Japan, 2025
Avery rolled out of bed in the middle of the night. The crash woke me, followed by the soft cry of startlement. He wasn’t hurt, but I scooped him into my arms all the same. He fell back asleep on my chest then, limp and trusting.
We haven’t slept like that since he was a baby. I felt both truths at once—how big he’s gotten, and how little he still is. Four years old, and somehow, a kid and an infant at the same time, both growing up and still clinging to the edges of childhood.
As he breathed against me, I felt time folding in on itself. The weight of him. The warmth. The knowledge that this moment was happening now and might never happen again. I laid there, riding the current of his breath, existing. My heart ached, not from sadness, but from the sheer force of love and the awareness that everything is always slipping forward.
When his breathing settled, and he was fully calm, I set him back in his own bed. Alive inside a moment that will never return.
Japan made it easier to notice things. The order, the quiet, the care in small details—it slowed me down enough to pay attention. For the last week, I’d lived in the currents and breaths of the life, following their motions like a boat adrift in the sea—guided, yet carried by the waves.
It revealed itself to me in small, quiet moments—moments that didn’t announce themselves, but reshaped something inside me all the same.
~
Earlier that evening, after we’d checked into the hotel and settled the kids down for an evening movie, I’d walked back alone to retrieve our luggage from the train station lockers. The night had felt alive and peaceful.
When I returned, Dani had set out a cheesecake that she’d bought from the Dontonbori street market earlier. I slipped into practicality mode at once—worrying she’d overbought and trying to protect joy from tomorrow. When I began explaining my position, her eyes told me to back off, and so I did, long enough to taste the dessert.
Different from the overpowering richness of American cheesecakes, this was soft, spongy, moist, and humble. Delicate enough that the raisins inside it felt decadent.
This cheesecake, like Osaka, like Japan, was content with itself. It didn’t need to complete or compare or declare its greatness. It quietly existed.
Japan kept offering me these small lessons. Nothing dramatic, nothing required—just reminders that life can be soft, unforced, and enough.
~
I lay in bed now, in the dark, listening to Avery breathing.
Soon, we would leave this place of precision and beauty for routine and familiarity. Vacation would give way to work again, and time together would give way to time apart. I love my home and I love my life, but here and now, this felt special.
I’m used to holding onto things, measuring what’s left, mourning what’s ending. Here, it felt easier to let a moment stay.
I would like to think that letting go is not “loss”—it’s “continuation.” That the momentary connection Avery and I shared left me more in tune with him and more aware—and, that allows me to be a better father. Likewise, this trip, these adventures, and the connections I’m sharing with my family have also left their imprints on me.
This trip will end, and that loss will hurt, but only at the moment of its departure, because that is the way of things.
I held my son, I felt his breath, and I let him go. When that time comes, I will do the same with Japan. All joy, it turns out, is fleeting.
~
In the morning, he had no memory of his nighttime scare, or the small gift that he’d left me. Instead, he awoke clapping to the beat of “Bingo was his name-oh” and then meowing like a kitty to quiet the joys of Dani and me.
It took nothing from him. It left everything with me.