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on of l a my route he sits up and says papa i m going to try to visit you in los angeles inside your brain you can do that how he looks down at his covers for a long time i don t know i can t do it yet he nods as if to assure himself but i m going to figure it out this morning i m in toronto already waiting for my next flight this airport is exactly like all airports on any other day i could imagine that i m anywhere on earth but today there is another layer the pleasure of imagining that these hallways and overpriced restaurants might be the microscopic contours of the inside of my son s foot the scale changes amplifies i smile at the idea that inside my small boy there might be a place this spacious and quiet that there might be so many people with different faces and stories i like that he might be trying to find a way inside himself that inside his mind is where we meet if i were to look up and see boy here in this departure lounge sitting between the two chinese girls across from me i d smile and give him a thumbs up you did it we d get a snack he d play on the moving walkways i d tell him halfheartedly to stop we d watch the planes take off and land against the wide blue sky and i d lean over and tell him you re so big you re bigger even than all of this share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized jul 18 ichi go ichi e posted by tracy franz 0 lately a mere two months away from the one year anniversary of our arrival to nova scotia from japan i ve found myself lifted and carried by a flood of memory maybe it s the change in season new life s surge or reverse culture shock i m due or my undeniably middle aged status 40 or my sporadic engagement with social media an endless yet ephemeral reunion of souls but again and again i ve been feeling that pang of emotion that accompanies vivid remembrance of those who have passed into and out of my life how do we reconcile ourselves to the loss of those we have loved the changed the hardened the dead those separated from us by time and distance and circumstance or by our own flawed choices and habits how do we find peace when this is our terrible and unrelenting reality travelers and expats know this struggle all too well the gain and loss of human connection is a huge part of the territory we are always saying goodbye forever always one time one meeting that old japanese tea ceremony adage is keenly felt constant and constantly jarring of course it is this very experience that contributes to a unique and broadened view one much more difficult to achieve when safe in the comforts of origin and home having children forces this perspective too perhaps at a greater rate and depth i hadn t known that as parents we cannot help but grasp the raw reality of a human life its brief and transient nature frankly i think it is much easier to overlook the arc of our own lives than to ignore that of those who are under our continual watch and care with our children we bear witness each day we meet a new version of our child each day we say goodbye to the child who was it is both joyful and wrenching this microcosm of human experience and yes it can seem overwhelming at times but it has been one of my greatest teachers there is no peace when it comes to abiding the impermanence of our bonds with others not in that blissful light happy sense of the word anyway there is just acceptance of what is and what will never be again we are grateful for what we have this moment we mourn what we have lost all those moments that came before there is no neat separation between the positive and negative because this is truth complex and blindingly simple on those days that i feel the loss most deeply as a traveler or as a mother or as a human of 40 years my reconciliation is in practice in simply being present at the center of a vast river of encounter this deluge of memory all i have known and loved in every moment i meet your past present and future selves the many versions of you i hold you in my mind in a wordless embrace there is nothing to say my heart is breaking i am grateful i am share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized jun 10 night sickness posted by koun 6 the week of norovirus when we all took turns being hooked up to ivs you never forget the first time that someone just throws up all over you until a few years ago i would have taken this statement as true not universal of course i know that some people experienced college for example in messy and hard to piece together ways still the gag reflex is a powerful way of marking time i know it was boy but i no longer know when a few nights when he was 1 year old all run together for me we would wake to a horrible sound from his room something far beyond coughing and find him sitting up in his crib in the dark just vomiting all over himself eyes asking us what is going on one of us would scoop him up trying to calm him down and get him out of his pajamas and the other would start the hurried and mechanical process of searching for towels changing sheets just trying to put things in order on a good night it happened only once on a rough one it might go until morning he made his way down the list of stomach bugs as if it was a matter of pride in each case a doctor the next day was able to cheerfully point to a chart and show us that this was just another completely routine event in the life of a small person but no matter how many times a 1 year old throws up it still doesn t make any sense to him his little body is suddenly and violently completely outside of his control he s being turned inside out probably following minutes or hours of nausea and having no way of communicating it to the only people who might be able to help even for me as an adult there is no worse feeling it s debilitating it reduces us to the most powerless versions of ourselves boy is 5 now and this nighttime scene is a thing of the distant past girl never had these problems even when she was sick they ve both passed that age of being constantly ill and if they do feel sick they understand what s happening and can go hover over the open toilet like the rest of us do it s a strange ritual to see played out by someone not even three feet tall i m happy for them and for us when i see them do it it s so clean all of this is a long way of pointing to the memory of those sick nights of the moment just after we d find him retching in his crib in every telling i probably hesitate there s always that pause as my eyes adjust to the dark and take in what is happening verifying that it s already too late to make any of it ok i reach down into the crib to my tiny vomit covered boy who is trying to cry but can t because his body is too busy doing something else and he reaches back up to me and i hold him close in the dark as he just barfs