It’s a critical case of “are you fucking kidding me?”

That’s how I imagine a younger me reacting to the past two years' events. Earlier today, as I sat in the back of a cologne-filled taxi, I looked at the sun cascading down from the cloudless sky. The first day of March brought my first allergy attack and a poignant reflection on how life deviates without warning.

Much of my lunch hour was spent going back and forth in English and Japanese with my sixth-grade elementary students as they tried to trash talk about the staff vs. students game at recess. I told them they’d better prepare for both dunks and nightmares, but in reality, I only got one or two off, instead deciding to go for layups and kick outs. The game ended forty-two to nine, and I had to console a very competitive kid (reminiscent of another similarly aged club player of mine) after the game.

I’d started the day trying to figure out how much time had passed since I’d left the States. How things have altered the way I view my own life. There’s been a definite shift, but it’s hard without the original reference point.

I know the changes live within me— as the phantom scents and tastes pop up unexpectedly in my reveries. I’ll find myself in the echo of a cinnamon-scented marker and the first-grade show and tell where I brought my calf skin “Buckaroo” wallet filled with spare change. I’d later give the wallet to Orion, holding onto tears, as I passed the baton from the favored nephew to the favored grandson.

Looking at all the changes doesn’t prompt an outrage or even a morose mindset. It’s more of a curious feeling— a wave of sorts— the one you’d roll over if you sat on a surfboard in the bay and didn’t want to catch it.

In a different world, I’d have been a father for an entire year by now. That’s where my mind has been. Something I didn’t know about until it was long past the point— but not the impact. I remember consoling myself that it was the right decision. That I wasn’t around and In fact had gone all the way across the world. I’d say all this to myself as I drove down the island after learning it on a video call where I sat on the forgotten steps of a torn-down school in the middle of a forest. I’d make it home and finally give in to the crush of tears that had built with every mile I passed. I couldn’t understand why something so outwardly reasonable stabbed down like a dagger.

We all have reminders that for all the efficiency hacks and grind culture propaganda, people are still living their lives with this inherent knowledge that no one (truly, no one) has been in the space they’ve been in. Even with the enormous backlog of history and fiction, you can find collected compassion and empathy through connection and reading.

So, I, as someone who always had this nebulous goal of being a father, learned that I had once been on a concrete path to being one without my knowledge. And that now I wasn’t. It was devastating in a way that feels like finding winning lottery ticket in a hurricane. You get pulled from the hurricane, but lose the ticket. You wonder what would have happened— but it’s impossible to know. It’s not even that great of a comparison, but I can’t fin one that fits what I’m trying to stay.

It was horrendous. I laid down in my bed and cried. I cried for a child that would not be. That for all practical, reasonable reasons, would not be. Wasn’t. And I couldn’t stop until the tears ran out. I, who had always believed they’d wanted to be a father, had gotten as close as you can get, and had it go away. All without knowing. That’s the whirling dervish skullfuckery of this all. It’s that I didn’t know until long after. It’s arriving at the funeral a year late. It doesn’t stop your own grief, but the impact is different.