New York Times, Aug 17, 2024, "SundyStyles" section

choi

Haig Chahinian, Father Finds His Way in a Sink-or-Swim Moment; Overcoming the gaps in parental knowledge is part of gay man's journey. at page 5 (in the column of Modern Love).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/ ... opted-daughter.html

excerpt in the window of print: Happy swimmers squealed in the other side of the wall. I hoped that joy was moments away for my child, too.

Note:
(a) "Teenagers rolled through the entrance * * * I felt for my child, who is biracial, squirming under the attendant's gaze. * * * That changed at 25 when I met Peter, a museum worker seven years older. I shared with him my dream to raise a child. He didn’t ache for the same thing. But he loved me and came around in his own time. On our sixth anniversary, we attended a 'Wannabe Parents' meeting at the gay and lesbian community center. * * * two white men and their Black little girl traipsing through Harlem."
(i) roll (vi):
"5a: to travel in a vehicle
* * *
7a: to swing from side to side  <the ship heaved and rolled>
  b: to walk with a swinging gait : SWAY
* * *
9a: to get underway : begin to move or operate
  b: to move forward : develop and maintain impetus  <the project finally got rolling>
      especially : to proceed or progress with notable ease or success  <the team was rolling>
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rol

Definition 5 is impossible. I think definition 9 fits the bill, as the pair of father and daughter had been in a queue, waiting for the gate to open.
(ii) feel for (phrasal verb): "2 : to have sympathy or pity for (someone)"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feel%20for
(iii) in one's own time:
"in British English
a: outside paid working hours
b: at one's own rate"
https://www.collinsdictionary.co ... sh/in-ones-own-time
Cambridge dictionary explains definition b this way: "If you do something in your own time, you do it at the speed at which you want to work."
(iv) "two white men and their Black little girl traipsing through Harlem."
(A) Why does Black start with an uppercase but not white? New York Times is woke: After George Floyd died, the newspaper  changed its style book, dictating black (race) would be Black from then on
(B) traipse (vi; First Known Use; 1647; etymology: origin unknown)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/traipse

(b) "I was thrown as Mother's Day loomed * * * That summer day, as we waited for the city pool manager to return, I held a well of prods and slights.?
(i)
(A) throw (vt): "2c: to get the better of : OVERCOME  <the problem didn't throw her>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/throw
(B) get the better of
https://www.merriam-webster.com/ ... 20the%20better%20of
(ii) prod (n): "1: a pointed instrument used to prod
2 : an incitement to act  <needed a few prods to remember her lines>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prod

-------------------------
As a gay, white man who had adopted a biracial daughter, I was at a loss when it came to choosing her bathing suits. I once outfitted her in a red cotton two-piece crocheted by my mother — a stylish yet impractical choice, which I learned when it got soaking wet.

The summer she turned 4, she said, “Papa, can we go to the pool park?”

“Right away,” I said, and then regretted it. Because we weren’t prepared. She was growing fast and needed new swimwear. Shopping on my own the next day at a discount department store, I puzzled over finding something she would like that would stay put, finally settling on a sturdy light blue wet-suit kind of thing that came down to her knees and elbows.

Walking my girl in her new one-piece to the nearby Harlem pool, I saw a long line ahead. On our third attempt at a midsummer swim, I had come to expect what felt like multifactor authentication for New York City public poolgoers.

The first time we had shown up during an hourlong cleaning break. The second time we hadn’t brought the right type of lock. As we joined the queue, I reread the posted rules. It seemed I was finally getting it right. Teenagers rolled through the entrance, giving me hope.

“Did she bring swimwear?” the guard asked me.

“Yes, she’s wearing it,” I said.

“That’s a bathing suit?” she said. “I don’t know. I need to get my supervisor.”

I felt for my child, who is biracial, squirming under the attendant’s gaze. Was I being implicated, too? Was our relationship on trial? With her brown skin next to my lighter, white complexion, we looked unrelated. Nobody could see that our hearts were attached.

When I was a little boy, my sisters called me “Skinny Bone Jones.” I wanted to be the opposite of my father. His parents had survived the Armenian genocide as orphans, yet the experience scarred them. As a father, he always seemed distant. On visits to the ocean, he would swim past me. I was left on my own digging for shells by the shoreline. I promised myself when the time came, I would play with my child.

In college, I struggled against my desire for guys. Relatives pressed me to marry an Armenian woman. I dated a young woman whose last name ended in the telltale “-ian,” wanting to make my father proud. I would provide my mother the brood of grandchildren she longed for. Yet denying my nature only fed my shame.

