Linds 🌵Seismic Events at Hellos and Goodbyes 📌

My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years. Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question. "What do you miss?" She expects hamburgers. She almost never gets hamburgers. And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years. "Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio) "If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia) "My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas) "We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota) "A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan) "Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana) "In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona) "Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa) "I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania) Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand. Sora. Seventeen. Missouri. "Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said. She was wrong. In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up. It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to. "Saw the storm. You home safe?" Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways. "Home safe." Her host mom wrote back one line. "Good. That's all I needed." My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is. They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home. So, America. You think you've lost something. You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather. You don't remember doing any of it. A kid in Tokyo will never forget.

There's a saying on American social media: "Be the American that Japanese people think you are." I'm Japanese. I've lived in Tokyo my whole life. So let me tell you what we actually say about you, when you're not in the room. "When someone falls down on the street, we pretend not to see. We're protecting their pride. Americans run straight at them. They don't care about the pride. They care about the knee." (Office worker, 38) "An American will stop four lanes of traffic for a family of ducks. And then everyone in the cars claps for the ducks." (Taxi driver, 61) "If you lend an American a pen, you will never see it again. If you need a kidney, they'll ask your blood type." (Nurse, 45) "At kids' soccer games, they cheer when the other team's kid scores. The other team's parents look confused. Then they cheer too." (Youth soccer coach, 52, lived one year in Ohio) "A man sneezed on a bus in Chicago. Eleven strangers said 'Bless you.' He said 'thank you' eleven times. Nobody on that bus thought this was strange." (University student, 21) "At an airport in Texas, I watched a soldier try to pay for his lunch. The cashier said someone already had. He asked who. She said, 'Somebody who didn't want you to know.'" (Retired teacher, 70) "American fathers cannot braid hair. But they will watch a video at midnight for an hour so their daughter's hair looks right on picture day." (Hair stylist, 33) "I ran the Chicago Marathon once. Strangers stood in the cold for hours holding signs for people they will never meet. At mile 20, a man I'd never seen read the name off my bib and screamed it like he'd raised me." (Runner, 48) "When Americans get lost, they ask a stranger. If the stranger is also lost, they become a team." (Tour guide, 39) "They ask the waitress her name. And then they remember it." (Restaurant owner, 66) And one more. From my father. He's 76. He doesn't say much about anything. This is the longest thing I have ever heard him say about another country. "Every time something terrible happens in America, I watch the news, and I look for one thing. The people running toward it. There are always so many." So, America. You don't have to become the Americans we think you are. We're not imagining you. We're remembering you.