-- I think I am getting old. But I am still in denial of this reality. My body is breaking down in weird places and for strange reasons. I do not think either of my two current ailments can be attributed to the aging process, but I could be wrong. I'm too young to know any better!
A couple of weeks ago, my left heel started hurting. Not like sharp pain, but kind of like the muscle (or whatever it is down there) is bruised and it hurts to step. I thought maybe it was plantar fasciitis... but I'm sure that is much more painful than what I have. Nonetheless, I cannot run until this injury heals. I do not know how it came about, which I think hurts me just as much as the fact that I cannot run.
Then two nights ago, I woke up from a coughing fit. I kept coughing for almost an hour, and my body was heaving so much that I felt a discomfort in my ribs. Sunday morning and afternoon I felt tired and had a headache, and I did not really notice the pain in my ribs so much. But as the day went on, it was harder and harder to breathe deeply without feeling a sharp pain. At first I thought maybe it was just a bruise, but then I started wondering if it wasn't fractured ribs. I'm still not sure. I'm still in pain, but it doesn't feel as bad as it did yesterday, so perhaps it's not such a serious injury. Still, I wonder why my body is breaking down in such weird and unpredictable ways?
-- Funny how some people show up in your lives once, and then disappear seemingly forever, and then randomly reappear in a place you least expect them to.
This has sort of happened to me twice, both times in Kobe. The first one was over a year ago now. While living in Winnipeg in 2002-03, I really missed contact with Japanese people, and found a listing for Japanese Alliance Church in the Yellow Pages. So I started attending and really enjoyed the fellowship. Particularly interesting was the story of the pastor and his wife, who were missionaries from Japan who originally served the aboriginal people in Northern Canada and Alaska. Anyhow, long story short, I moved back to Japan in 2003, and only saw them a few times after that. One such time was when their son, who was raised in Canada, wanted to finish high school in Japan, and enrolled at Okinawa Christian School. The family stayed in Winnipeg at the time, but they eventually moved back to Japan a few years ago, but to the (at that time) unknown-to-me city of Kobe. I was in Okinawa. Then I moved to Sapporo. Never thought I would see them again. Then I met a beautiful Kobe woman, and had to come see her to confirm that she was "the one" for me. During that time in Kobe, I stayed at that pastor's home, and it was a sweet time of reunion.
The other incident happened just yesterday. I went to Kobe Union Church after their service was over, in order to talk to the administration about having our wedding there. As we made our way in, we ran into some familiar faces. So we stopped and talked. Yumi started talking to a blonde lady, whom she had gone to Tokoku to do volunteer disaster relief work. That blonde lady looked way too familiar to have been someone I was meeting for the first time. "Oh, this is my fiance, Trevor. He's from Canada, too." And so a conversation ensued, and I started to hypothesize about where I had met this woman before. Her husband asked me, "How long have you been here?" So I gave my typical answer: 6 months in Kobe, but before that I lived in Sapporo for a year and Okinawa for ten or so. The blonde woman said, "I lived in Okinawa, too. In Naha City." My answer: "Yeah I know, we used to go to the same church!" I was amused at myself for the way I so non-chalantly divulged that we had known each other nearly a decade earlier. Funny stuff.
(Incidentally, this happened to Yumi a few months ago, too. My good friend Aaron, whom I met in Okinawa, invited us over for dinner. When we got there, Aaron's wife introduced herself to Yumi, and then said, "You know something, you look an awful lot like someone I know." And so it turns out, Yumi and Aaron's wife have known each other for longer than Aaron and I! Of course, they had lost touch for like a decade or so, but still... weird how our spouses unknowingly knew each other before we all met each other.)
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Well, this has gotten way longer than I expected, and I am out of time for now. I will write more again later, perhaps in a few days.
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