reunion

This was an entry dated July 8, 2013, around the time I went on hiatus.  Found it in my drafts:

Without the time I spent in New Zealand, I probably would have been a very different person.  It was where I first learned English.  It was where I learned that I was "Japanese".  It was where I learned it was only mongoloid kids that had blue butts.  And it was where I first went to school and made friends and "fell in love" with a Michael who lived nextdoor.

The past weekend, I met up with a friend from New Zealand whom I hadn't met in eighteen years.

The very first time I met her was at a uniform store.  We were both with our parents, buying shirts and skirts and gym clothes, and had the same problem with the size: When you're growing, you don't want to buy anything that's too big but you want something that would still fit you after a year or two.  As a result, you end up trying on T shirts that are too big.  I pulled at the extra piece of cloth that hung under my arms.

In another fitting room, another girl was trying on the same shirt, pulling at the cloth that drooped over her thin arm.  That was her.  According to my mother (who remembers the incident more clearly), the little girl followed her around and asked where we were from.  She was so intrigued to see these Asian people who looked different and spoke differently.

The next time we met was on the first day of school.  Her seat happened to be across from mine.  She was so ecstatic to see me that it almost scared me.  I never thought she would be my best friend for the next two years.

When I think about her now, it's still the little girl with big ears and freckles wearing a sleevless check dress under the cloudy winter sky.  We hadn't been in contact in years when we found each other on Facebook.  Her father had died but she still had the portrait of the five-year-old me my dad had painted, which had ended up at her place for some reason.

When I saw her at the hotel lobby last weekend, I recognized her right away.  She hadn't changed at all -- even the size of her head!  Well, she'd gotten taller and she'd developed some really nice breasts but that was about it. She probably thought the same about me (except the breast part). I was more worried about what kind of person she'd grown up to be, but she hadn't really changed inside either.  Maybe she had; maybe we just couldn't catch up enough to realize the change; maybe there were some moments we felt distant, but she laughed the same way.  And she remembered what I remembered.  In a world where almost everything keeps changing, it's nice to find that certain things stay the same.