Contemplating the "luck of the Irish" (of which I'm a quarter) on this St. Patrick's Day, I thought I'd look back at the role it has played in my life to date. While most of the life my family shares can be ascribed to careful decision making and hard work, there have been moments, instances of blind luck, that genuinely changed our lives and, in at least one case, actually set them in motion.
There was luck in my childhood, but it was of the typical kind. I had parents who looked after me and provided for me. I was able to go to school. Perhaps the most uniquely lucky aspect of my first twenty years is that I met a group of friends (15 or so) that still get together every year, despite living all over the country. Odd that so many strange souls who would call me a friend lived in the same town, but this bit of luck was nothing compared to what happened in college.
The greatest piece of luck I have ever experienced was being hired as a music librarian for my work study job at UC Davis. I felt I was lucky to have the job from the beginning, but it would take a year and a half to discover just how fortuitous my hiring had been.
In my second year, a beautiful woman entered the library. I'd seen her before. She handed me her student ID in exchange for a CD that she was going to listen to in preparation for a concert coming up. She was part of the student orchestra. Two minutes later, she came back to ask me how to work the CD player (this being her second visit, it was the second time she'd asked for help). When she finished, we ended up talking. And we're still talking twenty years later. If I hand't gotten that music library job, chances are I never would've met my future wife and experienced all the adventures that have come with it. In recognition of this, I still ensure that all our audio equipment is overly complicated so that she still needs to seek me out to get it going. It's my little insurance policy.
That music library job led to meeting Sumie and, three years later, resulted in the next stroke of luck. Sumie had come to UC Davis in the middle of getting her law degree in Japan. She finished her school work in California, and then, instead of just staying here in the US, she decided to finish up her degree in Japan. As a result, I ended up having the best year of my life teaching English to a wacky group of kids.
Before I left for Japan I had some very close friends, but they were all on the west coast. After a year in Japan, I came back to California with life-long friends from all over the world. That decision to live abroad had the lucky impact of opening up the world and helping me to take chances. As a result, I wouldn't stay in California for long.
Another instance of luck was that Sumie was accepted to study medicine in New York. For a while, we were looking at living in Hershey Pennsylvania. I could very well have ended up working as a chocolate historian. But as things worked out, we ended up moving to what would become our favorite city in the world. We discovered our first apartment that we actually lived in together on the Upper West Side...
...and fell in love with a tiny apartment, the first real estate we ever bought, on the Upper East Side.
We even had a little girl along the way.
After ten years on the east coast, we thought we'd be there pretty much forever. But then luck stepped into our path again. Sumie was set to sign a contract with a nephrology group back east, but the contract had been delayed by the group's attorney. As a result, when she was contacted by a medical group out here in California, we thought we might as well at least hear them out. Five days later, we'd decided to move to the Bay Area. Virtually blind luck again, but what can I say, it's been good to us.
That little girl in New York has now grown into a toothless 1st grader...
...who has interesting ideas about hats,
but can work hard when she wants to. She recently graduated Japanese Kindergarten.
Over the years, Mimi has been joined by Christopher, our little Kuri. He's the only three year old who can pull off a bomber jacket with shorts and strawberry rubber boots.
He's also very good at looking tough hanging out the top of a 911.
And lastly, there's Mariko, who though only a year old, already has complete control over the entire family. She is the puppet master.
Somehow, amazingly, all of this goes back to that random day when someone thought I'd make a decent music librarian. And, as such, though it paid the least, it will always be the job for which I'm most thankful.
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