Last week this little house in Oppama was full of people, conversations, time spent out on the deck, and good home-cooked food. Dad, Bryce, and sometimes Sara were always here, and I never really had any time to myself. I didn’t mind that a bit. Now Dad’s back home and Bryce is on a missions trip to the Ukraine (please pray for the team’s safe return). I’ve had the place to myself all week and it’s been WAY to quiet. Anyone who knows me knows that me and being alone don’t go together. Maybe for a day, TOPS.
That feeling is compounded by the fact that the ship will be heading out again very shortly. The greatest amount of time spent in this house is already over, and I just moved in last October. It’s weird living in a house, knowing that you’ll still have it eight months from now, but knowing that out of that time you’ll probably spend less than a month actually home. It feels very temporary. One of my dreams since coming to Japan was to have a house here. Out of 4 years here I’ll have had a home for only 6 months. I wander through my spartanly furnished rooms and wonder what it would be like if I had more time to accumulate things, you know, really fill the place up. I wonder if I might get to know the neighbors better. I wonder if I could tell people what it’s like to live in a Japanese house in every season. I wonder if I’d have house parties and be a place where friends would pop in unexpected. When I look up at the Japanese light fixtures they don’t really feel like mine. They’re mine for a short time, but not long enough to call them mine.
A perfect example of this feeling can be summed by looking at the wall by my computer. I put up a bunch of pictures that best caught memories or feelings. I used some cheap tape to put them up and all winter they hung tight. Now it’s getting more humid and they’re slowing falling off one by one. I put them up, add more tape, but they keep falling. Now the wall is blank except for one portrait I took of Sara. For some reason it’s not going anywhere. All the memories can fall away, but Sara’s a part of my life that wouldn’t go away, no matter how humid it got. But the rest have gently fallen to the ground, making my room seem more like a temporary place.
I guess everyone goes through a feeling of impermanence. I don’t feel like I’m ready to lay roots down anywhere just yet, but I expected so much more from having a place. The greatest thing this house has done is allow my friend to have a quiet place to get away from ship life, and give my dad a quiet place to rest when I wore him out seeing Japan.