A Flight of Fancy

Thirteen years ago yesterday, my son became a bar mitzvah. He was in the midst of a growth spurt, and the sleeves of the tuxedo jacket he had been fitted for only a month earlier did not quite cover his forearm.

Today, armed with instructions to obtain his measurements for a tuxedo for his sister’s wedding, I am off to Japan to visit that same son. He is years past his last physical growth spurt, but still, I wonder if I will hesitate when I first see him. It has been ten months since we have been together, and so much has changed, for both of us. Small changes, for the most part, but the kinds of changes that can reveal themselves in our faces, if we pay attention.  In Japan, though, it will be easy for us both to pick each other out of a crowd. A tall young white man with unruly hair and green eyes, and a short middle aged woman without any pretense of cool stoicism and with feet far too large to squeeze into locally made shoes.

This is my fourth trip to Japan. I am flying solo, without either of my daughters to tote me around as if I were an unruly toddler with an uncanny instinct to slow things down and walk the wrong way. I feel a tad self-satisfied, knowing I will manage, on my own, to navigate the somewhat familiar but increasingly mystifying world in which my son lives. I aim low; mostly, my goal is to get where I need to be without offending anybody or losing my internet connection.

I cannot help but wonder whether by sheer virtue of my Americanism I will be viewed with suspicion when I land on the other side of the world. In a society where a distinct ethnicity creates at least an appearance of an absence of the sort of diversity that inspires prejudice,’will the pervasive crassness of our political season, the loud voices of a vocal minority (I hope) of people who hate or mistrust anybody who is not like them, make me unwelcome? Does my son ever feel ostracized or misjudged by association? Will every polite bow be counterbalanced by a raised eyebrow? I cannot help but wonder.

As I often do when I am in Japan, I will feel as awkward as, say, a thirteen year old boy in an ill-fitting tuxedo. Or, frankly, a 26 year old young man being fitted for a tuxedo for his sister’s wedding. Our reunion will, at first, be just as awkward. But, though the place itself will always remain unfamiliar and a bit intimidating, it should not take long for us — my son and me — to reacquaint. No matter what he wears, no matter what he says, and no matter how comfortably at home he seems in such a faraway place, he is still the boy who grew before my very eyes, who could be unrecognizable from one moment to the next but, underneath it all, the same.

He lives a world away but always in my heart, a virtual hug away. My arms are as long as they need to be.