Milestones

I had never seen snow until the morning I arrived in Japan. Narita was freezing as I walked out of the terminal, all my worldly possessions in two carrier bags. I stood on the curb waiting for the bus, hoping I was in the right place. Conversations hummed around me, but I didn't know what they said. Signs and timetables, posters and advertising, all in words I could not read. I was alone, thousands of miles from the home I had left behind, unable to speak, unable to understand, illiterate. The Japanese gentleman beside me looked at me askance as I began to laugh. The adventure had begun.

Today I sat in my studio trimming dinner plates. Mika sat beside the wheel bench, in the warmth of the wood stove. We were talking about the four children, about ideas for a new studio, making puns, just talking about a myriad of things while I worked. We were talking in Japanese. Just as I began chattering the foot of the plate Sean came bouncing into the studio saying something of world shattering importance, as all things uttered by four year olds invariably are. Unfortunately we could not hear a word he said because of the chattering tool, but as I lifted the tool and quite descended, he rushed off to save the world, and we will never know what he said. I started to laugh, and Mika laughed with me.

The young man who stood laughing in the snow on January 21st, 1990 is still here inside me, somewhere, 20 years later. He is, however, no longer alone. The adventure continues.......