My eldest daughter called me yesterday and I could hear her voice overflowing with happiness through the phone. “Mom! I’m so happy! Super happy!”

She was happy because she had finally gotten in touch with her father (my ex-husband), who lives in Australia and whom she had not heard from for the past week. She found out that he was in Switzerland and would soon be awarded an international literary prize.

She said that he embraced her over the phone with love and an unprecedented smile, a happy voice, and a joyful expression.

My ex-husband, with his dark past as an exiled Romanian poet, his delicacy and difficulty in adapting to society, and the violent mood swings characteristic of poets, would often stare forlornly into the distance and then suddenly drop a bomb on us.

We had been living in constant fear that a missile might fall at any moment. Trying to prevent that from happening made our daily lives almost unlivable.

But this is a world where nothing is good or bad. Because of this bomb, it was like we were always in a fighting game. (The feeling of being “right in a fighting game” is something that Instructor Kishimoto taught us at the Miross Intensive course.)

I realized that even when my parents passed away, I did not have time to sink into grief because I was always in the middle of the game, receiving bombs in all directions. As a result, I could live without having to think about what was to come.

However, my ex-husband’s mood swings were like a Shakespearean play, alternating between tragedy and comedy several times a day, and our family, at the mercy of these waves, never felt happy, balanced, or secure.

Then, with a single word from Ms. Kishimoto during the Miross Intensive course, I realized that this was a spectacular, dramatically colored, self-made program to encounter Miross!

I had no idea things would turn out the way they did! I couldn’t help but Skype him to congratulate him for the first time in ages. He told me how he was living in Switzerland, and it’s as if he was saying that he never thought such a happy time would come.

For the first time, I saw a look of sincere happiness on the face of my ex-husband, who had looked grim throughout the 33 years since we met. And for the first time, the whole family is laughing wholeheartedly!

The title of his prize-winning book is Parallel Universe, and my younger daughter designed the book cover. It was amazing to think that this was a mirror of our family of four, and I was beyond amazed at the manga-like unfolding of the story as described by Ms. Kishimoto.

Dear Mr. Rossco and Ms. Midori, Although I only know you both from books, I feel full of gratitude for you!! This is the norm in Miross, isn’t it? Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this day would come.