Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

by Mitch Albom

Everything in this world is music if you can hear it. Make a joyful noise, the psalm says.

I began to lean over, to see tiny miracles the way you saw them. Baby ducks running. Frogs hiding in the weeds. The wind lifting a leaf you were about to grab. One of the best things a child can do for an adult is to draw them down, closer to the ground, for clearer reception to the voices of the earth.

Look. It’s one of the shortest sentences in the English language. But we don’t really look, Chika. Not as adults. We look over. We glance. We move on. You looked. Your eyes flickered with curiosity. You caught fireflies and asked if they had batteries. You unearthed a penny and asked if it was “treasure.” And without prompting, you knew discovery should be shared.

Children wonder at the world. Parents wonder at their children’s wonder. In so doing, we are all together young.

They say eyes are the reflection of the soul, Chika, but your voice was its echo, and we miss it every day. It was all the things you are, or were, or are still somewhere else, when you are not here with me in the mornings, rolling on the maroon carpet.

as the years passed I wondered if he ever missed not having a carefree, youthful stage. Sometimes life throws a saddle on you before you are ready to run.

For many years, that was my perception of fatherhood, a place where a child can find sanctuary. Perhaps this is why I took over the orphanage. Perhaps I’ve grown into my father that way.