Skip to main content

The Present

I'm at the dining table doing some writing and sipping red wine. Eri's getting ready to go to bed. She turns back to me and takes a breath and is about to say something, but then just looks at me for a beat.

"Nevermind. It's your birthday."

I sleep with the windows open in our bedroom. On these dog day summer nights Eri bunks with the boys so she can enjoy the air conditioner.

Last night with Kenzo gone at Friends Club summer camp it was just Eri and Osamu, who appropriated the top bunk in his big brother's absence.


A relatively quiet morning. It was weird. Osamu said he missed Kenzo, but he was also living it up being the full center of attention.


He also made a cool 30 yen helping me wash the car inside and out in the hot morning sun.


He loves using the hose. Who doesn't.


When Kenzo got off that bus from camp in a tie-dye T-shirt he made, it made my day. He went swimming, ate curry rice, had ice cream, played games, and best of all his lizards lived through it and made it home safe.


Osamu and I went shopping for meat in our jinbei, turning a bunch of heads along the way. When we got back it was miller time. Eri bought me some cans of delicious local craft beer.


Eri reminded me to get clams. Good lord with soy sauce and butter over the open flames... amazing.



The boys wolf down sausages and chicken, but they're still kinda wimpy about chewing on beef and pork. 


I told Kenzo I'd pay him 20 yen if he ran in the house and grabbed me a beer. Eri told me Osamu toiled all morning in the heat washing the car and got 30 yen so 20 yen for grabbing papa a beer is a bit much. I mumbled something about supply and demand and moved on. She's probably right.


Eri's complaints about me are totally valid. I should go to bed and wake up a little earlier and I should try to be a little more mindful of the boys' mischief around the house.

She's getting ready to go to bed and she takes a breath and is about to say something.

But suddenly she changes gears and looks at me like I got lost while using the car GPS. 

"Nevermind. It's your birthday."

I was like, "Wow, that might be the present I ever got."

She told me to cherish it, and we both laughed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

lookin tired/feelin good

I can't even read the clock right. Eri: "You're going to soccer, right? Aren't you a bit early?" Me: "Yeah! We usually leave at this time and get there right on time. We gotta go! Let's go guys!" Soccer club starts at 10 a.m. The boys know that when the long hand on the clock gets to the 8 (9:40) it's time to go to the bathroom and get our socks and shoes on and head down to the car. The big hand was on 8. The problem that Eri saw was the short hand. It was 8:40, not 9:40. I'm going nuts. Slowly . Rapidly. An hour later, after I slowly enjoyed my coffee and disposed of the last beetle (yes, all four beetles have now gone back to the earth) and cleaned his bug box to make room for new bug acquisitions and the boys chilled out on the sofa watching TV, we set off. While the boys played soccer I headed across the parking lot to grab them some juice boxes for a job well done. This is not standard procedure, but Kenzo made his comeback today after ...
1 comment
Read more

Experiences I Will Never Know About

Eri and I were checking out one of Kenzo's school notebooks tonight. This page has so much going on, and I love all of it. It made me realize something that I can easily forget - he's a person. He has a life separate from mine, lives each day having experiences that I will never know about, and has thoughts and ideas that I can't nor should get in the way of. "Thank you for doing everything," she said. Eri walked with me this morning as I went around the neighborhood and delivered planter box maintenance information and schedules to various folks.  We stopped at the first house and I rang the doorbell and handed the old lady the three-page information sheet I had made and copied and we exchanged greetings and then I realized this is going to take forever if I ring every single person’s doorbell and chit-chat with them. I’ve got 20+ more of these to hand out.  So we started just sticking them in people's mailboxes and made better time. Most folks aren’t home an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Certain Luxuries

I work from home. My office is in Osamu's future bedroom, though he doesn't know it yet. At some point a few years down the line he will probably start to yearn for his own space. For the time being he and Kenzo share the room next door and sleep in a bunk bed and have a grand time playing, roughhousing, and quarreling. As brothers are prone to do. I started the day with a two-hour meeting with an esteemed co-worker who is based in a city far away. He manages a team associated with mine, and I value our developing relationship. We're both in management positions where people depend on us, and for my part as a relatively new manager I respect and try as often as possible to seek out his advice and perspectives.  We're very different, though. We dance around the topic, but it's pretty clear that one of our differences is that I embrace ambiguity and he does not. I think that it's okay if meetings don't end with a clear solution, as long as the relationship be...
Post a Comment
Read more