Sweet Dreams, My Darling

It's the two month mark.

And we are doing great.

Both of us.

Redefining our paradigm. Our mother-son relationship. Our devoted family of two now spanning the globe.

The 8,000 miles that separate us. His night; my day. Has brought us closer together. Amazing.

This position is a perfect fit for Charlie. Perfect. It is as if he was hired solely on the basis of a few things:

1) He was a member of Hasty Pudding.

Although I am confident they think it was the theatrical wing. Costumed events. Rat races through Central. Singing skits. A sedan race in a team dressed as Rocky Balboa ... tailor-made black satin hooded boxing robes emblazoned with a gold dragon over silk trunks ... wow six men to a team carrying a tiny woman perched atop her ancient Asian chariot.

2) He's a jolly good sport.

And can be called upon at a moment's notice to play cricket, in a tourney no less, when he has never held a bat in his hands. Or to start for the firm's soccer team when his last foray into shin guards and slimy shorts (as he called them then) was when he was in kindergarten and he stayed on the team only long enough to get his baseball-type card for posterity. In fact, all the rules and strategy that he knows about the game came from years of Sony PlayStation soccer matches with his Norweigan college friend!

3) His senior honors thesis advisor is a highly celebrated global rock star who looks like Tony Blair, is a Brit and dazzles the press with his nonformist, contrarian views. An economist unparalleled.

That Charlie is a scholar whose post-colonial studies over the final six years of his education, depth of compassion, utmost sense of fairness, poise and passion ... or that he is fluent in Mandarin. Merely footnotes. I am guessing.

In ways he feels as if this firm, this storied colonial firm whose two Scottish founders colonized Hong Kong for Great Britain leveraging China trade to the Western world by their foothold at the gateway to Asia was tailored for him. A perfect fit. Whether five years, several decades or until retirement.

That opium was a primary export is immaterial. That the Opium Wars raged virulent in the early 1800s spiced up the landscape and adds to Jardine's backstory.

That trade with America was opening up in a very big way from ports in Canton (now Guangzhou) and Peking (now Beijing) propelled their business across multiple industries spanning the maps of the New World.

That the sea faring tall ships embarking across the globes waters from Boston and Nantucket were built in Maine and that the remnants of these shipbuilding landings still dot the shores of the Kennebunk River bring this home most poignantly over two centuries later.

The circle gets smaller. Aided by technology. But mostly by brave intrepid souls like my precious son. The new explorers. Pioneering in a new world order shedding the temptations of easy street in the familiar turf of New York or London to cast his net far and wide.

Sweet dreams, my Charlie. I am so proud of your spirit and ability to imagine the possibilities!