The Northern Lights and Lemon Water

Lately, I’ve been drinking lemon water every morning.

I cut a lemon in half, squeeze the juice, and dilute it with water. 

That’s all there is to it.

It’s a habit I picked up from my friend Chiaki.

Last month, I went to Sweden with her to see the Northern Lights.

In both Stockholm and Abisko, Chiaki would squeeze lemons every morning and make fresh lemon water for the two of us.

The trip itself came together quite suddenly.

It was originally planned by one of our junior high school classmates as part of a Europe trip, but she had to cancel at the last minute.

She asked me, “Could you go instead?”

Chiaki—another classmate from the same time—had already booked flights and a night train for their Aurora trip.

The dates could be changed, but the tickets could not be cancelled, so she would have to go alone.

But going to see the Northern Lights alone felt somehow too lonely for her.

To be honest, I had never been particularly interested in the Northern Lights.

I was born and raised in Tokyo, where the night sky means neon lights.

Even the stars are hard to see there.

Rather than feeling that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness the wonders of nature, my small, practical feelings won out: 

I wanted to pay off my mortgage, and I didn’t want to take paid leave.
My very limited capacity warned me not to get carried away.

However, the two of them were persistent.

They offered, “We’ll cover the hotel,” and said, “It would really help, and make us happy, if you came.”
Hearing words like that, which I don’t often receive, I was persuaded.

It even began to feel as though life had prepared this as a special arrangement just for me.

Before I knew it, I had purchased a Scandinavian Airlines ticket, bought a night train ticket, and installed an Aurora tracking app.

In the end, the Aurora trip loosened my tightly held heart.

When the body moves, the mind moves as well.

Standing on a vast frozen lake, looking up at an empty night sky with Chiaki,

there was a spread of stars I had never seen before.

In the middle of the night on the lake, there was almost no sound except for Chiaki’s voice, and hardly any people.

Chiaki started doing tai chi on the ice for fun, and I followed her.

As we moved awkwardly through the motions, thoughts of my mortgage, and of the colleagues covering for me at work, quietly slipped away.

A month has passed since I returned to the Netherlands.

The memory of that special time is gradually fading, and before I can even organize those memories, new everyday matters come in one after another.

Travel is a strange thing.
You step outside the frame, and when you return to it, even a sudden and dramatic change returns just as dramatically to what it was before, and life becomes ordinary again as if nothing had happened.

When I squeeze lemons every morning, I find myself wondering how Chiaki is doing.

The other day, she said she had suddenly remembered the trip and found herself quietly giggling.

Sometimes I think that this lemon water is what I brought back from that Aurora trip—
a trace of the journey.