That changed at 25 when I met Peter, a museum worker seven years older. I shared with him my dream to raise a child. He didn’t ache for the same thing. But he loved me and came around in his own time. On our sixth anniversary, we attended a “Wannabe Parents” meeting at the gay and lesbian community center.

When Peter told his mother about our aim to adopt a baby, she was dismissive.

“I’m too old to be a grandmother,” she said, although she was already a grandmother of three.

As we progressed with our plans, we coped with eyes prying into our affairs. Filling out an application at a queer-friendly midtown adoption agency, we answered understandably invasive questions about our histories. We indicated an openness to a healthy infant of any race.

A domestic adoption depends on how a caseworker views your apartment; whether or not a young woman deems you worthy of caring for the baby she’s carrying; and how a magistrate judges you and your husband standing before him with your girl as he decides if you will be her parents.

Then it’s settled.

At last, driving home as a trio, I wanted to give our infant the moon, the river, the whole Manhattan skyline.

It felt like I had been granted my wish overnight, but I needed time to adapt. Those first early mornings, I was startled to see our newborn in her crib, ready to be changed and fed. My mother arrived from California to dote on her only granddaughter, showering her with hand-knit onesies. My father seemed at a loss for words, repeating “hi” as he held her for the first time.

Strolling past the city pool, the three of us cut a striking profile: two white men and their Black little girl traipsing through Harlem. When I went for walks with her on days off work without Peter, I felt different. Passers-by looked at my daughter and me from the sides of their eyes.

To endure the glances, I let myself imagine that I had an African-American wife who happened to be at the office, trying to blur the makeup of my family for my own peace of mind. I hoped nobody would have the nerve to ask. Was I falling back into the closet?

The community center helped us stay connected with other same-sex households.

“Let’s go to the waterslide park with William and his moms,” our daughter said one afternoon. Off we went with our inner-tubes and picnic. Back home, we flipped through a photo book of her adoption, narrating her story for her to own. When we later saw her on the floor turning pages, mouthing words, I swelled with pride.

She also shined at the swim lessons I had flunked at her age. On the first day of preschool, she wowed staff with her budding athleticism.

“Look, watch,” she said, then tossed a toy football in a perfect spiral to the playroom monitor.

But confusion reigned with her classmates.

“She has five dads,” a boy told me in the schoolyard, pointing at her.

“She has two dads,” I said.

At drop-off, another schoolchild said, “Where’s her mom?”

Our social worker had taught us in moments like this we could choose to educate, ignore or be brief. “Not everyone has a mother,” I said. “Some students are raised by aunts or uncles.”

“But where’s her mom?” she said again.

“I’m her mom,” I replied, flustered.

Yet I was thrown as Mother’s Day loomed and asked the teacher how the occasion would be presented in the classroom.

“They’ll be making bouquets,” she said. “We figured for this Sunday’s celebration, you would receive her tissue flowers, and Peter would get the artwork for Father’s Day.” The school hadn’t asked how we would prefer to navigate the gendered holidays; the staff simply had deemed me the maternal figure. But when I realized they had probably overheard me referring to myself that way, I calmed down.

That summer day, as we waited for the city pool manager to return, I held a well of prods and slights.

The supervisor soon appeared.

“He says this is a swimsuit,” the guard told her.

The supervisor looked my child up and down, then peered at me.

“It’s a one piece,” I said, explaining the wet suit. “It protects from sunburn.”

Happy swimmers squealed on the other side of the wall. I hoped that joy was moments away for my child, too. But I was feeling spent from repeatedly reasserting myself as a rightful parent.

The supervisor finally spoke: “I’m not saying this is a bathing suit. And I’m not saying it isn’t.” Then she waved us toward the shimmering blue basin. We were in.

As my girl and I shuttled through the changing room, she said, “Thanks for my cool wet suit, Papa.”

I let go of my annoyance toward those who didn’t get us at first blush. They were struggling to figure out what looked like a curious bond. And I was, too. I expected we would spend our lifetimes seeking answers.

I entered the cold pool, and my girl waited on the deck for me to take my place. When I stopped a few feet from the edge, she frowned.

“Not so close, Papa,” she said.

She wanted to be bold and brave -- and maybe show me how brave I had been too.

