Sublime

The omission of Tillie’s side of the family came “naturally” to my father because in the world of my childhood, we did not tell time by mothers, only by fathers. It is the father’s name that marks one generation and then the next.

During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social

as if he, too, might have another hundred years or two to document what time hides forever in plain sight.

That’s why we were so surprised when Master Philip’s Nanny was dismissed after being with the family all those years, and they said a new girl was coming from England.’

Dahai Han and I became friends. After I finished my walk, because his punishment was over, he went back to the government. And the first time he returned to America, he defected. He wound up in Kissimmee, Florida, next to Disney World, selling hamburgers and married to an American woman. This was a complete disaster. He divorced.

Last week I planted an acer in the furthest bed from the house, in honour of our new baby. The sapling is as tall as me and, by all accounts, it can grow forty feet tall. So, in thirty years’ time, if we’re still here I can come back and see this tree in its maturity. But the thought depresses me: in thirty years’ time I’ll be in my mid sixties and