At the seashore

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining one,
a suggestion of fishes and ships
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

-Pablo Neruda-

This I can say, we do need the sea.




As our fate unravels only to get tangled into tiresome knots, as all the petty facts of life clamber and claw over us, we need the sea to remind us of the truth. The waves do not knock down our fears or draw away our problems with the tide. We gain something greater, the reminder that we are but tiny phytoplankton with the life expectancy of just a few days.
That truth is incredibly liberating. With our perspective straightened, we are free to work on those knots and stand up under the weight of our nagging concerns.

The Graduate

With much ado and fanfare, this boy graduated from kindergarten last week. Two years vanished in a poof and now here we are with a genki, semi-literate, functionally bilingual Nicolai. Japanese kindergarten is not for the faint of heart. In which I mean lazy. It is a full-time job keeping up with all the events and activities that go on in a regular school year and before you know it, your kid is bowing to his sensei and singing sayonara to kindergarten. Literally...



We were lucky to be able to send both of the boys to private kindergartens, both valuing that critical stage of childhood by creating an environment that encouraged creativity, cooperation, and social awareness. Academic prowess is not central in the Japanese kindergarten; it is more about cultivating experiences that the child can carry with them through life. Sebastian's kindergarten followed a Piaget approach, granting the children lots of freedom and space for discovery. Nico's kindergarten was a Buddhist school so regular lessons in manners, sensitivity, and compassion were taught in the week.




All in all, it has been a very wonderful experience for our family and I know Nicolai is ready to start school in April. We'll have a year off from kindergarten until Colette starts (we like them to have 4 years at home in English) which will be a good chance to catch up on other aspects of our life.
Then we'll be ready to start round three.

It will be hard at first to get used to this guy being a first grader.

Year of the Snake

Words.
I am experiencing a drought of words.

Or, perhaps, it is not for lack of words to string together.
Perhaps it is just that I have yet to successfully saddle and mount time. There is a bridle in place but my hands are caught and twisted in the reins. I'm being dragged around by a beastly stallion and I don't even have the sense to complain.
Is it a poor excuse? Perhaps.

It has almost been one year since I left teaching full-time. I never knew before how very short a year could be.

It has been two years since the disaster in Northern Japan. Two years since a tsunami washed away thousands of lives and my misconceptions of what I wanted in life.

I haven't been writing here because I have been busy elsewhere but without any tangible results to share. I know that this space is more of a process bulletin board but for my own idea of this online record of events, I would like to try and reach my own bizarre standards. Unfortunately, this means that I try to write here when the computer is free (unusual) and when my mind is clear (unlikely). Essentially impossible conditions in a small apartment crowded with littles.

The first post after an extended break is always the hardest. What do I tell and how much of it should I share?

Maybe if I break it into bite-sized bullet points then it will be simpler:

-Nico is graduating from kindergarten on Friday.
-Nico is starting elementary school in April.
-Sebastian will be a fourth grader.
-From April, I will teach part-time, Jason will teach part-time.
-I started a resin jewelry Etsy shop.
-We don't know how everything will work out.
-We don't know where we will end up. Everywhere is lovely and awful. We can no longer search outside of ourselves for utopia.
- I've been obsessed with this idea of Huxley's: "Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
-I cried watching this movie.
-Luca is a full-fledged walker who loves rice and vegetables. He also weighs almost 29 pounds.
-I am not reaching my writing quota. Getting the shop running has taken over all spare minutes. And there were not so many to begin with so I had to make some up. Like the minutes that fall after midnight.
-Jason bought a suit today and was highly disgruntled about it.
-The cherry blossoms will bloom soon. Again.

So, maybe that is good for now. I'll do my best to post at least twice a week from here on. For my own crazy standards, not for you, patient reader. I know that if you are reading this now, you're ready to wait me out.

xoxo

Thoughts of Transition

Now, it is the pleasure of my everyday chores, the warm sunshine of Spring, the songbirds, the children laughing during their recess in the schoolyard next-door.
My heart is ripe with gratitude. How lucky I am to be here, right now.

I want to chronicle the stars and air and sounds for Luca, the setting of his first chapter. Most important, I want to remember this sweet period right before he joins us so that later (perhaps when he is sixteen and pimply, sneaking cigarettes and breaking curfew) I will have something luxurious and soft to pull from my battered mothering box, a cloak to wrap around my sweet boy and protect him from my easy judgments and exasperations.

Every mother has a pile of these memories, perched on the edge of our minds, at the ready.

These quiet, mundane weeks before Luca is born are now ready to be folded and put away. I can feel a shift occurring in my body and mind. Every minute lived is another minute closer to Luca. Soon I will have memories of woven with details that only a parent can savor, like those tiny, tiny fingernails and the way his eyelids will flutter while he is lost in newborn dreams.

The whole family seems to sense the transition. Every morning I wake up surrounded by my children, all of them quietly vying for my attention, even if it is just passive physical contact. They perhaps sense that my attention will stray for a little while, to be focused on a little one instead of homework assignments and skinned knees. The boys are more understanding but I wonder how Colette will respond to this coup. In these days before she loses the Baby crown, I am kissing those sweet cheeks just a little more often, giving her more time to gather her rocks and dig in the sand at the playground. I think she will like the Big Sister crown just as well, though it might fit a little awkwardly at first.

Christmas Part 2

Woke up to white rooftops and it is still snowing...

And look what we found, more presents. The poor postal worker delivered two of the three missing boxes around 8 o'clock last night (keep in mind that the post office is closed on the weekends in Japan). The kids were very excited to have an extension of present opening, particularly Colette who has perfected her wrapping tearing technique to include both her hands and teeth.




All in all, it is still very Christmasy here. Snowy outside and snuggly inside. Pajamas and hot chocolate complete the effect quite nicely.

xoxo