Moms

Me, in Nagoya, Japan, 1986. It's a warm spring afternoon, a Sunday, and I go to a park near the apartment building I live in. Japan is not noted for having much greenery in urban areas, and Nagoya, which is known for its manufacturing of cars, is not an exception. When I go to my office to pick up teaching supplies, I look out the ninth-floor window and am amazed that all I see, stretching to the horizon, is concrete and glass.
Back to the park. I'm enjoying sitting in the shade and I'm reading a book, looking up now and then to people watch. I look up and see a woman and her daughter. The daughter is around six or seven. They have a rubber ball with them and they begin to throw it back and forth, the trajectory the ball makes an invisible cord connecting the two. The girl is delighted with every catch and throw. The mother is as delighted. Both laugh with pure pleasure.
Nothing I ever saw made me want to be a parent more than this, but I never became a parent despite that, as much as I tried.