The beauty of Japan is never more clearly manifested than in the weeks of cherry blossom blooming. Normally I would cherish this time, be outside as much as possible, visit beautiful spots, take a train to the mountains, have picknick with my wife in a park, but this year everything is different. This weekend we are asked to avoid going out and the beauty, I feel, has to wait for next year.
Maybe I would not be so stressed if this was a year like all the other years of my previous life, that is a year with no baby on the way. But this year our miracle is growing in my wife’s stomach and that changes everything. Absolutely everything. So today I find myself slowly changing my previous image of the three of us celebrating my wife’s birthday under a cherry blossom tree with our baby sleeping safely surrounded by amniotic fluid, to an image that has our sweet baby lying on a blanket happily looking at white sakura flowers instead. That is also very beautiful.
I am slowly changing my image of many things. Of course life would have changed with our baby, virus or not; just not this way. And so all of my mental preparations this past year suddenly feel quite inadequate and I do not quite know how to start over again, what world our little baby will meet the day he decides to join us out here. I sense that my way of dealing with all that is happening is to try to focus on our family, our home, in a way that catches the unchanging essence of me and my wife’s deep connection, and while holding on to that, letting all the uncertainty swirl past me instead of letting it drag me along.
In times like this my fears are growing exponentially, but so is also the ability to assume the perspective where what is important, really important, comes in full view – practicing to be thankful for that without being overcome by fear, has in a way become my new path of preparation for you my sweet baby.
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