The Thread

Every day, at around midday Tokyo time, my friend Lisa sends me her Wordle result, a daily word puzzle that ends with a small grid of coloured squares to share, I send mine back.

That’s it. No message attached. No “how are you?” Just a small check in landing in my phone from New York, where she is somewhere in her previous evening while I’m in the middle of the next day.

I play mine first — Tokyo is always ahead — then I wait for hers. When it arrives it lands like a small flag,  I’m still here. We’re still doing this.

We’ve been doing it for years. It started without discussion and has continued the same way. No agreement. It just became our thing.

Here’s what I’ve noticed. If I don’t receive her grid for a few days, I reach out. Not to ask about Wordle. To check if she’s okay. The silence where a small group of coloured squares should be has become a kind of signal. Her absence from my phone says something her words might not yet be ready to say.

She does the same for me.

We’ve never talked about this system. We didn’t design it. It emerged the way most good things do. Quietly, from repetition and care.

Very occasionally, a photo surfaces. From Tokyo twenty three years ago, when we both lived here with our small children and no idea of what our lives were going to become. Or from a visit to New York, or her landing back here in Tokyo. In some of them our kids are tiny. In some of them we look so young.

When one arrives I feel something I don’t have a precise word for. Seen across time, maybe. Reminded that I am a person with a long history, and that someone who was there for that history is still here in my life now.

Across thirteen time zones. Still here.

I’ve been thinking about what this actually is.

It isn’t a check in the way we normally mean.  There’s no emotional labour involved. No performance of connection. Just a small, consistent gesture that says, I’m here. You’re there. We haven’t forgotten each other.

What holds our friendship together isn’t usually the big conversations. It’s the thread. The small, almost invisible thing that runs underneath everything. The photo. The occasional video chats, The Wordle grid arriving at midday from the other side of the world.

The thread doesn’t say “I love you” out loud.

But it is, in fact, I love you.

This morning my Wordle came first, as it always does. I played it, sent my result, and waited.

Just after midday, Lisa’s arrived.