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.

A discerning taste

We arrived to Tokyo with an 11pm touch down.  I won't say that the 11 hour flight, the first international flight with the frijolito, was harrowing, but that would only be because I wish to forget it all together.

Exhausted, sleep deprived, I was so glad to see my mom upon exiting customs in Haneda.

On the drive home, she was telling us about this special wagu beef that is the highest classification of quality, called A5.  She had gone to this butcher and was going to get the second to highest grade because the price differential between A5 and, assumedly, A4 was so vast that she didn't think it was worth the difference.  But the butcher told her that it was worth the price.  So she did - and used this A5 beef to make sukiyaki.  "It really tasted amazing!" she said.  

"I wonder what makes A5 beef so different?" I mused in my sleep deprived, manic mind set.

"The taste," she said definitavely.

"I mean, what makes makes the taste different?" I clarified.

"The flavor is better," she answered.

I am returned to the land of my forefathers.  Let the hilarity begin.

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.

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."

Feeling and Nothingness

The past two weeks have been a frenzy of preparations to leave this city that has been home to me for years now. The last box is sealed, all the cabinets are empty and the quiet silence that is no computer, no TV, no radio has given me a space to pause and consider and finally, after all this, feel sad to be leaving. It's been hard not to let emotions get the upper-hand when looking at the distant Manhattan skyline as I walk toward the subway, a view I saw on my way to work every weekday for so long, or looking at the beautiful decay of the brick railroad apartment buildings on my block, or at the tears in my 93-year-old neighbors eyes when she says she will always remember me and John and "Yo quiero mucho mucho," or, or, or. The list is growing. 

I spoke to my mom tonight and told her I was feeling a bit sad now that the busy-ness has subsided. I remembered that she also moved west after living in New York in the late 60s, so I asked her, "What did you feel when you left New York?"  There was a pregnant pause before she made her considered and thoughtful reply:

"Nothing."

I won't reiterate my firm stance that my mother may be a robot, but I forgive her this because a) she's always looking forward which is a good lesson for me (who is always looking back)  lest I be turned in to a pillar of salt and b) she said the word 'tish' again during the conversation and it doesn't get much cuter than that!!

New York: I'm gonna miss you. But I'll be back.

A rock and a hard place

My mom suffers the same inclination of many people from her generation which is to refer to all people of Asian descent as 'Orientals,' a term that, growing up in the PC 80s, was eradicated from my vocabulary long ago but persists in hers despite my valiant efforts to update her outmoded terminology. Or maybe it's in spite of my efforts, but I digress. Talking to her about perpetuating this semi-racist usage only inspires her to argue about her rights since she herself is Oriental. My people-are-not-rugs-logic has never gotten me anywhere.

On her trip to NYC in February, of course she said Oriental and I expected to have this perennial interaction of me saying, "Use 'Asian'" and her saying, "Why?" followed by the usual back-and-forth ending with her above-mentioned go-to justification: "I'm one so I can say it if I want to."

Not to say that we didn't have just that, but after the requisite (and now more than two-decades old) song-and-dance, my mom paused, looked at me thoughtfully then announced her compromise.

"Well, can I just call myself a Jap then?"

A rock and a hard place.

I swear to God this really happened.

Abbot and Costello have nothing on us:
Y: You know, I found that in your room today.
N: (abject terror) WHAT?! 
Y: My metronome.
N: Oh! I thought you were going to say mukade. Don't scare me like that!
Y: (enters my room) Ha ha. I forgot about mukade.
N: Well, I haven't.
She looks at the kimono I have hanging up air-pressing wrinkles out before I have to wear it on Wednesday.
Y: This is nice!
N: Yeah, I'm going to wear it Wednesday to the sobetsukai.
Y: Where's mine? 
I'd sent three out for cleaning; they'd belonged to my grandmother and hadn't seen the light of day since whenever, a long time ago. Two I will bring with me back to the US. One is a formal kimono of the style of a married woman, with the Matsuda crest on it. My mom told me I should have it cleaned for her. 
N: Over there in the wrapping.
We open the package and look at it.
Y: That's not mine. I've never seen it before.
N: Yeah, I know. It was baba's.
Y: You're not going to take it with you?
N: No, I can't wear it because you can only wear it if you're married.
Y: But, I'm not married.
N: Argh! You know what I mean! Anyway, Sumie-san said that you can wear it to a formal event, like if I ever get married or whatever, you can wear it to my wedding.
Y: Will you get married then, so I can wear this kimono?
N: Ha ha ha!
Y: Really. It doesn't matter to who.

