It’s a small world.

Back in 1997, a little video game called Final Fantasy VII was released on Sony Playstation in Japan. I was a freshman in college at Auburn. The English release wouldn’t be for another 7-8 months, and being the huge video game nerd that I was (still am?), I had to play it ASAP. So I imported it.

Of course, the entire thing was in this bizarre language that I couldn’t even begin to understand. There weren’t even any recognizable letters to look up in a dictionary. The whole thing confused me, but I was determined. I got some basic language books and a dictionary special order from the bookstore (there wasn’t much in the way of online resources way back then), and managed to fumble my way through to the ending.

In the fall of 1997, going into my sophomore year, I had a choice of electives to make. I’d always enjoyed studying languages, having studied Latin, French, and even Russian in high school, along with an aborted attempt to learn Irish on my own, so I decided to see what languages Auburn had to offer. As luck would have it, they offered two years of Japanese language, and I knew that was what I had to do. At this point in my life I had never even met a Japanese person, knew very little about the country, but was eager to dive in and make the best of it.

It was one of the smaller classes I ever took in college. I don’t think there were more than 12 or 13 of us in total all year. I made a couple of friends that I lost touch with over the years, but one person always stayed in my mind as having a huge impact on the future direction of my life–my teacher. She wasn’t much older than us students, and was one of two Japanese language teachers at Auburn. At the end of the year we all rode up to Atlanta to visit a Japanese grocery store and have a nice meal at a Japanese restaurant–something that wasn’t easy to find back in 1998.

And then the news came that the Japanese program at Auburn was going to be cancelled. There would be no second year for us. Our teacher would be moving back to Japan. I was pretty bummed out. I ended up taking some French classes to round out my electives, and after college I moved to Holland for a while, but I’d always wanted to get back to my Japanese studies and kept up my own personal learning as best I could.

A few years later I got the opportunity to meet another Japanese girl and learn more Japanese. Her name was Aiko, and we all know how that story ended–she decided to marry me. It’s been almost 23 years since we first met via a silly AOL personal ad. Five kids, four states, and two countries later, we’re now living back in the south, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

One of our kids, as many of you know, has dwarfism. We spend a lot of time dealing with various special needs situations with school and daily life. At this point we’ve got a lot of experience in that realm, and when an opportunity arises to share our knowledge and love with that community, we do our best to pass on everything we can.

In Seattle we helped out with a group of families–mostly from our kids’ school and a couple of local churches–who put together an event for special needs kids with more severe disabilities than dwarfism, an event where they could come hang out with a bunch of other kids their age and just have a fun time. There were games, crafts, a petting zoo, visits from the fire department (who of course hosed everyone down from the fire hose, I mean, who doesn’t love that?!). It not only brightened those kids’ days, but it also brightened our own hearts and helped make us better people too.

After we moved to Atlanta a few years ago, Aiko got connected with a Japanese church that’s almost literally a few blocks from our house. We’d visited once before, years and years ago, and she saw this as a great opportunity to connect with the local Japanese Christian community (a community that, even in the most densely-populated Japanese cities, is extremely tiny). They had just brought a new pastor from Japan, and, as fate would have it, one of their children is a special needs girl.

Once you’re involved with a special needs child, you start to run into other special needs families, and Aiko and the pastor’s wife found there were many to serve in the area–many of them Japanese. What a wonderful opportunity–the ability to serve the Japanese special needs community with a church right around the corner!

Aiko’s been helping them out for over a year now. They meet every week, and function a lot like a support group. It’s always good to have a support group, no matter what issues you’re dealing with. It’s always comforting to know that others are facing the same challenges as you, and extremely rewarding to be able to help another family out who’s at a different stage in their lives than you are.

Today the church hosted a barbecue for the group. We all gathered at the church–it was a beautiful spring day–and grilled burgers, veggies, smores, and I think the boys started grilling rocks, pine cones, dead grass… I have to admit at first I was hesitant to go. I’m naturally an introvert and it’s spring break, and I just wanted a day to rest. When we pulled up to the church I commented that I don’t know anyone here, but decided that it’d be a great chance for me to see first hand what Aiko’s so involved with.

I’m so glad I chose to go.

I met a lot of amazing people and their amazing children. Our own kids had a great time (and some of them had been reluctant to go, too). I spent much of my time socializing with another of the dads who is also in software development, and talking about how our profession had changed with COVID, lamenting the layoffs in the industry, and generally having a good time getting to know each other.

About an hour into the barbecue, another family showed up, this one biracial like us–an American husband with a Japanese wife. They had a couple of kids in tow, an older son and a teenaged daughter. Aiko called me over as soon as they showed up, saying she wanted to introduce me to the husband. As I was walking over, she was saying “He’s from Auburn, too!”

I introduce myself, and he asks when I was there.

“Oh, from 96 to 2000.”

He turned to his wife. “Oh, that’s about the same time we were there. I think we were there until what, 98?”

“Yeah, that’d be a couple of years’ overlap.” I have a habit of stating the obvious.

His wife introduces herself. He mentions that he was in grad school at the time, while his wife was at Auburn teaching Japanese.

“Oh, that’s funny, I took Japanese there.”

She looked at me with an expression that felt insanely familiar but I could not place it.

“You took Japanese there in what year?”

“97-98.”

“That was the last year of the program.”

“I know! I was so disappointed when it ended. Wait, does that mean…”

“There were two teachers…”

“I was in first year.”

“…and I taught the beginners…”

As it turns out, she was my Japanese teacher. The woman who introduced me to the language, the culture, the people, the woman who instilled a love and respect for Japan before I ever knew how big a role it would play in my life.

Within a few moments we both remembered each other, and I even remembered her husband–who was her fiancé at the time–who had come with us on that trip to Atlanta at the end of the year. We spent a lot of time talking about the past three decades since we’d had any contact. They’d lived in Japan for a long time, then in Birmingham, and finally settled in Atlanta. We’d lived in Orlando, Tokyo, Orlando again, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and now Atlanta.

It was surreal, to say the least. The person who started me off on a journey that ultimately led to the life I live today with the wonderful family I have now, was there at this gathering where we could now serve her and her family in the ways they need it. Almost thirty years later. I’ve been thinking about how crazy this encounter was all day.

I think we’re going to try to get our families together more. It’s almost a requirement, right? Almost like fate?

Full circle.

Postscript: As she left the barbecue, she mentioned that she probably had some pictures from back then. She sent them within the hour.

Good grief I was such a dork in 1998.