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Tripping home

My last week in Japan was plagued by the curse of possibility. I could not sleep and spent my waking hours online looking up odds of survival and treatment options. Then I sent out a desperate plea for Toru to come and save me and he answered. We should all be blessed with friends so sweet. My most tender friend accompanied me while I ran errands, walked my daughter home from school and sat with me patiently while I battled with worry. I had to walk away quickly at the train station when it was time to separate myself from him, fast enough to duck behind the corner of a building before the tears started to flow.

The fight over the Pacific was long and torturously uncomfortable, as expected. Kiomye did well. She slept soundly with her feet jabbed into my waist, her heavy head on my arm and all my blankets piled over her. As we disembarked in Seattle, the woman who had been sitting in front of us on the plane complimented Kiomye on her poised travel demeanor. Of course, I thought, my daughter is always good. (Even when she’s not.)

The evening after our return, I borrowed my mother’s car and drove into town to buy familiar toiletries and catch a moment of solitude. In the scant year since my last visit, large developments have spring up – strip malls and box stores. I soaked in every change with wide attentive eyes. The sun was setting and creating a bright Maxfield Parrish sunset for my mother’s clunky Oldsmobile to roll beneath, obtaining painted grace.

I had anticipated some sort of moment of clarity upon return to my homeland – as if contact with the soil of my land of origin would spark some magnetic impulse or synapses whose latent activity has been responsible for my lack of direction. No such luck. Still lost as ever.

Attempting to close off possibilities, I visited the doctor that delivered my child four years ago. He told me not to fear, his authority resting on the quick sweep of his eyes over my body. I have no answers for your questions, he said, but I don’t like to see those worry lines on your face. He was no help at all.

I slept two nights in my mother’s house. Spent two more walking between my bedroom and the dining room, the dining room and the backyard, the backyard and my bedroom, trying to find where my sleep was hiding.

When we drove into Seattle, Kiomye shouted with joy. There it is! She yelled - gesturing at the tall buildings and sparkling bay filled with tilting sailboat. We drove in circles. I pointed out the sights to my daughter. There is my old high school. That is the drive-in where I had my first job and met your father. There is the hill I used to run up with my red-haired track coach. She oohed and ahhed appropriately. It all feels unreal to me, as if watching a movie. I am not really here; I am simply playing back an old reel from my past. If we stop the car and go over to the store where I used to buy my notebooks and give the front a good shove, it will fall over like a fake-plywood stage prop. I am certain of it.

We landed at my father’s house. There he was, not at all older, with a dog beside him that looks the exact same, but is not the exact same as the one from a year ago. (People aren’t the only ones that get cancer. We are just more difficult to replace.) My stepmother offered me doting concerned sweetness that melted my heart and I knew instantly that I had found a safe place for my daughter to stay while I went to find my friend.

Christy. It isn’t until she was standing before me, all energy and smiles and bounce, that I finally felt if I have come home. I let out a long deep breath and wanted to wrap my arms around her and cry for a day, but instead I flipped back my hair, told her how great she looks and reclaimed my rightful place in the passenger seat in her car.

It was block party night in Seattle. We ate a mix of foods donated by neighbors and sat on plastic lawn chairs in the middle of the street while a sweet young crooner sang his Seattle songs and strummed his guitar. Christy’s husband is gorgeously delicious like a piece of butterscotch candy and smiles sweet and sublime whenever Christy floats into his view. Nevertheless, I stole her away and we sat somewhere dark where I could sip red wine and marvel at the woman she has become.

Today my daughter was reunited with her father. I find myself alone and unencumbered. Totally discombobulated. What do I do with myself? I can’t quite shake the feeling that I am missing something, like my keys or my cell phone, but really it’s my daughter whose existence I keep trying to reassure myself of. So I do what I did when I was 17 and feeling lost in the world. I retreat to my old coffee shop, the one with the upstairs loft and the creaky wooden floors. The name has changed and it is much cleaner and swankier now than I remember, but the feeling of sanctuary is the same. Yes, sometimes it is good to be home.

I will spend the rest of my fortuitous free time today searching out the perfect book of Baudelaire for the man I’ve never actually met. Maybe then he’ll forgive me my absorption in my life. Please.

posted by Scribbler @ Thursday, August 03, 2006