Little By Little

Miwa has come to live with us. She is a long-time friend spanning two continents and ten years. We were starting to struggle with Tom and the loss of sleep and the state of the school. So we are are so grateful just to have her around.

The World Cup grows closer with the Socceroos opener against Japan. This puts me in a beautiful quandry - living in Japan and barracking for the opponent. Its hard to say how that game will go. I think, very close.

Funny Japan; Nadia was at our local community language centre. A woman noticed that a tiny part of Tom's belly was showing (the weather was warm) and started saying 'damme damme'! You must cover it! Later we noticed (once again) children unseatbelted in moving cars! Strange priorities.

Thoughts from abroad....

I won't pretend that the past two weeks haven't been difficult. The thought has crossed my mind more than once that we have bitten off more than we could chew, as having a new born baby is quite a big ask in these circumstances. Perhaps in any circumstances.

Japan always strikes me as a place of extremes. Extraordinary kindness and strangeness in equal measure. In the past week there has been yet another violent crime against a child - a boy found dead not far from his village home in Akita Prefecture. A girl was found dead only a fortnight earlier in not dissimilar circumstances in the same town, but the police (as usual) failed to detect foul play. Now they can see a connection. Such is hindsight!

As for kindness, well, it abounds. A friend has planted a vegetable garden for us. Tonight we went to our dear friend Shu's house for dinner. No ceremony, no fuss. Just a Japanese family at home on a Sunday night. Boy, I love that!

Week 3 begins tomorrow. I hope that I can report greater stamina for the struggle ahead in my next post. I want to be a better husband and father. Really.

Arrivals

From our bedroom window, a towerblock in Flowertown looks like a castle at night. The whole structure has been scaffolded and meshed-in(for painting) so that the apartment lights are muted. The roof appears as if turreted. So lying on my bed, its not hard to imagine the tortuous treck to the dark castle on the hill. The grave porter.

The school has far too few students now to survive for any great length of time. It has disappointing to see the names of so many favourites crossed out in the roll. I guess we have a few months to turn things around, at best. I know we can, even if the competition is fierce.

Tom made the trip effortlessly, hardly crying or even lifting his head. He has cried quite a lot since though, perhaps in compensation. Journeys are not easy for me. I think I'm a perpetual creature of habit, disliking change where it takes me from the comfort zone. But I do like coming here. Everything is familiar - the house, the car, our cups and bed.

That vase.

Bon Voyage

Well my last entry from this hemisphere for a year or so. Tomorrow we head back to Japan for what promises to be a far more challenging time. I think it will be tough sometimes, but doesn't that make a better person of one, in the end.

Tom has taken to crying a lot during the day, sometimes for reasons quite beyond our ken. He's a lovely boy but it's all so life changing. We think his ears are poking out a little more today. Bodies are strange things, ne?

Leaving autumn
we slide across invisibilities,
finding the seat warm

A Prayer For Sophie

About two years ago a three year old, Sophie, was the victim of a bizarre car accident in which a motorist drove into a child car centre. She was severely burned, but, with huge courage and many operations, recovered. Today, shockingly, she was thrown 18 metres while crossing a road in her wheelchair. She is in critical condition, on life support.

I have read many prayers for her and confessions of anguish and disbelief that such fury can twice strike such an innocent. I don't have any words to sum up my feelings.

Only this prayer.

Dear Sophie

Twice you have been unfairly struck down through no fault of your own. Once you were burnt, now you are crushed. I am sad for you and grieve for you. But I am helpless to act. We are all disconsolate.

May God bless you. May He whisper kind words, soothing words to you. May His hand be upon you. May He support your body. May He replenish your spirit. May He help you to fight once again. May He carry you up this steep hill. May He touch you with love, His boundless,luminous love.

May Jesus hear this prayer

Amen.

La Plus Change......

On Monday we leave for another year in Japan. I usually love these returns, but this time the assignment is somewhat tougher. We have a new baby. We are tired. The school is struggling to keep its head above the proverbial. I find that my usual limitless energy is flagging. So too the sunny outlook.

On the other hand, every change to circumstances presents another opportunity somewhere. Somehow. It will be struggle to be alert and on-task after a sleepless night. On the other hand the very act of raising a family in a foreign land presents, perhaps, endless possibilities for moving ahead with life.

What a strange project life is! So planned yet utterly unplanned. We set our sights on certainties that we have no right to, their very solidity blasted away by the first setback or shock or disaster. And the funny thing is, everything is in some way foreseeable, not clairvoyantly, but logically. Of course people must die, even those close to us! Some will die bizarely, unfairly. Yes, that's always been the case. Fortunes are made and lost on hardwork or bad luck or just plain stupidity. We all get sick at some stage, some worse than others. People lie to us or talk behind our backs. Why does it come as such a surprise? Why should the intrusion of personal fate be so startling? How is it we exclude ourselves from inevitability of suffering until it actually claims us?

Do I have any idea? Not at all. Perhaps that the meaning of religion, in its most pure sense. To make some sense.