Oh, on the contrary, some like it Japanese

This little frijolito loves books.  We have a select handful of Japanese language kids books that I read to him to the best of my ability, and John narrates according to their illustrations.  This leads to hilarity when the Anpanman character is interpreted as a friendly drunk with his shiny red nose and bicycle, or awkwardness when the little brown haired girl character in the pottybook about pooping is interpreted as “Mama,” but we make do and John John seems to be happy with our efforts.

My mom was here and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get more Japanese in the frijolito’s ear, so I brought out a few of the books she had given us (that had been in storage because he’s been too little anything but board books until recently).  Both have weird, slightly sad lessons...but that’s a different story.  

John John would bring books and ask to sit on her lap, so I would just passively observe the bed-time routine.  I took this picture – they are happy:

One of the times, he chose a board book of very selected Original Mother Goose Rhymes.  When we first inherited this book, I was surprised at how many of those rhymes were still there in my little grey cells.  And when my mom went to read them, I also realized how culturally exclusive, bizarre, and strange some are.  My mom did not have my same ingrained understading of them and responded accordingly.  There were some keepers.

  

Reaction from my mom, upon reading “Hey Diddle, Diddle,” out loud to John John:     “What a weird story.”

Reading No. 1 (misspellings indicate pronunciation):
“Pussy cat, pussy cat”

Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you bin?
 I’ve bin to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you, uh, 
what did you? do there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chain.
(Oh, chair.  The ‘R’ looked like an ‘N’)

John John started to get a little restless at this point.  This was not his mother’s Mother Goose.

Reading No. 2:

“Mary, Mary”

Mary, Mary quite…CONtrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle? Cockle? shells?
And pretty maids all in? a row.

I’m laughing now.  John John turns the page to what is arguably his favorite rhyme:

Reading No. 3:

“Pease Porridge”

Pea…peeez? What is that? Peeessse? 
(“It’s just pronounced ‘peas’," I told her)
Pease Porridge? Hot?

John John squirms to get off her lap. I thought he was done with Mother Goose and was going to go choose a new book. 

Nope.  He took the book from my mom, turned and gave it to me. “Read please Mama.” Then sat down in my lap.  I was dying of laughter and almost couldn’t read it myself.

Still surprising herself at 73

My mom is visiting the frijolito (and, incidentally, us parents, too) and just arrived from SoCal where she is teaching kids in San Juan Capistrano.  This past weekend, the friends with whom she was staying threw a surprise party for her.

A historical note: One time, in the early 70s before I was born, someone attempted to throw my mom a surprise birthday party.  She said it wasn't a surprise because people would come up to her and say, "I can't come to your party," and other things like that ruining the crucial element.  

I guess she found the experience disappointing enough that she thought she would spare her offspring such awful letdowns.  In grade school, friends would have surprise parties.  I remember begging for one, but I might as well have asked for a pony for the kind of resounding NO that came back every time.  The NO was always followed by this same one story. 

End result was that I never had a surprise party until one was kindly thrown for me by the family I nannied for, when I was in my late 20s.  I don't know in what context I would have mentioned the sad affair of being a child without a surprise party at my job, but clearly this emotional scar was deep.  Deep enough for me to apparently tell my boss, and enough for her to want to make it right by throwing me a little surprise birthday party with the kids.

The surprise was not ruined, even by a seven-year-old who had the responsibility of getting me to take him straight home from school – not out to a playground as was our normal routine – without arousing suspicion.  Guess seven-year-olds can keep a secret better than adults in the 70s, though somehow that makes sense to me.

Anyway, so back to 2015:  My mom had this surprise party thrown for her. It's a roaring good time.  She excitedly showed us a photo montage someone made: of the food, and people, and my mom and Masako playing shamisen, and another Japanese lady dancing awaodori.  Clearly everyone was having so much fun.  

"It was so much fun!" my mom enthused.

"I thought you hated surprise parties," I countered, with just the tiniest hint of bitterness, because how can one ever truly fully let go of the crushed spirit of one's eight-year-old self who was denied her one true dream?

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "I thought I did, but apparently I didn't."

...

Looks like surprise parties are back on the menu.

It's still better than $5 in a freshly laundered pair of jeans, or even change in the couch cushions...

I wrote this god-knows-when.  I think last time my mom was visiting, as I vaguely recall the moment and I picture her sitting at our dining table.  Saying, with some effort (and this below is what I just discovered in my drafts with no further explanation):

Booger-y.
BURRgury.

I love to find these forgotten treasures.

And, in case you were wondering, she was trying to say Bulgaria.

This is what a mother's nightmares are made of...

We were chatting via Skype, catching up on the news du jour and listening to my mom make all manner of ridiculous noises at the frijolito as he crawled about.  He is always happy to see her - amazing that he can recognize his baba-chan on an iphone screen!

She often calls at this time, which is Saturday morning in Japan just before her student arrives for her lesson.  It's never a long call but I know they both like it - these calls have certainly replaced her checking in on me, her kid!  

*ring, ring* me: "Hello?"  her: "Is he awake?"  me: "Not yet."  her: "Okay, call me when he gets up.  Bye."  *click and dial tone*

Maybe it's not that harsh and in a way I should be happy about this change but in either case I digress...

As we finished up this call, my mom suddenly jumps up from her seat and says, "I have to go put on coffee - my student likes it."  

This would seem fine except that once this student arrived while we were still online together and my mother introduced us over Skype.  And she is 5.

"What?  Isn't your student five?  You are giving a five-year-old coffee??!!"

"She likes it - she doesn't even take any milk or sugar.  Just black," my mom informs me, as if that makes it any better.  "Besides, I'm making decaf."

I launch in to my spiel about how caffeine isn't good for kids but in Japan who knows how much green tea or even coca cola this child consumes.  Maybe a weekly black coffee isn't the end of the world.  Though I did have a nightmare this morning where my mom was attempting to feed the frijolito copious amounts of cake telling me he likes it!  I woke up with a racing pulse, my screaming protestations still fresh in my head.

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."

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.' "

Yoko's Koan (the official beginning of FCTG)

Having found ourselves in a position of needing to secure a new set of wheels, my mom had some parenting advice to dispense about when we do:

When you do get a new car, don't make your baby pee in it.

Hearing these words of wisdom made me realize that this little frijolito's crazy Tokyo grandmother is going to be a whole new ballgame.  I can't wait to mine this treasure trove.

Here she is in the dress rehearsal for the previously mentioned play which had its run this weekend.  Alien-violin-teacher-crazy-tokyo-mother-and-soon-to-be-grandmother.  This is going to be a lot of fun.