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Everything

Late in the afternoon I went downstairs to refill my water and Eri was taking refuge in the back of the kitchen with a little sparkling wine. 

"The boys are sooooo hyper," she murmurs to me.

They were. They are. Every day. It's always like Daffy Duck and the Tasmanian Devil are loose in our living room and they're trying to pin each other down but every time one of them gains an advantage the other one wriggles out of that piece of clothing and escapes and the woohoo woohoo carnival continues. 

Kenzo is on flu quarantine and there was a bear spotting at Osamu's kindergarten this morning so they closed everything.

"It's a blessing," I said.


Eri glared at me, as she does. Often. She gets how I am but she can't relate to it. I'm that way with her too so we're even. "A blessing..." she trailed off. "I've never heard you say something is a blessing before."


I thought for a second and I said, "Yeah, I guess you're right. I don't know where that came from. And it's the most authentic thing you're gonna hear from me all day."

I can't think of anything more joyous, fortunate, and yes blessed, than being dad and mom in a warm house on a snowy day with two healthy little boys energetically running amok and laughing and arguing and bumping and tumbling and occasionally crying and yelling I hate you and then all of that over and over until they collapse. 


It’s chaos, and I also see it as life in its purest form.

There was a time when I thought life would always stretch out ahead of me, endless and guaranteed. We all have that to a certain extent I think. But I’ve died a few times... metaphorically, emotionally... enough to know better. Loss, hardship, and grief have a way of stripping away illusions, of making you see how fragile it all is. I can’t afford to waste time being angry, to let resentment or regret steal what’s left. I know now that real life isn’t in the quiet, predictable moments. It’s in the noise, the exhaustion, the relentless motion of it all.

When the boys are crashing into furniture, shrieking with laughter one second and sobbing the next, I don’t wish for silence. I don’t wish for an empty house. Because I know, one day, the silence will come whether I want it to or not.


Right now, in this moment, I am alive. And that’s everything.

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