I scooted back two steps. As she bent her knees, I reached out my arms, and she leaped into them, laughing.

choi

(2) Vows: AJ Aquino and David Poon: The Pandemic, and Canada, Couldn't Keep Them Apart.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/ ... dding-advocacy.html

Note: "Dr David Edward-Ooi Poon * * * Ms Aquino, who goes by AJ, had worked as a frontline [ie, war zone] nurse in Dublin at the time. * * * Dr Poon grew up in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan. His mother, Dr Teik Im Ooi, is Malaysian; his father, Dr. Edward Toyin Poon, was born in China. Both are family physicians. When Dr Poon left Saskatchewan for the University of Alberta, where he got a bachelor's degree in medical science, they divorced. But they had long been united in wanting their son to study medicine.
(i) Poon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poon
("Romanization variant of Pan (surname), an East Asian surname")

That is Cantonese pronunciation.
(ii) Huang (surname)  黄
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_(surname)
(section 1 Pronunciations/transliterations: Oi, Ooi: "used in Min Nan and the Hokkien- and Teochew-speaking Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia")

This romanization or transliteration will not appear in Taiwan, because the Hokkien pronunciation in Taiwan does not sound like this.
(iii) "Dr Poon left Saskatchewan for the University of Alberta, where he got a bachelor's degree in medical science"
(A) In X (formerly Twitter), he identifies himself as "MD MPH CCFP," the last being member, College of Family Physicians of Canada.
(B) In the whole Web, this NYT article is the only one that says he has a bachelor's degree in medicine.
(C) Canada confers MD degrees. See Medical school in Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_school_in_Canada
(D) avid Edward-​Ooi Poon. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, undated
https://www.dlsph.utoronto.ca/faculty-profile/poon-david/
("He completed his medical school at the University of Alberta, and his Public Health and Preventive Medicine residency, including family medicine, at the University of Toronto. He received his Masters of Public Health at Columbia University")
------------
Dr. David Edward-Ooi Poon was living in Toronto and studying to be a public health physician in the spring of 2020 when he had a premonition that something awful was about to happen.

Canada had started clamping down on international visitors days after the World Health Organization declared a worldwide Covid pandemic on March 15, 2020. On April 10, Dr. Poon’s girlfriend, Alexandria Jasmin Aquino, of Bray, Ireland, had boarded a plane to Toronto for a visit both were sure had been cleared by authorities.

“That’s when the ‘Oh, no’ moment happened,” Dr. Poon said.

Ms. Aquino, who goes by AJ, had worked as a frontline nurse in Dublin at the time. She “had made it all the way here — we had our feet in the same country,” Dr. Poon said. But before they could celebrate or even set eyes on each other, a border guard confiscated her passport and rerouted her on the next flight back to Ireland.

“I was devastated,” Dr. Poon said. “I was isolated, the world was seemingly collapsing, and the person who gave me so much hope had been treated like a criminal and sent out of the country.”

A month later, the two formed Faces of Advocacy, a grass roots group that would eventually attract 11,000 members in its efforts to reunite couples and families separated by pandemic border restrictions.

Dr. Poon, 38, and Ms. Aquino, 28, met on Tinder in July 2017. Ms. Aquino had no dating app experience, but she was feeling adventurous while on vacation with her family in Toronto and signed up on a whim. “It was impulsive, like getting a new haircut,” she said. She swiped right on Dr. Poon because of his profile photo. In it, he was wearing autographed Spider-Man underpants, his arm around the Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee. “I thought, wow, this guy has to be one of a kind or some kind of maniac.”

On July 25, they met in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Ms. Aquino, who hadn’t told her mother, Iris Adeva, and stepfather, Rogelio Aquino, that she was going on a date, was two hours late. “I couldn’t figure out a way to sneak off to meet him,” she said. “I was a hot mess.”

Dr. Poon was ready to go home when she finally arrived. “But then I had this huge sense of relief,” he said, because the person he had been getting to know through a week of app messaging seemed just as compelling in person.

“She’s really funny, and I found her super attractive,” he said. Instead of sitting down to dinner, something Dr. Poon wanted to avoid because he is a messy eater — “I have a friend who describes me as the ugliest eater he’s ever seen,” he said — they strolled the market. They told each other dad jokes and talked about their pasts. When Ms. Aquino’s ride back to her hotel arrived, they kissed good night.

Dr. Poon grew up in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan. His mother, Dr. Teik Im Ooi, is Malaysian; his father, Dr. Edward Toyin Poon, was born in China. Both are family physicians. His parents had met in medical school and moved to Canada in 1984. When Dr. Poon left Saskatchewan for the University of Alberta, where he got a bachelor’s degree in medical science, they divorced. But they had long been united in wanting their son to study medicine. In his 20s, Dr. Poon was briefly a standup comedian. Back then, before “heightened cultural sensitivity,” he said, he used to tell a joke about the medical exam being the Asian bar mitzvah.

In 2021, two years after completing his family medicine residency at Toronto Western Hospital, he earned a master’s degree in public health at Columbia. Last year, he finished a public health and preventive medicine residency at the University of Toronto and became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. He is now working toward a master of studies in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at Oxford and expects to graduate next year.

