The kids’ grandpa picked us up at the airport and drove us home.
“What was your favorite thing you saw?”
Avery answered first.
“Food.”
Grandpa glanced over at the traffic.
“Watch this guy.”
Dani interrupted.
“Japan did have great food. Though he refused to eat anything but microwave noodles, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets.”
She laughed.
“At least he was honest about it.”
Right on cue, we drove past a 7-Eleven, and both he and his brother jumped into a song they’d made up about the store that they’d sung to us twelve times a day since leaving.
~
One thing Avery won’t remember—but Dani and I will—is the “why” phase.
Every shrine, every bus, every sign, every bowl of noodles:
“What’s that?”
“A boat.”
“Why?”
Sometimes, the way out was through reversal.
“Why is that a boat, Avery?”
“Because it’s in the water.”
You could almost see the gears turning.
Japan wasn’t new to him—existence was.
~
When the kid’s song quieted, his grandpa asked Corbin.
“What about you?”
“Nothing.”
Then, from behind me, he whispered.
“The good museum with bad pictures.”
“A-bomb …”
I jumped in.
“The Hiroshima Peace Museum.”
Then he moved on.
Corbin had written a singe word in shaky letters on the back of his Japanese customs form when we first landed.
ENGLISH
Holding it up to the security window, he read it to the agent:
“I speak English.”
It totally embarrassed Dani and me.
Now he leaned toward his grandpa.
“Say one in Japanese?”
No pause. He answered it himself.
“Ichi.”
“Say two in Japanese?”
“Ni.”
He laughed.
“I speak English. Can you speak Japanese?”
~
By the time we were on the freeway, I found myself struggling.
Dani’s father was attentive to the road. He noticed things I probably would have missed.
“What was that?”
“Why would he do that?”
“Doesn’t anybody know how to drive anymore?”
There was usually something happening just ahead of us that deserved his attention.
He watched the traffic with the same focus I’d spent the last two weeks giving train windows, looking for mountains, shrines, and unfamiliar neighborhoods.
I watched traffic too, but for different reasons.
One day earlier, I’d been on a bullet train watching Mount Fuji drift past the window.
Now brake lights stretched to the horizon.
The trip dissolved faster than I expected.
The stations.
The noodles.
The sound of train doors closing.
My kids on crowded platforms.
Even the long stretches of countryside slipping past the windows had already started feeling farther away than they should.
I wondered if anything had actually changed.
The next afternoon, I drove to my mom’s house to pick up our dog.
Traffic merged and separated around me.
Someone squeezed into my lane without enough room.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Then loosened again.
There wasn’t anything else to do.
The spaces between the cars caught my attention instead—the gaps opening and closing, everyone finding their place for a few seconds before moving on again.
I drove the rest of the way watching that rhythm.
When I pulled into my mom’s driveway, our dog was already waiting at the front door.