On the Shinkansen passing through Hiroshima I think about events of twenty plus years ago and possible other lives.

When I was young I never understood the phrases uttered by my elders.

“I haven’t been to Italy since the ’80’s,” they would say, in ’97 or ’04. “Loved it, but I don’t know, it’s probably changed”.

Why hadn’t they been back, I wondered, in ten years? What had kept them away if they loved that earlier trip? Surely I would not make that mistake, surely I would return more frequently to places I love.

I loved our time in Hiroshima, twenty two years ago.

More shocking than the gap, though, is the distance between what I imagined then and now. That trip was to a place neither of us lived, just friends exploring the world. It was the kind of trip I assumed would be common, would be a regular part of life. After all we were young and had already been so many places.

We are older, now, and have been so, so many more places. The lists grow long enough that we forget trips, forget why we were in one city or another. Some of them we’ve even done together: a weekend in Oakland, two years ago now. A long weekend in Colorado, fifteen years ago. Weddings, ours and others.

It’s still too short a list, for a friendship that’s spanned twenty five years. Life happens, of course. That’s what the younger me didn’t know, or couldn’t understand. Life happens, not in the big moments but in the day to day, in the small commitments to sports teams and jobs, to family and fitness. Life happens whether we do or do not.

On this Sunday, passing through Hiroshima at high speed, we are on our way to see another friend, or to see another friend’s family. His daughter is eleven, his widow grown wise in a way we’d prefer not to. They understand, in ways I still don’t, what it means to live in the present. That’s why we are on this train, why they will meet us at the station. So we can spend one evening together, wandering Fukuoka. One evening, after five years, is not long enough. It’s barely enough to hear all that’s happened, to hear the high points of our plans for the future, of her school, of work, of houses and retirement and parents.

One evening is not long enough for me to feel comfortable remembering, to feel comfortable telling stories. Next time, I tell myself.

And thinking of Hiroshima, of that trip with another old friend, now twenty years passed, I resolve: don’t let them wait. Don’t let the next time be so long. Whatever the cost.

“Come to Japan in the fall,” I tell my friend in LA via text the next morning. “We have to make it happen.”

“November,” he says, and my spirits rise.