Athletics Day (運動会)

Yesterday was Undoukai, or Athletics Day, for the kindergarten. They practiced for weeks in preparation and every family prepared obentos for picnic lunches. The rain held off and it was a really fun day. I had a flash of realization when I began to sigh from the relief that I had finished getting everything ready for the day, that this was not the last Undoukai that I would have to prepare for. No, rather I saw them lined up for years to come, taking into account that we have three children all three years apart. So I better learn to make the most of it.
If you want to see the race frame by frame (I didn't have the video camera yesterday), look:

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Don't worry, the kids that fell weren't hurt. They both got up and finished the race as everyone shouted "Ganbatte!" ("Do your best!").

Rumors about My Dad

According to my brother, my father can play the guitar
According to his brother, my father was the best
billiards player in the county
According to his mother, my father was a certified genius

My father played baseball all throughout his youth,
He was a pitcher, a hitter, a third baseman
My father was a vegetarian before he knew the word for it,
He ate cold tins of baked beans while his mother made bacon and
sausage for the rest of her sons

My father is legendary
My father will deny everything

Here are some things that I know to be true:
He has a chocolate birthmark under his right elbow and
looked for a similar mark on each one of my sons

If he was supposed to pick me up after school, seventy-five
percent of the time he would drive home then remember and go back
to get me

He used to get up at four o’clock every morning to paint in the quiet hours

When my mom isn’t around, he’ll call her cute

He read Jane Austen with such devotion that I felt compelled to do the same

He loved his own father very much and once told me how my grandfather lifted a car so that my uncle wouldn’t be crushed under it with such admiration in his voice that even though I never knew my grandfather, I loved him for his strength and bravery

He also told me how my grandfather loved Christmas, something that my dad does as well, putting on Christmas albums long before December

And the most uncontested fact about my father,
sixty six years ago today, he made his way into our world
And it has been a better place because of it

Happy Birthday Dad.

and like that...

i'm thirty.
i woke up and went to the docks to see the sunrise, something i haven't done since i arrived here. the docks were buzzing with people, fishermen and buyers, readying for the auction. in white boxes, the fish flipped and the lobsters attempted escape, scrambling over the sides and onto the wet concrete, the fishermen in fast pursuit.
and later, my birthday books arrived, leaves of grass from sebastian, emerson from nico, and the giant collection of neruda from jason.
we've been to the park, the good one with the roller slide, where one of my (or should i say our) students was there and brought nico into the inner circle of baseball players warming up for saturday games.
there is a chocolate cake waiting and the collection of shells, rocks, flowers, all in sets of thirty, to come.
it is a little bittersweet to say good-bye to my twenties but i am straightening my shoulders and raising my chin, ready for this new segment of my life.
as for a list, i don't think it is necessary. i have things to do, and i will do them. i will have a baby, and move to a big city, i will work on my degree, and also work on my own personal passions: drawing, writing, living with mindfulness, acting compassionately, intentionally.

A Decade in Retrospect

(With birthdays as markers...)
**********10 years ago: I bought a blue and white ski jacket as part of a scheme to travel to Alaska in the coming winter.
*********9 years ago: Returning from a trip to North Carolina with Jason, who I had only known since August.
********8 years ago: We moved back to Jacksonville and painted the walls of our Fenimore apartment white while listening to Bjork's Vespertine
*******7 years ago: Came back from New York and a Belle and Sebastian concert, discovered that Sebastian was growing within me
******6 years ago: Was going to school full-time. Saw Lost in Translation and decided to apply to the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program
*****5 years ago: Living and teaching in Nara, saw a boat slowly circle the torch-lit pond, ate a candied apple
****4 years ago: Struggling with my place in the world, went to Kyoto for the day
***3 years ago: Found ourselves back in Jacksonville, living at the Fenimore again and also pregnant, again
**2 years ago: Working at the university language program, feeling overwhelmed and homesick for Japan, took a late night trip to Georgia to play the big ticket lottery
*1 year ago: Living here in Gotou, ate chocolate cake from the patisserie, did some homework

I am a little sad to see this chapter end but eager to turn the page. It is funny to read this list because I managed some really monumental feats of life at a very young age, without expectation and not too much anxiety. I hope I have the same courage in my thirties, but perhaps tempered with a little rationality. Just a tad though.

Those 29 Things To Do....

This is my list from my birthday last year.
I did quite a few of them. And I did a lot that wasn't on the list.
I think I will recycle a few of these for my 30th birthday list.
I was really ambitious last year. I think this year I will focus on my daily habits. Things I can do, want to do everyday. Like writing and drawing. Like sitting meditation. Shaping my day to day life into a time spent well, spent intentionally.

1. Go to Kyoto check
2. Sew 5 dresses for myself check
3. Become pera-pera in Japanese
4. Read one book entirely in Japanese check
5. Get perfect scores in all my classes
6. Go to the dentist check
7. Vote for Obama check
8. Knit a scarf to completion by winter
9. Make a print block postcard once a month
10. Teach Sebastian how to write
11. Toilet train Nico
12. Do yoga at least twice a week check
13. Join the Japan Association of Language Teachers and attend Nagasaki chapter meetings check
14. Publish at least two pieces of writing
15. Draw more check
16. Go camping at least once check
17. Swim at Takahama Beach check
18. Donate money to Karma Kagyu check
19. Do a litter pick up every other month check
20. Donate to NPR check
21. Up my intake of locally produced food to 75 percent check
22. Keep daily journal of bilingual progress and post online
23. Buy a new Montessori material every month
24. Grow plants indoors and out check
25. Get some furniture check
26. Save 20 percent of income check
27. Go to Fukuoka check
28. Meditate daily
29. Remember to take pictures every day

nico days

there are less than two months until the baby is due to make her appearance. i am busy with school (and procrastinating with my school work) most days and trying to find a balance of kindergarten activities and housekeeping.

and then, of course, there is nico. ferociously sweet nico. i went back to work five months after his birth so these last weeks have been a period of really getting to know my second son. everything is a little slower with nico. his pace and attention to the details along the way make a simple trip to the grocery into an expedition. he's more independent than sebastian and enjoys his space.
he's also more likely to experiment and to make epic disasters in his wake. he cannot be left alone with any sort of writing or drawing material, or a glass of liquid. or rice. or unlocked windows. i know it is part of his process of blooming into his own so i try to give him the space he needs in an environment that is both safe for him and safe for our house.
and blossoming he is. he's already starting to outgrow many of sebastian's hand-me-downs, from last year. (aka, he's wearing size 5 clothes now). he's learning to read along with sebastian.
he enjoys counting cars that pass us and can count all the way into the forties now (on this island, it takes a long time for that many cars to pass us).
he loves his little black kitty (with the missing eyes) and also likes to carry colored pencils with him, as toys. they have very elaborate conversations together.

he's a funny and creative kid, always growing, always trying to catch up with sebastian.
i am grateful for this time to see him by himself.

8 years ago

we had that tuesday off. we slept in, ate a late breakfast, then packed our laundry in the car to head to his parents' house. and of course, npr came on as soon as we started the engine. and this is what we heard.

before we understood what was happening, i remember the shadows of the giant oaks in our neighborhood, i remember laughing about some joke quickly forgotten. i don't remember how we navigated to his parents' house after we grasped what was going on.
even now, i am listening to it (for the first time since it happened) and shaking a little. the disbelief, utter and complete, was enormous. even after we arrived and saw the images over and over on the television, i just couldn't comprehend it. i still can't.