The Frijolito's 100th Day!

I grew up looking at this picture of me taken on 

my hundredth day, so I knew there was some significance to it and calculated when our baby's hundredth day would be.

Today I did a bit of hunting to find out what it all meant and discovered that on this day, people perform a weaning ceremony for their baby called Okuizome where they offer the baby a sumptuous (though strictly ceremonial) meal of foods like snapper, rice, pickled plum, clear soup and a stone (weird, I know, but it is Japan after all).  The baby doesn't actually eat any of it - he just gets these items touched to his lips while he probably thinks, "What is this and where the hell is my milk?!"

Anyway, the ritual meal and feeding is meant to wish the baby a life with abundance and without hunger. 

The reason I was compelled to do research was because when I had asked my mom about it, she seemed sketchy on the details.  Very sketchy.  Her inkling was that maybe it was to celebrate that the baby didn't die in 100 days so it will probably survive.  Weird, macabre, and totally Yoko.

The foods in the meal all have significance (like the snapper, tai, being associated with celebration or medetai, etc.) and the stone is supposed to represent strong teeth for the child.  As my mom didn't know about this Okuizome stuff, it follows that I did not have a stone ceremoniously touched to my mouth on the day pictured above, which could very well be the reason for my life-long dental issues and nothing to do with the fact that as a child I ate candy like it was its own essential food group.  

Though I know it's no substitute for proactive parenting (don't worry: I do plan to teach this kid about self-control and dental hygiene), don't think for a moment that I'll skip out on touching a stone to his mouth tonight.  If there was ever a perk to being half-Japanese, it's doing all these weird things with impunity.

It's almost sweet that she remembers what I looked like.

Tonight our friend Matt was over and my mom was enjoying some quality time with the little frijolito on her lap.  Matt asked her if she sees a resemblance to either John or me or if he looks like me when I was a newborn.

"Sometimes," she replied.  

"When he's pooping."

Occam of the future

Last night I was scraping off the label from a new metal spatchula when my mom says to me, "Where did you find the one sided laser?"

I looked at the razor in my hand and started laughing.

Someday when everything is digital this won't be funny much less understood. But until that day:

My mom recently bought a Kindle and has been enjoying using it to read books on this trip to the US.  She bought it not only because it's lighter than carrying around a bunch of books, but also because in Japan it is easier to find English language books for Kindle than in print.

The biggest problem turned out to be that she doesn't know which books to buy, so she asked John and me for some suggestions.  We looked up a Jonathan Franzen book on the Kindle store app and the search pulled up multiple versions of the same book.

One was more expensive than the other, which I thought was kind of weird for a digital medium. 

"Maybe that one is the hardback," my mom reasoned.

Hearty laughter ensued.

First date-night

Last night, John and I left the frijolito with my mom for a quick date and caught the second half of a jazz show at Cafe Stritch.  It was the first time to leave him in the care of someone and I definitely felt some pangs of separation anxiety as we drove away from the house, but he was fast asleep when we left plus we planned to be back before any needs arose, plus my mom is great with him, plus there are cell phones... and I know it's important to enjoy some time just John and me.

The show was fantastic and we got home with plenty of time before the baby's next feeding.  And though I knew nothing had gone wrong because we had not received any frantic calls from my mom, I was very anxious to know how the first babysitting had gone.

We opened the door, my mom popped around the corner and I asked how it'd gone.  

My mom looked really excited to let us know:

"NOT A BEEP!!"

Genuine gratitude naturally leads to hijinx

Despite my mom's request that I not give birth until she arrived to the Bay Area on August 4th, at the end of July we were surprised by the slightly early arrival of our beautiful son.  My mom arrived one week later and will be here for several weeks to fawn at the cuteness of her grandson and help around the house.

On the second day of her stay, after finally having eaten several proper homemade meals, I truly felt overwhelmingly thankful to have her here.  So much so that at the end of dinner, I decided to express my gratitude in a rare but genuine expression of my feelings.

"Thank you so much," I said, maybe tearing up a little, "for coming to help.  It really makes a huge difference just to have an extra pair of hands around and I am so thankful you are here!"

The blank stare from my mom rendered this tender moment totally awkward.  

"What did you say?" she asked me.

So I repeated my sentiment a little more perfunctorily. 

"Just that it is a real help to have an extra pair of hands to cook or take care of the baby is all."

"Ohhh," she said, "I thought you said 'extra pair of pants.' "

Sorry Babs...

Neel, a former student of my mom's, became like a brother to me not just because we got along but because we both derived filial pleasure from giving my mom a hard time.

I remember once she was scolding him about his playing posture, a weird combination of a teenage slouch paired with the twisted spine of a lazy violin player resting the left elbow on the torso .  She commented in exasperated tones, "If you just sat straighter, your playing would be so much better!"  to which Neel replied, "Yoko, if you just used articles, your English would be so much better!"

Point being, Neel and I always had a natural affinity. 

Last weekend, he and his wife Lucia stopped by our house en route back down to SoCal and we had a chance to skype with my mom while we were all together.  In catching her up to their news, Neel mentioned that Lucia just got back from touring with Barbara Streisand.

"Oh, is she still alive?" was the first thing my mom said.

"She's only 71," said Lucia.  "Same as YOU!" I added.  "Boy, you are harsh."

"Barbara can be very difficult to work with," my mom nonchalantly replied.

I had to stop the conversation.  

"BARBARA? What, you're on first name basis with her? Did you work with her or something?"

The answer, it turns out, is: yes.  

Apparently the diva-esque demand was Ms. Streisand's choosing Beethoven's Große Fuge as the background music for a scene where she is vacuuming.  

Of course my mom couldn't remember the title of the movie, but googling it turned it up on (of course) my dad's website and we found out it was a 1979 movie called 'The Main Event.'

Maybe I'll watch it if I can find it streaming somewhere.