Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Missing Home

Andrew is quite sick and so this morning I took a short walk to the grocery store to get some sports drinks and sherbet.  Winter walks in Cincinnati, like and unlike winter walks any and everywhere else.  The bare trees, the gray sky, terrain I've known my entire life only a little smaller than memory.  I somehow seem to continue to grow bigger than it.  

And along the way I met other early morning people.  A man doing Tai Chi in the woods, a person walking, someone taking care of the abandoned grocery store carts on the path.  Some things are still in Japan, how to say "Good morning,"  and what side of the path I should walk along.  But they easily come back and there is something so comforting about saying "Good morning," to another in English.  Those are my words.

Last night I had a dream about remembering Japan.  Driving in America, navigating a car through the streets while remembering the trains of Japan that take one so effortlessly where one needs to go.  The ease of moving and living, the peacefulness of it.  Perhaps a few days home I'm missing Japan in some ways.  And yet still, it is so comforting to be surrounded by familiarity, where the basic social interactions are natural and known.

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