Yesterday was my birthday, a real thirty-something affair, with my amazing husband skipping work to make a day out of it. I loused it up and I am now reeling from pain.

It started-off grand. We dropped the kiddos off at preschool together, then rode the train to a pretty rad part of Tokyo. We gobbled liqueur doughnuts. I’d nibbled two by 10 am, very enthusiastically. We hung around the area and sipped Prosecco in an Italian courtyard. We passed outdoor coffee tables made of skateboards and I tried on heels from Bangkok. We made the day pretty fun, then rushed to get the kids.

Everything would have been delicious, amazing, more than fine. But no. I had to trim the little tree in our front yard. After all, it nearly touched the neighbor’s wall.

Why, o, why, did I have to snip and pull those ivy vines? Why’d I have to mess with the perfection of a birthday?

Because I am both greenery hippie and wannabe florist. Because I thought time in soil brought balance and something enlightened, a moment to reflect. (Shaking head, sadly, like a mother seeing her child putting both legs in the leg hole, repeatedly). I brought in a handful of branches from the tree I snipped. I carried them in, barehanded. I plunked them in my crystal vase at the kitchen sink, and only five minutes later, I freaked the hell out. Freaked out. First I saw one caterpillar, then another, and another, until I was full-on cursing while kids and husband watched Sesame Street in the adjoining room. I wriggled that disgusto-dance we chicks do when we even hear the word “lice”. It was bad.

This morning I woke up one digit older with a neck and forearms on fire. Then it became my tummy and hips. Those buggers got me everywhere. It’s their little nasty hairs. They sense danger and BAM. Somehow they try to kill you. Suddenly you’re me, biking to the dermatologist’s office when the sky is threatening big rain. You’re paying a big lot for the visit and meds, and wishing that little tube of steroid creme was to be applied every five minutes, because no way the 2-3 times a day treatment will do anything. And Claritin. Neither is doing anything to help.

Websites say these gross catastrophes may last a solid few weeks. Nah, dog. I don’t think this is how I should roll into this thirty-something year. My kids go to touch me and I nearly scream. My daughter hugged my arm and poor thing, I made her cry, just responding to the painful itch. I may be driven to meet toothless criminals in alleyways of Shibuya to get on some non-insured experimental drugs. I may be driven to sleepless madness at 3:40 am and chop down that bugger of a tree, just in case any are lurking. You see how quickly one can lose everything they love because they couldn’t just enjoy a doughnut and some downtime?

So thanks, you nasty little caterpillars. You ruined my birthday and messed me up good. Hear that, you little twerps? I’m older now and wiser. Listen–no matter how much your inner green space wants to, don’t go near a garden on your birthday. Don’t look at dirt. Don’t muse over floral spray. If you must have a flower, let it be silk, or construction paper. Let nature come by way of dolphins on a CD. Give up eggs and only support pasteurization. The only living things should be us. 

(Too far?)

PS You understand why I had to buy a two-pack of insecticide from the store and kill them all.

PSS The next time I engage in a moment of gardening, I will look like a hypochondriac beekeeper. Seriously, I don’t think I’ll get any sleep. Talk to me, anyone who’s up.

This post is more of a public service broadcast. Beep bee dee beee bee dee bee beeee. You’ll understand soon enough, you, who are sitting clear under an AC vent, or frantically waving a fan.

Tokyo is a jungle, an urban jungle. It is a humid, sultry sweat house of a place during summer. This is when you may choose to flee, or take five showers. There are the lovelies, however—the ways to make it grand, or at least (better than) bearable.

Leza Lowitz, the famed, exquisite author, has some lifesaving tips to keep you from heatstroke. Do you know Leza’s work? She is the definition of “prolific writer” and writes through and within many genres. Her latest is Here Comes the Sun, a memoir chronicling young Lowitz’s life in Berkeley, California, to a woman making a life rooted in Tokyo. Through deep, poetic writing, Lowitz shares how yoga and a desire for mothering helped her to realize the nature and depth of her heart and the ability to mother. She captures a soul’s longing and shows us the glory of a heart poised for possibility.

Here Comes the Sun was part of a triad of current books by expat authors in this post, here. (Sorry, the giveaway is over, folks).

