I try to always live in the before.

Before whatever terrible event will cut this short. Before our future. Before we stop being able to fly to frisbee tournaments in different countries. Before we need masks. Before we needed visas. Before we were so injured. Before our bodies hurt. Before we were afraid.

So much of whatever superpower I have comes from living in a very brief window between that wonderful day that lives strong in our memories and right now holding on tight to this branch that’s holding us up. It’s the way I scale ledges that will not hold me again, the way I survived a decade of building climbing (buildering, they say now I hear). Mostly survived. Mostly survived. It’s the way I handle traffic, stepping out into it without fear, and the way I have managed to continue.

Parenting is a series of encounters with our own mortality. Between our inevitable physical decline, offset for however long by strong routines, by gym afternoons, by “active lifestyles”, and the clear, clear sense that whatever we do or live for will matter less than we hope to the generations after us, to the generations we are so invested in building.

These aren’t new revelations, and the decline in written correspondence, internet or otherwise, by friends who have children is incredibly clear. Not only do we have less time for thinking, less quiet hours to craft words around our experiences, but we are also so much more aware of the limited importance of our unique point of view, of the experiences that have shaped the self we are now trying to improve. For parenting is a series of attempts to improve ourselves, to be the parents, the people, we aspire to be before our children are old enough to know the truth.

We are learning Japanese, reading children’s books before bed in a language we can barely read. It’s a silly goal, yet it is a goal, it is who we are. It’s who we want to be. And just like that, like our bike adventures this afternoon, across half of northern Tokyo, so much is clear.

We are desperately trying to live, now. While we are able, physically mentally and emotionally. While we are able to, between work trips and zoom calls. While we are able to, after we have been given exceptional opportunities and before we are too jaded to value them. Before we are too jaded to value them. It’s not an easy thing to write. None of this is easy to write. That’s why we share less. We are less sure.

And so I look back to the decades of buildering, to the freedom I feel when holding on to something secure, hanging off the side of our apartment block in Tokyo, checking out a pipe leak. Few people feel that free, even today. And fewer still have the scars, some sharply visible some faded with time, of all the times whatever it was didn’t hold.

We’re getting older, here, teaching our daughter about e-bikes and metro systems, about weather patterns and friend networks. We’re teaching her things we’d never seen, in places we’d never imagined. We’re still learning, all of us, in this before.

I’m grateful. That’s the truth. For every single minute, here now or after.