Time. 時間 or “jikan”.
I was MIA for the majority of the month of February because my mom visited for two weeks, my friend Tom for one, and I had back to back shifts alternately dancing my ass off and practicing my honorific Japanese. On days I didn’t have work, or when I wasn’t playing tour guide, I was either sleeping in late or dancing til dawn. Both practices achieve the same result – not facing reality. A windowless club, with its pulsing throngs, throbbing bass, and shimmering glass helps you forget that there’s a world outside, with responsibilities and people to face, in the same way that the curtains of your eyelids let you hide behind vivid dreams, ambient music, and pitch black. Maybe it was the weather – Tokyo gets dark around five, the wind whips relentlessly, especially in the tunnels created between the cold, towering buildings. Maybe it was the realization of time running out. Maybe it was my credit card bill. Probably all of those things, in cahoots with the chemicals in my brain. Whatever it was, I want you to know, depression happens, even when you’re having the time of your life.
And I have had the time of my life.
Mommy
My mom came on her birthday, February 2nd and stayed until the 16th. Due to both felicitous and dastardly acts of happenstance, we spent more time together than intended. We had moments of frustration, one such in which I collapsed upon my luggage in the middle of Tokyo Station, bawling my eyes out and cursing the entire staff of Japan Rail, my mother haplessly patting my shoulder. We had moments of shock, for example watching my 92 year old great aunt climbing a steep hilltop by herself and informing us, “It’s ok, I rode a motorcycle until my eyes went out seven years ago!” We had too many laughs, usually regarding my chibi cousins, aged six and two respectively, who favor copious amounts of fine grade sashimi to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We shared memories, well, more vicariously for me, of the Kansai region, her birthplace, as we traversed up and down the area. But most of all, we had moments together, which was most precious. There were moments, like ones that have occurred sporadically over the past five years, that jolt me to the unsettling realization that your parent is a person, with an identity separate and increasingly restricted from you. My mother is not just family, she’s my best friend, and not in the way that most family members are automatically inducted into the friendship circle, but in the way that, had I met her outside of the womb, I would probably still think she was amazing and want to hang out with her.
I cried when I said goodbye to Kelley in Shibuya Station. When that smile, you know the mournful smile of memories flooding back and the realization of distance, crept up on my face, she sharply turned away, “Ok, bye!” I feel like I left my long-lost, long-longed-for sister behind.
The second time: Sera and I were talking at the table the morning I left. She folded my clothes for in this way, in this loving way that one would imagine four months could not produce.
I got on the plane satisfied. My time was up.