He also has two jobs. By day, Dr. Poon is a medical health officer for Northern Medical Services in Saskatchewan, where his hours are mostly virtual because commuting requires a flight plus an hourslong drive. At night, he is a general practitioner psychotherapist at Toronto’s Comprehensive Treatment Clinic, specializing in addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

In the early 2000s, Ms. Aquino’s mother had immigrated to Ireland from the Philippines as a nurse. She successfully petitioned to have her daughter, then 5, and husband join her. Ms. Aquino’s father died of cancer less than a year later. “She was a widow at 28 and provided as much as she could with the cards she was dealt,” Ms. Aquino said.

Ms. Aquino graduated from University College Dublin with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She later earned a master’s degree in marketing from King’s College London. In Toronto, where she now lives with Dr. Poon, she works as a disability case manager at Manulife, an insurance company.

After their first date at Kensington Market, Ms. Aquino returned to Ireland, and Dr. Poon resumed his life in Toronto, caring for patients as a family medicine resident at the University of Toronto. For more than a year, they kept in touch by texting. Dr. Poon wanted to pick up the pace of the courtship and pressed for more visits. But Ms. Aquino, whose mother and stepfather wouldn’t have approved of how she met Dr. Poon, wasn’t ready.

By October 2018, he was despondent enough to tell her he wasn’t sure the relationship would last without a visit to look forward to. She flew to Toronto that month. “I honestly had never met anyone like David in my life,” Ms. Aquino said. “I thought it would be stupid of me to not even try to make it work.”

To help her feel safe in advance of what would become a three-week stay in Canada, Dr. Poon pre-emptively sent her a clean police record check. She appreciated that: “I was an avid crime documentary fan. I didn’t want to end up featured on ‘60 Minutes.’”

While Dr. Poon worked those three weeks, she cleaned his untidy apartment — her way of showing affection, she said — and got to know the city. At night, he brought her Filipino fast food, which she couldn’t get in Ireland. “That was really sweet, and it definitely solidified my feelings for David,” she said.

But it would take them several more months of traveling between the two countries to exchange I love you’s. They had been a couple a little more than a year when the World Health Organization made its pandemic announcement.

The scene at the airport when Ms. Aquino arrived for the foiled April 2020 visit left her terrified. She said an agent had accused her of lying about clearing the visit through organizations including the Canadian embassy. After her passport was confiscated, she was escorted through the terminal.

She was heartsick. “People were dying, and we didn’t know when we would see each other again,” she said.

It ended up being that month. Ireland’s 2020 border laws were less restrictive than Canada’s. While the world adjusted to its new reality, he stayed with Ms. Aquino and her family for three months, the maximum Ireland then allowed.

Faces of Advocacy was already finding supporters online. Separation stories were pouring in: A pregnant Canadian woman married to an American man couldn’t get clearance for her husband to be with her when she gave birth. The British fiancé of a woman being treated for cancer in Canada wasn’t able to be at her bedside to comfort her. A Canadian mother had to say goodbye to her American children via FaceTime as she died in a hospital from liver failure.

Given the gravity of these situations, “It was quickly apparent that AJ and I were not the story,” Dr. Poon said.

By the fall of 2020, Faces of Advocacy had 10,000 members, and Dr. Poon had spoken at a parliamentary news conference at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and was booking TV interviews. “We had a simple message,” he said. “We are not asking for open borders. We are just asking to be together.”

In October, Canada started allowing what became known as “extended family and compassionate exemptions” into the country. “That was our victory,” he said.

On May 23, 2023, he proposed to Ms. Aquino at their Toronto condominium. She had moved to Toronto a year earlier and became a permanent resident in January.

On Aug. 4, Dr. Poon and Ms. Aquino were married at the Toronto Reference Library. Virginia Ceni, an officiant through the Registrar General of the Province of Ontario, conducted a simple ceremony for 60 guests.

Ms. Aquino wore a long white dress she bought on sale at lulus.com. Dr. Poon wore a green suit, also on sale, that he shopped for at Kensington Market. “Our vows were quiet, personal and only shared with each other,” Dr. Poon said. “We wanted it to be intimate, nothing showy at all,” Ms. Aquino added.

That is not to say they didn’t celebrate. After they were pronounced married, the couple welcomed 140 friends and family members for a karaoke reception at the library. Many had crossed the border to be there.

To kick off the party, the couple sang a duet of what they consider their song, “Summer Sunshine,” by the Irish band the Corrs. Afterward, they formed a quartet with their mothers to sing “The Twist” by Chubby Checker.

The twists they had endured to be together seemed behind them, finally. “Marrying AJ felt incredible,” Dr. Poon said. “It was the capstone of a challenging and fulfilling journey. It represented everything we had to do to never give up.”