The feeling of hikikomogomo 悲喜交々 (having alternating feelings of joy and sorrow in your heart, tasting the bittersweetness of life)

A wedding memory, a confession, and a book built on five yen coins

Last year we took our children to Japan for the summer. It didn’t turn out quite as we had hoped. We landed. We melted. We celebrated an eighth birthday at Disneyland on the hottest day of the year. We went to more convenience stores in three days than I had been to in my life. I tried to focus on the basics: stay cool and hydrated, find food they will eat, be spontaneous, have fun. It was easier said than done when I didn’t recognise myself. I am normally a calm, curious and flexible traveller, especially in Japan, where I have lived and worked for years, and been back to more times than I can remember.

I had experienced Kyoto summers before. What did I expect? The children had lost their beloved grandma just months before, and were tired at the end of a long school year. What did I expect? I was trying to have a holiday at the same time as grieving my mother and writing a book. What did I expect? Travelling anywhere with children takes all your reserves. We had no reserves. What did I expect?

I had hoped to leave the stress of the previous few months behind, but it turned out I had brought it all with me, and I was on edge, impatient and shattered.

After a couple of weeks, which got better as soon as we decided Mr K would take the girls home early and leave me to my research for Kokoro, my family left on a midnight plane to Dubai and sleep taunted me like a ghost, hovering yet not quite arriving. Despite the joy-filled last few days of our time together in Kyoto, I felt like a failure.

I tried not to think of how everything most precious to me was hurtling around the planet in a metal tube. I berated myself for not having planned better. For not having been more patient. I was sick with something that felt like the flu. I got up while it was still dark and looked in the bathroom mirror. My face was lopsided and puffy with dark triangles under my eyes. I could see every drop of grief laid out in the deep creases of my face. I had a suntan but somehow looked grey. My hair was flat. I didn’t recognise myself.

I lit a candle, made some tea, and listened for traces of my family’s laughter soaked into the walls of our tiny rented machiya. There is a beautiful term in Japanese, hikikomogomo (悲喜交々), which means having alternating feelings of joy and sorrow in your heart, tasting the bittersweetness of life. I had felt this often over the past few months, and it lingered in our little house once my family had gone. Love and loss, frustration and laughter, shadow and light, numbness and aliveness, shattering and gratitude.

It is this feeling I am remembering now,