We are not translators, not by a long shot!

I have found myself in a position where I am having to attempt to translate some of the photo captions from my picasa site. It is inordinately difficult. My mom and I struggled through a few, agreeing and disagreeing on the Japanese or the English or both. Talk about vexation! We were not even speaking a language by the time we took a break. These words actually passed my mom's lips: "Like I’m always looking for a new word kind of way." Wha? Meaning is completely up for grabs. I'm sure that's not English either, but I'm beyond caring right now.
We arrived at the photo of the girl with her cell phone down the back of her pants. The caption, "From this girl, I learned the best place to store your cell phone is your butt-crack," seemed straight forward enough, so I was typing the Japanese as my mom quickly and easily dictated her translation because she, too, thought it should be a breeze. Oh, how wrong we were.

Here is her Japanese translation retranslated back into English:
"From this girl, I learned the best place to store your cell phone is your butt-hole."

I almost laughed out my lung.

A clue: the haves and have-nots.

There is a store in Japan called Zoff that has inexpensive but cute eye wear and I decided that I should buy a pair or two while I'm here because glasses, like belts, are a useful tool but shouldn't be relegated to simple utilitarianism. Why use a piece of rope when you have your snazzy Western belt buckle, right? So, I bought a pair a while back. I hadn't really worn them much, though, because they are a little bit more delicate than my hunk o' plastic frames that can take a lickin and keep on tickin. But last night, I was going out to dinner with a former student and I decided I should wear the new ones. So I put them on and to my extreme surprise, I realized they are vaguely reminiscent of Sarah Palin's glasses. Well, what can you do? It's not as though I bought them because of that plus it seems unlikely in terms of fashion no-no's that her eye wear choices will go the way of the Hitler mustache. So I put them on and went downstairs.

My mom was there to see me out and complimented my new glasses. "Thanks," I told her. "I just realized, though, that they kind of look like Sarah Palin's glasses."
"Who's that?" she asked me.
Even given who was asking this question, I was shocked: we live in the internet age; even my mom gets her daily headlines emailed to her from the New York Times; we watch the international broadcasts of CNN and the BBC World News.
"Are you serious! You don't know who that is," I replied.
"No. And should I?"
"It's McCain's vice presidential running mate!"
"Oh, that," she said with some exasperation. "I thought you meant someone I knew."

She was never allowed to Rock the Vote, not even once

I just received my sample ballot in the mail for the November elections. My mother, who was never naturalized, had never seen a ballot in all her 37 or 8 years in the US and so was curious to see what they looked like. I assured her they were nothing interesting, but she pressed, so I showed it to her. She was nonplussed in general and remarked that she hadn't realized it wasn't just a presidential election, that there were other things on the ballot. "Of course," I told her. "But this time around I'm registered to vote in Los Angeles, so there's a lot on the ballot I don't know anything about. I'm going to have to...," but before I could finish my thought about needing to do some research before the end of October, she conveniently filled in my words for me.
"...fill them in randomly?"

NO! NO! Thank God she's never voted! Argh!

My civic self had a total hissy fit, then my actual self dissolved into hysterics. Plus, it reminded me of a story about my mom's Japanese colleague who gave a talk in the US in the 70s or something about how progressive Japan was becoming and made the fatal L/R pronunciation error and told a bunch of people at a lecture: In Japan, even women can now have erections.
Ah, but that seems more civically responsible than filling in a ballot like your SATs when you've run out of time.

she knows just how to put my mind at rest.

