journal features

a year in the life

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.03.25

Today is The Boy's first day in the day care class for two year olds.

How time has certainly flown, recently. When he started, he was still a bit shaky on his legs (and some of his classmates could not yet walk at all) and he didn't speak. Now we can't get him to shut up. And he's halfway toilet trained, too. Yesterday he made it through the day in underpants without any accidents. I can't even imagine where he'll be in another year.

Good luck with your second year class, kiddo!

P.S. We've written some thank you notes for his two teachers, Yuko-sensei and "E-chan" (whose proper name I never learned). They've not only helped our son enormously but they've certainly helped Mari and me become more able parents. Mari's favorite treat every day was to read what the teachers had written in the journal that we pass back and forth.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner