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I love fresh cut flowers but we don't have them in the house too often because my mom doesn't like buying them. My grandma loved cut flowers so my mom was constantly having to buy them toward the end of my grandma's stay on earth. I guess she got sick of them and had once told me that so I thought she just didn't like them. "That's why I have so many dried flowers in the house," she told me by way of explanation. She will get them from time to time, though, which surprised me. Once I asked her why she was going to buy flowers because I thought she hated them. "I don't hate them," she told me. "I just don't like them." I suppose there is a difference.
Speaking of flowers, my mom's friend Ogura san, carpenter extraordinaire, came to help out with tree trimming earlier in the week and he brought about a dozen beautiful long-stemmed roses for my mom for her birthday.
I happened upon her as she was trimming them to put in a vase. She had the scissors ready to cut more than half-way up the stem and she comments, "It seems like such a waste to cut off the long stem!"
"Don't cut the stem off!" I blurted out. "That's what makes these special!"
"Oh."
"They sell the short stemmed kind at the florist, too, you know," Ogura san piped in casually. So my mom found a vase that would hold these long stemmed beauties and starts filling it with water. "Please don't use hot water," he requests. He has a dry sense of humor and his quick, perfect timing is awesome. Sadly, so much of it gets lost in translation. There are many a thing he has said that still make me laugh like crazy.
When I got home from work, I went to the kitchen to try to suss out the lunch situation. I observed a pan on the stove with three eggs sitting in a shallow bath of lukewarm water. I picked one up and held it up to my mom, who was sprawled out on the couch trying to stay cool in the recently warming weather.
"What's this?" I asked her. Her reply?
"Egg."
Naturally.
Today was my mom's birthday. Everyone think her happy birthday. I'm sure she appreciates it. I don't know if it's that I'm getting used to her ways or, more likely, because I'm becoming like her, but as the months wile away fewer things are popping out to me as post-able material. But, as I said, it is her birthday and I want to take a moment to recount a little nothing moment that I feel accurately represents her true spirit.
We were walking together toward the train station. I don't remember when or why, just that it was fairly recent. The day was not too cold, a little bit rainy and humid. We came to a small intersection and were nearly run over by people on bicycles holding umbrellas coming from both directions. As I recall, it was two from the front and one coming from behind. She was walking along pretty blind to any possible catastrophe; luckily my eagle eyes had seen the two bicyclists ahead and I'd heard the warning bell from the bike behind. Ascertaining the potential hurt on the horizon, I turned and pulled my mother out of the way. A heroic move (if I do say so myself) that avoided a lot of pain and suffering for both of us. Anyway, it really was a near miss, but before I had finished breathing my sigh of relief, what do you think she did immediately?
She ran out into the street against the cross walk signal to jaywalk to the other side. Obviously.
I could hardly believe her. Fortunately there were no cars. But somehow this 'caution to the wind,' blindered existence has gotten her farther along than my (soon to be) 31 years. I must give credit to where it's due. I don't know how she's done it, but I certainly can't refute the fact that she has. Happy Birthday!
We stopped at a konbini (which is the Japanese word for convenience store, which, unlike any States side, actually are full of convenience) to get some coffee as we hit the road. Shirking away from the coffees in cans which are also readily available, I bought us each a cup from new brand of coffee which my mother had tried yesterday - it's called Mt. Rainier. It comes pre-packaged in what looks like any to-go cup from an espresso bar and this place was selling several varieties. You could differentiate because the colors on the cups varied but as far as what the actual differences were, anyone's guess was as good as mine since they all basically said 'espresso latte.' My mom had gotten the one that said 'Premium' (and whose only other difference, aside from the word 'premium' in front of the words 'espresso latte,' was that it was ¥50 more expensive than the regular kind); she'd said it was really good yesterday, so I got it again. It was pretty damn good.
As she drank it in the car, she commented, "They must put something in this coffee."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Like, drugs or something," she replied.
"Why?" I laughed.
"Because, every time I taste it, I think 'Oh, this is so good!' Every time it touches my tongue I think it. It's not normal!"
"Are you sure it's the coffee's fault? Perhaps it is you who are not normal."
I don't think there's anyone else in my life who would immediately attribute the deliciousness of something to it being spiked with drugs. I tried to convey this to her but maybe I should have just said "Yeah..."
We'd bought some walnuts near a temple in Hakusan on our trip and they've been sitting in a bowl with a nut-cracker for a few days now. Today, my mom told me that she'd tried to crack one open but it was too hard. "So, I tried smashing it with a hammer, and look what it did to that cutting board Ogura san made! I even wrapped it in a towel first."
I thought I'd give it a try, too, and damn if it wasn't the hardest nut I've ever tried to crack! I gave up and sat down. "You're right. It's too hard!" I told her.
"They came with directions," she then told me, "that said to boil them first, but I'd never heard of that so I threw the directions away." I nearly had a heart-attack in the laughing fit that followed. She still doesn't understand what I found so funny. I'm still laughing.
I noticed a pair of unfamiliar grandma-like sandals in our genkan-entryway and thought maybe there was someone here. So I asked my mom, but she said no and why do I ask. "Because there are a pair of old granny shoes in the genkan that I've never seen before."
"Oh, those are mine," she tells me.
"Those granny shoes?" I ask.
"Yes, I thought I'd start wearing them from now...," she responds.
I thought about it for a minute.
"Because you're getting old or because it's getting warm?"
She laughed so I thought she was going to say, "Both" but she didn't say anything at all. Sometimes her actions are super CB*
* Yay! Footnote number 2
cho bimyo means 'very hard to tell' - I recently read an article about this kind of Japanese that they are calling KY-style Japanese. I want to bring it to the US because if it's possible to make something that already is kind of meaningless to me even more meaningless while somehow retaining some significance, then I'LL DO IT.
I happened upon her as she was trimming them to put in a vase. She had the scissors ready to cut more than half-way up the stem and she comments, "It seems like such a waste to cut off the long stem!"
