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no 18

Have you accidentally looked into the sun or bright light, and then looked away, the image burned into your eyelids? That’s an afterimage.

I’m back at work this week after a month away. As I climbed into bed last night, I noticed how happy I was about my summer. This might be the best summer of my adult life.

Here's what I saw, heard, or sensed that has stayed with me in the past week. I'm adding a section: Out of Curiosity. There’s one last story about Hawaii this week. I'm ready to put it past me, and you won’t hear about it again.

Let’s begin.

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What You See: Sameness

What I felt: Difference

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Two photos that appear so alike couldn’t be so different.

Your eyes won’t catch the temperature difference in the two photos. I live in Sapporo, the only city in the world with more than a million people that receives more than five meters of snow every year. It’s early August, but my body clocks mid-September temperatures for Tokyo or New York.

Yesterday, I made it out to the water, a quiet beach on the other side of the mountains, ninety minutes from home. I wanted to see whether I was ready to make peace with my experience in Kauai.

I parked my car and walked toward the shoreline. Feeling the cold water on my feet felt cleansing. My mind wandered to the afternoon in Kauai and realized I'd skipped two important personal rituals before venturing into the water. One was collecting trash (there was none). The other was prayer.

I offered one silently before I waded in, neck deep.

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Out of Curiosity: Dating, Desire, and Desirability

I downloaded a couple of dating apps, curious to see what prospects look like for a woman shy of fifty in Japan and how the apps have changed during the pandemic.

Since then, I have often thought about Desire and Desirability and their roles in our lives.

Learning to discern between Desire and Desirability, to continue tuning into my Desire, and to keep practicing has given me a more grounded experience through the more unpredictable areas of my life.

Here's a short essay on Desire and Desirability, how they're relevant to the way we shape our careers, and an exercise for you to explore: Dating, Desire, and Desirability (and how it relates to work).

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Message from My Body: I am an Immigrant

About My Best Summer Ever. Yes, I reconnected with family in the most picturesque corners of the Hawaiian islands. Time in Tokyo. I got to travel and still be home to pick the cherries and harvest the hydrangea, thyme, basil, and chili peppers. We received our first overnight guests in our new home. I had ample time to recover from the accident and the long-haul flight without worrying about work.

Past summers were spent moving countries, moving homes, ending a relationship, being separated from my daughter due to COVID, being reunited with her in a city new to both of us, setting up a new home, starting a new relationship, rushing to meet my long-distance partner in mid-pandemic desperation, getting my nostrils jabbed eight time with long cotton swabs for it, taking care of two households and an unwell parent.

This summer, I had no one to answer or please except myself.

After a lifetime of morphing and losing myself to accommodate others and being the good daughter of generations of women who did the same before me, I’m seeing for the first time how taking care of myself takes care of everyone.

I’m a new immigrant. I’ve departed from the generations of women in my family before me who've mistaken humility for undervaluing herself. Like so many immigrants, my hope for my daughter is that she'll be empowered by the new choices available to her, be carried by resilience and creativity our mothers before us lovingly carried forward to us, and be fulfilled in her dreams as a first-generation daughter.

We stand anew in this new terrain of possibility.

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