August 24, 2019
Dear Eric,
I was away for a few days this week moving. My family and I have at last truly, finally arrived in America. It took over five years to fully execute our transition from Japan to the USA, though I think the work is now done. Moving to another apartment wasn't the thing - we've made four such moves so far here - as much as moving to THIS particular apartment did the job. And again, it isn't the apartment as much our state-of-mind in executing this move. During the past three moves around Irvine we felt like refugees trudging around with our few possessions, selecting places to live more out of necessity rather than choice, and setting up house with odds and ends and leftovers of our own and other people's lives - stuff we found others had discarded - as we attempted to make house of whatever we had at hand. This time was decidedly different... This time the choice of where to live - house, condo or apartment; and what city, Dana Point, Laguna Hills, or Irvine - was so deliberate as to feel like the edict of a family who were truly comfortable enough in our new community and secure enough in our meager fortune to make up our own minds. Plus, all the stuff is also now our own - no more leftovers. In fact, we fully discarded all the other people's stuff we'd accumulated since coming to the USA. We have new beds, new furniture, new knickknacks, nearly everything new! But it wasn't so much the newness of the things we possess, as the newness of our sense of belonging and resolve which made the difference. We're here. We're back in the USA. We're fully returned.
Now, I wonder how long this settled sense will last before Yumiko and I get bored with this particular life and decide to move on to something else - which is what we always do? I rather suspect we may not do this again very soon, as we're getting a little older now and the process of destroying and rebuilding lives isn't as easy as it once was.
Kurt
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.