Tomorrow

            It is exceedingly uncommon to know the exact date and time of the end of an era; it is easier, generally, to mark beginnings.  When the Great East Japan Earthquake devastated our islands, everything suddenly morphed into something that no Japanese citizen could have imagined.  There was no warning, no time to reflect on the events that were to follow. The ending of the pre-earthquake era was instantaneous; the beginning of our new lives was, and is, a much slower project.

The things one does before the end of an era are the things that define us as people.  When this ending is unscheduled and unpredictable, we go about our lives.  We go to work or to school.  We play sports or games.  We water our plants, pet the cats, and clean our apartments.  We think about the daily tomorrows, the deadlines, the meetings, the laundry, the dinners to cook.  We think about going to that new ramen shop on the way home from the train station.  Then, one day, tomorrow is not just a tomorrow; it is an after.  After the earthquake.  Our humanity is redefined and our tomorrows become something else.  We are no longer laundry-doers and ramen-eaters.  We are nuclear disaster cleaners and search and rescuers, rubble sifters and shelter managers.  We become something other than what we were before.

The birth of my daughter was  a bit more predictable than the earthquake.  The pregnancy progressed, my wife’s belly going from flat to distended in a few short months.  Doctors predicted her due date – the zero-hour, the end of our previous lives.  Still, we do not celebrate the end of life before a daughter; we celebrate the beginning of hers.  Perhaps this is what it means to know that the end of an era is coming.  Perhaps to know of an incoming ending is simply to predict a beginning.

The knowing, in itself, brought forth a different dilemma.  We couldn't stop our minds from skipping ahead of the todays and tomorrows, skipping to the after.  We anxiously anticipated the infinite futures that could have been, and we made mental lists of how best to prepare for millions of outcomes.  We bit our nails and waited.  Waited.  We stayed up late, red-eyed, wondering when and how and why. Even now, memories of the days before her birth are dominated by things that did not happen outside our minds.  In a way, the event of her birth brought grounding: where the before of the event was cerebral and indistinct, the after was earthly, demanding of the whole body.

I cannot pretend to know who we will be tomorrow.  I am left with the simultaneous dread and excitement inherent in change, in the infiniteness of what has not happened yet.  All that is left to do is wait.