Eyes

On Christmas I was standing in my grandparents’ shower — the one I’m too tall for. Thinking, as the high-pressure water carved a path down my back, about a photograph I hadn’t seen in at least 15 years. Nonetheless, just as I felt the stinging water etch itself into my flesh, there is a permanent etching of that photo in my memory. The photo is of me and my great-grandfather on our shared birthday party in June of 2000. In front of me was a birthday cake with a solitary candle in the shape of a 1 and in front of my great-grandfather 2 9-shaped candles softly illuminated the face of a man who would be dead within a year.

I went to visit the spot in Vancouver where he was born on the Thursday before Battle of BC 5. The “red shack” is now an empty lot next to a derelict looking Taoist temple. Right across the street is the park where he played baseball for the (relatively) famous Asahi Japanese-Canadian baseball team over 100 years ago. It’s hard to understand what 100 years means — it seems and like an insurmountable time ago and yet 100 years ago someone I shared a cake with was a young man.

Eizaburo Kitagawa! What a mouthful! No wonder all the white people called you Eddie and surrounded by white people no wonder eventually everyone called you Eddie. I didn’t know anyone in my family had a Japanese name for about half my life — I suppose I gave myself one too.

“The water pressure in my grandparent’s shower is really too much,” I mentally grumbled as I returned to the present. I, nonetheless, kept thinking of my great-grandfather's name and, just as how a stone erodes under a current until it’s smooth, I realised that his name kind of sounds like eyes. Then, quite abruptly, I thought that Eyes sounded like a pretty cool name. Why not add a 4th one then?

So the year is 2025 and I am adding yet another name.

Hi! My name is Justin & Ume & Adelaide & Eyes.

I meant to write this for New Years Day, but since I didn’t have the time I am doing it now!

Here's an eye an an example!