The Promised Meeting Without a Date

(Regarding this article,
it is a fictional case
that has been layered, processed, and modified
from several different cases.

Please be aware in advance
that this article remains
within the scope of the duty of confidentiality
borne by mental health professionals.)

——Thoughts circulate.

Carrying wishes.
Carrying prayers.

...

There was a married couple.

Spring.

Swallows came to the eaves of the house where the two lived.

It was the wife who found them first.

"Swallows are here."

When the husband went outside after being told that, the small black shadows circled the house
a few times,

and after a while, they flew off somewhere.

That was all for that year.
They did not see the black shadows again.

Another year.

Swallows came to the eaves of the house where the two lived again.

The couple watched the scene from the dining table.

"Perhaps they are going to build a nest."

The wife said.
Looking out the window, the husband

"That would be nice,"

he replied.

The small black shadow
after a while
flew off somewhere.

That year, that was it.
I never saw the black shadow again.

...

Before they knew it, the two of them
at the eaves of their house
had begun to wish
that a swallow would come.

And then,

spring came again.

The one who spotted it first
was my wife again.

"Hey, look."

When I went outside after being told that,
a small black bird was flying back and forth repeatedly.

Carrying mud, carrying dead grass,
it was gradually forming the shape of a nest.

The couple watched the progress almost every day.

...

"I had always been hoping
that a swallow would build a nest."

Later on,
the couple told me that happily.

They would always check before leaving for work in the morning.

And,
when returning home, to see if
anything had changed while they were away,
they would look up at the eaves first thing.

The nest grew little by little.

However,
the more they cared,
the more they worried.

"Maybe we shouldn't
get too close."

"If we make too much noise,
they might leave before laying eggs."

The two of them naturally
began to talk about such things.

The nest gradually took shape.

But,

they didn't know if there were any eggs.

One day,

the couple talked about swallows,
and after a brief silence, they smiled faintly.

“These swallows
are our salvation.”

...

—Years of fertility treatment.

The piling up of failures and
the experience of loss.

It was

a story where the next page
could not be turned

and

a meeting
without a promised date.

It was also that.

The long, long time

between such wishes and reality,
the couple simply,

earnestly walked through.

I was simply
there by their side.