So, I went to the Doc's just out of convenience really, but she told me that it didn't look like a spider bite and her only other guess (given how much it swelled and hurt for days) was that it might be the dreaded Japanese mukade. Or, centipede of doom, as I like to call them. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where in my home I got bit because I can't find out how long it takes to feel the first effects of such a bite (damn you internet! Though I did find this cute blog entry from 2005 about this kind of bug by some young boys. It was informative). But it definitely happened in the house. Possibly downstairs in the music room, which is where I felt the effects. But, there is a chance it happened in my own room, which pleases me NOT AT ALL. I can hardly relax for fear of the dreaded mukade falling on me from my ceiling or crawling into my mouth while I sleep, biting my tongue or throat, it swelling up and me asphyxiating to death. Well, that's dramatic and probably won't happen, but I did find a mukade in my closet. It wasn't alive but it was horrifying nonetheless, with its blue legs and black body. BLECH. Well, here. See for your self.Anyway, it was pretty tiny - maybe 2 inches long, but enough to give me the heebie-jeebies for a while. I was whining to my mom and she said that she hadn't known they came so small. She continued, "The one I saw crawl under the house a few weeks ago was at least 6 inches long." It wasn't the same type, though. It was the deadlier, red legged version.

Dude. I am never sleeping again.

Y.E.S. - Yoko's English? Subversive.

She had joined in on my skype chat with my dad and step-mom. After greetings, she informed them, "Nami is dreading summer in Japan."
Now, it's mid-August. As far as I can tell, we are in the middle of summer in Japan! The linguist in me can't let this slide by unnoticed.
"Dread is about a future occurrence. I can't dread summer. It is summer. You're using the word wrong."
"No, I'm not. I've always used it like that."
"I'm sure you have. But, dread is like about trepidation about something that hasn't happened yet."
"Well, whatever then. Nami hates summer in Japan."

I can't say she's wrong. The constant cry of cicadas are like some audio form of waterboarding to me. It's true that I had just asked her when all the cicadas will die. I'm sick of their screaming. She told this to my dad and Deborah, but she said locusts. I corrected her, but she claimed that it's the same difference. It SO isn't, but she was just confused because I guess "17-year locusts" are cicadas. Whoever invented that name was deliberately trying to stir up future Japanese mother/ Half-Japanese daughter disagreements, I just know it.

Anyway, later we continued our discussion about 'dread' v 'hate' - I can't help that I've become something of a vocabulary Nazi. "Do you really use the word 'dread' like the word 'hate'?" I asked my mom.
"No," she answered. "They don't mean the same thing."
"True," I agreed. "I'm telling you that 'dread' is always about something in the future."
She replied, "I always thought it was when you were worried about something that's gonna happen."
**Long pause as we gaze at each other like high noon (somewhere a tumbleweed is rolling by).
"EXACTLY! Going to happen! Something in the future! You just said it yourself! You knew all along!" She starts laughing like crazy.
"I'm going to go have a cigarette," she announces before she steps out. I don't think it's that she's trying to make me look like the grammar police. I think she just likes riling me up. Argh.

Confounder confounded by confoundee

On Tuesday morning, my mom was multi-tasking, talking on the phone and surfing the net simultaneously. I learned later that she was trying to look up directions to a museum on the impossible-to-navigate Japanese internet. I don't know who they've all hired as their UI advisors, but they should all be killed. Or failing that, at least fired. I know that this entry took a harsh turn right away..... (hello dad....).

Anyway, something was evidently not going right, so she turned to me and wrote me a note on a piece of paper then pushed it toward me. It said, "map." I had no idea what that meant. I was completely confounded. So, I decided to confound her back, by using some of my recently acquired KY-style Japanese. Underneath her words I wrote, "I.W." (which, if you're too lazy to look at the link, means "Don't understand a thing"). But, unfazed, she continued chatting on the phone and turned back to the computer. She then typed the letters "I.W." on her key-board and waited patiently. Of course nothing happened, at which point she turned to me with a half-scowl, like I'd purposefully deceived her or something. It was around this time I was able to piece together what was actually going on. Once I did, you know I laughed like mad.

PS no fatties

I'm sick as a dog today and thanking god for the invention of audio books and iTunes. I'm about to sink into a blissful reverie of listening to tragic mystery as written by Truman Capote for what will most likely be the rest of the day, but needed to note these few occurrences.
1 - my mom tried to get me to take ルル. Again. And after having just read 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd' by Ms. Agatha Christie, I'm convinced that she has it out for me.
2 - the house keeper came today and this time straight up told me that I was getting fat. WTF? She still said it smiling so I still think it was not meant to be derogatory at all, but jeez. Luckily I'm on that new fangled diet called the flu. I hear you can drop pounds like mad on it.

