter or when we had to do something some days when I was little we would go to a doughnut place and get donuts then sit in the car with music and eat them that was always nice for me and I loved doing it. Then after we ate them my mom would drive to the house which was only about three blocks away. We would see our grandparents sometimes usually my grandfather but not my grandmother since she still works and was working at the time. Every day for 6 months we would walk to school with ernie even in the winter also my mom started dating my papa Michael. Then after those six months we moved to Vermont in Newfane and mom was still dating papa then and then one week we went to my grandparents and one night we went to a place called Valencia to eat then when we came home my papa had us come in the breezeway and he proposed to her with his face red she said yes the date he proposed was APRIL 24 2010.

They got married September 18 2010 there was all this kissing and

Anyways then we went around the grange and played hide and seek that night ( I think ) and there was a huge wedding party which was super fun and there was people there that were towering over me and they were loud. For me it was a nice thing to have cousins that were the same age as me and we danced the entire party. Also there were biscuits with whipped cream and strawberries. When I went downstairs Maya was there but since I didn't really know her I just ignored her not really on purpose it's just that I didn't really talk to kids I did not know. After I ate the cake which was really yummy. I went upstairs to where the dancing was and I danced with my cousins to salsa. The wedding was really fun and I felt like was dancing for forever and of course meeting a bunch of people that I didn’t really know. Meanwhile, while I was having fun like everyone else my mom was sick very very sick and still managing to have fun (maybe) after the party was done we went back to the hotel at like 12:00 pm.

Part 3 My favorite place in the world.

One day my mom told us that we were going to a place called Aruba. Ernie and I were so excited to go to another place. When it was a month before we were going to leave mom made a countdown chart and we started counting down the days until we were going to leave which in my opinion was taking a very long time. A couple days before went left for Connecticut since our grandparents were coming with us too and we were to leave from New York we packed. Then on Monday of our April break we left for Connecticut with all of our things (we were going to have easter twice, once in Aruba on the actual day and one not on easter). When we got to connecticut it was about six we unpacked our things and left them downstairs then had dinner it was pizza it was good there was broccoli and cheese also there was pizza with more toppings after dinner mom gave me pajamas and I went to bed. Usually Ernie would sleep downstairs in a bed that you have to get setup but since that would be a lot to do in the early morning he just slept with me and mom and papa slept together in the bed that is also a couch. Before I went to sleep that night I quickly prayed not like please god or that just think please let me not kick Ernie in the night and I didn’t which was really good. In the morning 5:00am mom made hot shredded wheat which was really really really really good. After breakfast we waited for the taxi driver to come and bring us to the airport. We got into the taxi and got all our stuff loaded in with us. Then the guy drove us to the airport. When we go there we brought our stuff through a long process it took maybe 3 hours then we went through a scanning thing where our bags went through and we had to go through thing that scanned our clothes for anything dangerous. After all of that we went to the waiting area and walked around after we put all our stuff on chairs I walked around with mom and Ernie walked around with my grandmother. My papa and grandfather stayed with the stuff. As we were walking around I saw a candy shop and asked mom if we could go there she said maybe and we walked back to meet with everyone. Mom told Ernie and grandmother about the shop and they figured out the time and all that stuff then she told us that we could go but we had to be quick so Ernie, mom, and I all went to the candy shop I got gum, licorice candies, shark gummies, and lego candies that turned my tongue the color that the candy was. After we went to the shop we came back got our stuff and got onto the plane. When I went to my seat (I got to sit with my grandparents) I saw that there were tvs so I got earphones from my grandmother and watched the tv all the way to Aruba when we got there we got driven to the resort it was about five o’clock. Then we went into the hotel and got all of our stuff sorted out. After that we had dinner my mom came up with a rule that we had to eat a salad at lunch and dinner and a fruit choice at breakfast so I had my salad and ate pasta then I had dessert which was these little fluff cups. After dinner we went to the outside pool. We did things like this everyday and went to watch dancing one night. As we left I was sad I decided it was my favorite place in the world.