My given name is Naoko Nakamura. My married name is Naoko Tanaka. And once, for a short time in between, it was something else—a nontraditional name from an unconventional wedding ceremony held under an ancient tree of flickering lights.
We did not have an ordained priest to perform the ceremony. We were not married in a sacred shrine, and I did not have the three customary costume changes.
But I had love.
That evening, night blanketed the village of little houses and bundled it under a cloak of black, but the orange western sky clung to its horizon, peeking, curious. The humid air kissed my cheeks as I stepped from the porch onto the ground, and when I rounded the corner, I gasped.
Paper lanterns lined the pebbled path and butter-gold orbs illuminated the trees like the yellow hotaru, fireflies, swarming after July’s heavy rains. So many that when I walked under their branches and looked up, they were like giant umbrellas shielding me from a hundred falling stars.
With a smile, I ran my hand down my gown to feel its lush texture under my fingertips. I had never felt more beautiful or more nervous. My insides crackled in excitement like a sparkler’s flare, a charged path that raced through me from toes to fingertips.
Ahead, at the center of the small waiting crowd, was my soon-to-be husband. The lantern’s light reflected in his eyes, causing the white wisps at the center to dance like sails across the bluest ocean, and I was lost in them. In him. In that moment.
Each step I took brought me closer to my future and farther away from my family. It was a contrast of extremes in every sense, but I had somehow found my place between them. That was what Buddha called the middle way. The correct balance of life.
I called it happy.
A life with love is happy. A life for love is foolish. A life of if only is unbearable. In my seventy-eight years, I have had all three.
Grandmother would often say, “So it is with sorrow. So it is with happiness. It will pass.” But even in my old age, when I close my eyes, I can still see the distant flicker of a thousand tiny lights.