My life in Legos

Uta's Sensei will receive this special gift today!

Baby, Its Cold Outside!

Stripes

Happy Boy

I think this is the happiest I've ever seen Uta. Or maybe its just a certain kind of happy that is totally new to him. It starts deep inside him like a glow, slowly lifting up every cell in his being like a million brightly colored helium balloons, until it escapes out his mouth in a sigh of pride and self satisfaction. He is walking taller this morning. Basking in orange.

Dekita!

(He did it!)

In the night kitchen

I can only vaguely remember a time when the night felt eternally long, when staying up until midnight felt like a feat insurmountable, and waking up before dawn to get an early start on a childhood trip felt like stepping out into a foreign land of vaguely familiar shadows. Now the wee hours of the night are as ordinary as the day. I'm up most nights, creaking the floor boards, and startling the cockroaches out of their happy hour. Our neighbors across the hall are single friends. I'm not sure exactly of the head count, who is living there, who is just crashing on the sofa. I hear them coming home. Their voices lifted up by the drama of alcohol as their night collides with mine. Only a thin wall separating us. On my side I am quiet, swaying with my baby, heavy on the edge of sleep. I'm conducting invisible orchestras for an audience of one, hoping to get the rhythms in time with the lull of the sea, the melody as mesmerising as the stars. And then maybe back to bed. A cross section of our building would tell six very different tales, strangers living atop each other, all of us just being human through the night.

Orange belt...

The official results will not be announced until after Wednesday. But from what me and Pop could observe, Uta did brilliantly.

Love note

Dear Uta

I know you have girlfriends and all but I wanted to say I love you.

love Phoebe

(in this envelop there is a secret of love)

This is not the first confession of love that Uta has received, nor will it be the last. When I picked him up yesterday he handed me the note and said, "Read this in your head". After I finished he said, "I don't get it. Why would she write that?"