Wishful thinking

It's a given that the streets in Tokyo are notoriously narrow and that the phone poles often jut out into the street making the already difficult task of driving in a metropolis all the more complex. All this notwithstanding, sometimes my mother's driving gives me a heart-attack. It seems to me when there is ample room on one side, she crowds the other with many near misses (in mah humble yet co-rrect o-pinion, as my "Texan" father might say) of, say, parked cars, phone poles, center dividers, people on bikes and sometimes, yes, pedestrians. I swear that when she sees a pedestrian about to cross, she'll hit the gas first before hitting the brake. She claims to not notice doing this, but I can't help but think that maybe she gets some sick thrill out of watching me clutch my chest in panic and horror. Personally, I think it's payback for her experience of my drivers'-permit-driving when I was 15, but I digress. I realized early on in my stay that I wasn't going to be able to change how she drove and, as evidenced by the lack of dents in her car, my mom's driving couldn't be all that dangerous so I should just trust in her ability and let her be. I've felt relatively safe under this assumption until now.

On Sunday my mom took some visiting friends and myself out to lunch, just a short drive away. On the way back, there were several near misses of large objects, but I kept my cool, chanting to myself "She knows what she's doing; we're all perfectly safe in here." That is until we came really too close to a pole and I nearly popped both eyeballs from my skull. "YOU REALLY ALMOST HIT THAT POLE" I close to screamed. "It was less than an inch from your mirror!"
I was hoping for something soothing from her, like, "Oh, don't worry - it's fine." But, when have I ever gotten what I was hoping for in these situations. Her response? "There was a pole?"

Of course.

My nerves are shot for good.

Flowers were for Algernon, now also for Yoko

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.

it continues

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.

A birthday tribute

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!

'mfa≠job steve' has it right: Yoko you so crazy

Last night my mom was talking about this kind of light, orchestral music that is not really classical but not really pop and as such is extremely popular among many Japanese. She couldn't remember the name of the composer and so started to try and describe the music to me. She didn't even make it through one sentence.
Y: It's really soupy...
N: You mean, sappy...
Y: No, SOUPY. You know, light and not really very serious, sentimental.
N: Yes. Sappy. Cheesy.
Y: Soupy.
N: I don't understand. You are telling me that the music has the quality of soup? I have no idea what that means. I think you are using the wrong word.
Y: No, I've used it for years and no one has said anything before.
N: That's probably because they thought you were meaning 'sappy.' But, please, explain to me exactly how music can have the quality of soup, and what that means to you.
Y: (laughing) Well... (long pause)
N: (laughing) You don't even know, do you!
Y: Yes I do! It's nice and it's sort of runny...

She couldn't get any further than this though which told me enough, not that I would have heard her over my cackling. I can't really give her any grief since I'm sure there are a million things I know how to use but probably couldn't give a definition if my life depended on it. Actually, I've discovered I have this problem with many idioms. I guess adjectives are to Yoko what idioms are to me.

If my ego was a zeppelin, it'd the Hindenburg

So, today when I went down to have some lunch, the housekeeper was just getting ready to leave. She's in her 70s, the one who is fast. At any rate, we were making small talk and just as I was reaching in to the fridge, she says, "I always thought you were skinny, but you're not really so skinny, are you." I froze. Yes, I've put on a few since I've been here (and yes, sadly in Japan they use the metric system); also, I don't think she meant it as a criticism, but rather some weird post WWII-type compliment in my granparents'-era-style. Needless to say, I reached past my original lunch item and grabbed for the plain, low fat yogurt. Anyway, later when I got home, I told my mom this story and she laughed with me about it. As we were laughing, the cat started to beg for more dinner, and my mom says to him, "You can't have any more. You're fat, too."
"Fat, TOO?!"
"Well, you just said it," she started to back-peddle, "We're all kind of getting fat..."

Anyway, I can't say much because, well, the scale doesn't lie. Also, I think my mom confuses empathy and sympathy sometimes (I guess they do sound alike...) and she wasn't trying to make me feel like a whale. Needless to say, I think I'm going to go on a diet. Failing that, maybe just a day long 'cleanse.'