Leza, to be sure, knows Tokyo summers. She knows the work of pressing in to greatness despite humidity or any temporary condition. We’ll call this post, “Here Comes the Heat”. Get it?

If Lowitz was a doc, she’d prescribe this:

2. If you can’t leave, visit the ice-cold baths at a local sento or, say, Bath King (Ofuro no Ousama) in Oimachi.

I packed for our five day, four night beach trip to Shimoda, like it was a month away at the Jersey Shore. I packed like every guide in a fashion mag suggests. I even packed a coral scarfy thing that could double as sarong. Mostly, though, I wore my new high-wasted bikini every second, and a striped thin dress.

It is magical, this getting away. We need big horizons, especially us city people. We need concrete and buildings to move out of the way. These are the memories we need to build.

We invited my husband’s parents, the loves that they are, and my girl’s Godmother. I can’t decide if I want to write a tourist-specific article, or feed you some beach house recipes and describe all the drinks we drank, or just rattle-on about seaweed and shells.

The bottom line? Families, couples need the sea. We need walks down to the shore, with stones and big jumbles of seaweed. We need to take our kids’ fleshy kid hands, and climb over rocks to tide pools before walking back to wash our sandy feet under a spicket.

It was a pocket of riches, this time at the beach. And the magic of Shimoda? It is not flat, but a landscape, windows full of lush mountains as well as sea. It is lagoons and a canvas of stars.

I still have my tan and none of my burns have peeled.

To “kvell” is to beam inwardly, on your face, too. To see all that is right. It is the opposite of “kvetch”. It’s a Yiddish word.

I kvell, feel proud of my kids, just admiring their beauty, noting their observations, and awareness of the world, their sweet sensitivity. I gaze, I laugh at their hilarity, their kindness and outrageous senses of humor.

I’m on Kveller, my third post, talking about the beautiful work involved in moving from outsider to friend. I have my rough moments here in Japan. It’s so important for women to feel that they are not alone.

Here it is, “I Felt Like an Outsider Living in Japan, Until I Befriended Another Mom”.

Our boy has new shoes. They are red. They have that runner’s tread and slope at the toe. They are Transformers, I think. 

I didn’t think his toes were nearly pressed to the inside of his navy shoes until I squat-down and checked. Tight! Small! One day the shoe is okaaaay, doable, and the next day, it is disaster bordering on neglect!

Kids grow so stealthily; the last pair of new shoes are suddenly a parody of how shoes should fit. We have flung my girl’s clothes from dresser drawer directly to doll pile! One has to be quick! You have one week to wear this new dress from your Auntie! Go! I want to see it on you at every meal and through the night! (Her fuzzy Disney bear has a pretty nice wardrobe from the handful of items just too nice to pass on or chuck). 

We have given away a fortune in baby clothes and gear, always to the same (lucky) recipient. I forward bags and bags of baby, toddler, and increasingly-big-kid finery. It is sometimes emotionally tough, sometimes a delight. I pass-on the treasures that appear in the most joyful photographs of my life! I clear what little small closets I have. Out with the old! It is healthy to be this way, but sometimes I ache.

Children outgrow their toys, their heirloom stitches, the gifts from faraway family members, the shirts that read, “ONE YEAR OLD BOY,” and all you can do it enjoy the thing while it’s here. I try to find that picture online, scouring Facebook for photos of my pigtailed one-year-old in her lilac dress. I dream up ways to sew all of their childhood costumes into one pillow. Even the best items can yellow in a bag, waiting. 

Shoes keep leaving. I placed about thirty-two pairs of kid shoes in a blue Costco bag downstairs. They have waited three days at the door, perhaps two months in the linen closet, and longer in the depths of our shoe closet, loitering awkwardly. Every kiddo-item waits for the boot, the revolving door called change and outgrowth. It’s enough to make you read The Velveteen Rabbit and cry. Everything is on its way out.

Is this what it is, every month, scavenging socks drawers for what is now too tight and ill-fitting? Will I bag up sentiment, cloth, and tread until they are adults? I am more than content to have healthy, growing kids. I am. This is what it should be. This is the best of the best, growing taller and lanky in their sleep, sprouting long feet, hair nails, and teeth, growing strong hearts that beat. I can get on board with that.

I’ll move out the old to get to the new. It’ll be great. We’ll get even better sneakers, three sizes too big.