him and me and her

I lived alone for several years, and I lived far from my family for a number of those years. While in Florida, I had my cat Sarge to keep me company, but most of my time in Japan was as a solitaire. After my last roommate and I parted ways, I decided that the only way I would ever live with anybody again was to be married to them.

Marriage was never something I completely ruled out of my life. I didn't want to not get married. I didn't want marry just any man; I wanted to marry the right man. I also would have been okay with cohabitation, but I had the feeling that marriage would make things easier from a legal standpoint, not to mention just for the sake of convenience. But that was really a distraction from the main point, which was that I wanted to be in love with someone before I considered living with them.

Geordie moved in with me at the beginning of February, 2011. Though, really, "moved in" is just a convenient way to put it. It was possible that it was going to be a temporary thing, a place for him to live while he looked for a permanent job and while I looked for a new one. He was temporarily assigned a position in Hitachi, which was far enough away from Moriya for him to be unable to make a daily commute. So, really, he lived with me on the weekends. The rest of the week, I was still alone. We'd seen more of each other when we weren't living together.

Two weeks after he moved in, we found out I was pregnant. We saw no way for him to be able to leave the job he had, so for a month, he was home only on the weekends. I was pregnant alone, and it was tough going. It felt to me that I was becoming more adjusted to the pregnancy than he was, and to be fair, that was probably true. I lived with the pregnancy constantly; for him, it was a weekend thing. He didn't go through the many bodily changes that reminded me of what was happening or the mood swings that shook me into sudden bouts of crying. Or the tiredness - that sheer exhaustion that knocked me out cold. These were oddities to him, things I had to explain again every weekend. That ended with the Tohoku earthquake, the story of which is far too long to tell here and shall be written about at length in November.

Things changed after the earthquake. Geordie came back from Hitachi, and his company sent him to work in Tokyo, which was an unpleasant commute but one that allowed him to come home every day. From then on, I had him every day and every night. We became a daily occurence for each other, and it was during this time, I think, that the pregnancy became a very real thing for him. It was at that point that we became not a unit of two but a unit of three.

It happened faster than I had expected. One month, I was living alone happily enough; the next, I was living with a family - my family. I had thought that would take longer to adjust to, but by the time we moved to Susono, it was done. I was a wife and a mother, carrying a child that would make our little family complete. I was carrying our child, and nothing could have been more right. Everything was as it should be, and I would not have gone back to living alone for anything. I still wouldn't.

Geordie and Lauren and me. We're a family. We always will be. Lauren is a part of us, still loved and cared for. It doesn't matter that she's not physically here with us; she's here in other ways, and we'll carry her with us for the rest of our lives.

Rewind: Japanese Travel Journal: Hanami

[to note: date these pictures back to early April]

Sakura trees get a lot of praise and adulation in Japan, and it's easy to see why. Pictures can't capture the true majesty of a row of sakura trees heavy with blossoms, and it's near impossible to try to describe their intoxicating scent. For about two weeks in spring, Japanese social outings revolve around the life span of the cherry blossom, for good reason: walking down a sakura lane can't be much different from walking in paradise.

A very crowded paradise in some places, but a sweet-smelling and magical paradise nonetheless.

The act of viewing cherry blossoms is called hanami, which actually translates to "flower viewing" but seems to be reserved for sakura only. The basic purpose of hanami is to sit and look at blossoms. However, you don't just sit and look at blossoms - you also eat crazy festival foods, drink until your heart's content (or stomach's discontent, whichever hits you first), and hang out with your compadres. And should there be a karaoke machine just standing around and waiting for you to take the mike, then so much the better.

I saw a good amount of sakura this spring, and while I'm sorry that its season is so short-lived, I realize it's probably for the best. Society can only take so much sitting around and drinking before it starts to collapse. But the progression of the blossoms' lives is astounding. Sakura are only fully open for a very short time - they die quickly, sloughing down from the trees in pink and white waves. But they leave the sakura tree draped in a rich green canopy, the color of which is so vivid that it's a miracle in itself. I loved the blossoms, but the green leaves enamored me. Walking down sakura lanes became akin to walking through a hallway lined in velvet, so deep and lush that I lost track of the time as I stood and stared at the leaves. These leaves are what pushes the blossoms loose from the tree, breaking their tenuous hold on life, and I'm glad for it. They're not so pretty and cute, but they're stronger and more vibrant, lasting longer than the delicate flowers that let go of life just when it's beginning.

It's become a standard cliche - sakura blossoms trembling in the wind before separating from their branches, floating like airy boats before coming to a gentle rest on the ground - but it works because the experience is so moving. It's no wonder that sakura is a metaphor for life: so beautiful and brief, beginning with such great promise and ending with such swiftness, culminating in a bittersweet momento mori.

rewind: movies I watched on the flight to Japan

I fully intended to sleep most of the flight, but I ended up sleeping only about 90 minutes. Instead, I tortured myself with bad movies. Hooray!

The Incredible Hulk
Two words: utter crap. That's a crappy way to begin a movie (seriously, overdone pantomime with the credits? it was cheesier than a goofy silent movie) and end a movie (um, what?). In fact, the whole movie sucked in ways that can't be enumerated. If this is how you're going to treat graphic novels, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. I'm talking to you, Hollywood!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I can't imagine that anyone who has any sort of respect for the Indiana Jones series would enjoy this movie. In fact, I can't imagine anyone who has any sort of respect for anything in general would enjoy this movie. It's time to quit when you've gotten so formulaic that you might as well be a Dan Brown novel. You know what doesn't belong in an Indiana Jones movie? Aliens. Forget Harrison Ford and the utter ridiculousness of his stunts. Even his scene-chewing antics can't overshadow the fact that this was an Indiana Jones movie about aliens.

Hancock
Um . . . why? What's the deal with the screenplay here? Did some pages go missing during filming and nobody noticed until after post-production when it was too late to do any more shooting? I love Will Smith (his choice of scripts lately has just not been all that great), and I liked the rehabilitating superhero angle, but the rest of it was just confusing. The plot twist? Stupefying. And predictable. But mostly stupefying.

Leatherheads
Didn't get to watch all of it, but what I saw was entertaining. Nice vaudevillian touches, very true to the era. I also appreciated the World War I scenario, that being a special interest of mine. I'm actually sorry I didn't get to see how it ended, even though I could guess because it's still a predictable Hollywood movie. But at least it wasn't confusing. And there weren't any aliens.