all over me over and over limp and convulsing and confused intimacy is such a beautiful word and i use it often when i speak of beautiful buddhist teachings but the image in my head is of this encounter of my hand against his heaving back and the hot slow avalanche running down and into my shirt the trust and the fear in his little grabbing hands and later after he falls back asleep in new pajamas and new sheets me standing outside the house at 3am with a hose in one hand to wash everything off waving with the other hand to make the motion sensitive light stay on long enough to get the job done strangely awake in the jarring rare clarity of knowing there is really nothing more to be done than this share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized apr 24 a small matter of consequence posted by tracy franz 1 he looks so familiar i think a man in his 30s probably an immigrant from china angry and talking to himself as he strides down the sidewalk toward me and away from the scene of another man also in his 30s but with a dirty blond beard driving a bright yellow snowplow violently against a massive mountain of snow i say china because after ten years in japan i ve developed an ear for asian languages i say violently because the driver is jerking the machine powerfully back and forth to clear the evidence of two days worth of nova scotia storm when the driver sees me a white woman 40 in a fashionable coat walking toward him with a young boy in tow he immediately stops and backs his vehicle out of our path i am grateful for the chance to pass because we are late collecting my daughter from the daycare down the street then i see the bus stop and also the bus pulling away from it and i understand that the courtesy offered to us was most likely given by a man who a few minutes earlier had denied it to someone else with my son s hand in mine i stop and turn to see in the distance the man who looks so much like a neighbor and old friend in japan his name on the tip of my tongue still walking stiffly angrily toward the next accessible bus stop down the road the other man the plow driver now again assaulting snow continues to clear a path and build a barrier simultaneously boy says has been saying over and over again the whole while mama mama look that snowplow is so big and strong i think i m late i ll say something when we come back this way just something so that he will know that i know the words will come to me as i walk but then i don t think of it again we went home a different way after all until much later when i am tucking boy into bed asking about the quality of his day and thinking back on mine wondering how i could have forgotten that terrible detail that small errand of conscience as i am about to leave his room boy asks in spring when the snow is all gone can i ride my bike and this reminds me of a moment in kumamoto standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change when a man hit me from behind with his bicycle the force knocking me into oncoming traffic and him yelling bakana gaijin then the woman with long black hair leaping after me and screaming abunai abunai she pulled me back that reflex of human kindness to the safety of the sidewalk as the man continued to call me names but notably angled away from us down a different path shamed by the woman s pure action but that moment next to the bus stop how could i have known for sure for certain and am i a better or worse mother for not having said or done anything is writing this now enough and what of the boy who was standing next to me in the snow awed by the raw power of the machine and by extension the man inside it mama mama look it s so strong my son what kind of man will he become share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized apr 01 comfort food posted by tracy franz 1 when i told a friend a fellow american that our family was moving to canada from japan she exclaimed immediately oh they have a kind of cookie there that i like very much this amused me and then i thought later that this is also how i most often recall places i have been but do not know well in england a savory pastry that you can eat with your hands as you walk through the park trailing crumbs for gray pigeons in france pungent red wine legally sipped from a glass in a restaurant when i was barely 12 years old in mexico cheese curds soft and fresh and salty in thailand a coconut curry for boy and girl for the distant place they have been but do not know well it has always been in america big pizza in fact this became a saying for us about all things large as in as big as an american pizza and so later when koun and i explained that it was not america but canada that we were moving home to for some reason our kids began to talk about canada as the place with the pizza in this way our kids created context for a change that was probably otherwise unimaginable a certain comfort taken in the recollection of a massive circle of dough and tomato sauce and cheese consumed in san francisco some months earlier it must be this connection food memory that causes for many expats that pervasive discomfort that longing for the food of the well known place for years and years in japan it was my mother s rhubarb pie that i craved most of all red stalks from an alaskan garden in late summer ample sugar to temper the tartness the buttery pastry shell holding it together when i finally came to think of japanese food as the familiar i still craved the pie that when eaten on trips stateside always prompted me to say the thing that i first thought an error in translation in japan it s sweet but good i could not stand more than a few bites my palate had changed become accented but my longing had not since moving to nova scotia six months ago i can find nothing in our new home that tastes quite like what i really really want to eat obviously part of this is that the local cuisine is different as are the typical grocery store offerings there is also the overarching fact that i am no longer drawn to those original comfort foods the muted flavors of the large carb centered meals of north america but there is something else there too that i can t quite put my finger on a flawed memory drawn from a flawed flavor and so every meal is tinged with a kind of dissatisfaction good yes but not quite what i had in mind i often felt this in japan too it s my personal ongoing samsara perhaps an obvious consequence of always being out of context meanwhile boy and girl both of whom know the food of japan to be normal seem to be reasonably satisfied with their somewhat revised diet perhaps especially the canadian pizza sometimes i think because of their youth they are simply cultural chameleons taking on the flavor of whatever place they inhabit and so my simple theories o...
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