Oyako Day Essay Contest 2022 Winners

I went to elementary and middle school at a place way out in the country. At class reunions, all the boys were of one voice to say, “Your Mother always looked good in a kimono.” And I would mutter to myself, “No, that wasn’t a kimono. Just work clothes! “It’s been sixty years now.

I was born in Oboro, Hokkaido, whose train station has become the number one Lost Train Station* in Japan. I used to take the train to the neighboring town of Rebun to go to elementary school. Ours was a family of 6. I was the youngest of four siblings. We were poor but happy. My fondest memory of my mother is her first school visit, Parent’s Day when I was in first grade.

A group of Mothers had arrived and were being noisy at the back of the room. Amongst them stood my Mother, ever petite and clothed in her habitual monpe work trousers with a matching top. A young teacher with a loud voice, who till this day Yutaka the farmer calls “Auntie,” came into the classroom and started a math class. Michiko’s Mother had finished looking at Michiko’s workbook and was now taking a peak at mine.

So then, Kojima’s mother, who lived in the National Railway’s official residence, came over to her kid’s desk and started running her own class, explaining carefully and announcing repeatedly, “And that’s is the way this gets done,” before moving on to the next page. At that point, all the mothers took that as a cue to step in and do the same with their own children. It was a free-for-all, and our teacher just stood there on standby.

I was all the way at the back of the classroom. But still, as long as I waited, my mother didn’t come. I finally looked behind me and saw my mother with her back to the wall, standing just where she had been, smiling at me. The warm sunlight coming through the window lit up my mother like a spotlight. All she had for makeup was her lipstick, and she was wearing a brand new, indigo blue monpe, top and bottom, for dress-up.

Once I was home, I lay my head in my Mother’s lap while she cleaned my ears.
“Today you were the only one who didn’t come with the children. Why didn’t you?” It was a frank question at a comfortable moment.
“I’m sure you know the answer to that without me telling you, don’t you?” she answered, which was not at all the explanation I had been expecting, but one that made me happy. And in that same moment, the image of my Mother, the only one not swept away by the crowd of Mother’s, standing at the back of the room filled me with admiration.
My Mother passed 40 years ago.
Even now, I can’t think of my Mother without recalling her in that classroom.
It’s like the key scene in a movie.

Long before my daughter ever woke up to the world, she always kept an eye out for me. As a person with ASD, I have trouble thinking about two things at once, so making decisions about what is best or how to get ahead is not my forte. Moreover, I am often absent-minded. I have a mountain of newly bought & untouched Lip Balm to prove it. In the courts of the mislaid and tardy, I am an habitual offender. But there is someone who keeps me out of trouble before it ever happens, my daughter, always by my side. She tells me when I’ve left a half-cut carrot behind, if I’ve walked off and left all the lights shining, and takes care to let her needs be known one at a time. I’m so ineffective and ill-prepared that everything takes time, but she’s never bothered by my own lack of patience. She plays, taking her time and happy to wait.
No one taught her how to get along with me, she just came to it naturally.
Nonetheless, she’s not always happy to give me a hand. Sometimes, when she’s tired or in a bad mood, she clearly says no or whines about it. There’ve been many times when we were out in public together when we both panicked and burst into tears. Of course, my daughter doesn’t think of me as being handicapped, so for better or worse, she regularly tells her friends the stories of my failures, which they all take to be hilarious. Now, since she’s a senior in high school, she also uses the stories for her composition class.

Some might wonder if I’m not embarrassed, but I’d say no, I’m comforted by the fact that my daughter appears to have taken her life with this strange mother here as normal.
“Parents lead their children by the hand” may seem like common sense, but that’s not the way we work. Maybe people will find that strange. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost confidence in myself as a parent. But each time, it just made my daughter smile and laugh.

Whenever things got out of hand at the house my father would put on his headphones. That’s not as outlandish as it might seem. We were six bothers and sisters, and everyday was filled with disputes : one day I fought over who gets seconds of fried chicken, the next I cried over hand-me-downs. Most of the time my mother would impose order by throwing down thunder and lightening, and that’s when my Fathers would put on his headphones. Maybe it was just his way of saying “be quiet,” but as a child I always felt it was a little cold.

That Father of mine.. when we found out that he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, he had very little time left to live.
“Why didn’t you say anything!?” “Why, Papa!” “Daddy, why?” We all felt flustered and lost, and we ended up getting mad at him.
His first answer was “Because I didn’t want to trouble you,”but he quickly got tired of us all pestering him and turned away to put his headphones back on.
“Please Daddy, stay alive!” “If you die, we’ll never forgive you!” …our mouths overflowed with grief, but our Father said nothing, turning away from us to listen to his music.

On the 49th day after his passing, I was putting away my Father’s things and I found those headphones. When I looked carefully, I noticed the cable was broken.
“Your Father heard every word you kids said!” Mom announced in a voice filled with her own longing. I learned that after that day, my Father spoke of switching from palliative care to more aggressive therapy to prolong his life. In other words, he tried to answer his children’s call.

Once, when I cried about having to use a hand-me-down school bag, he arranged for a loan in secret so that he could buy me a new one. Though he often pretended not to listen, the fact is nobody heard more clearly than our Father.
“Hey, what are you doing with those broken down headphones?!” My brother was staring at the beat-up cables with an air of regret.
There’s nothing to say. But when I think about my Dad, I can feel my heart get warmer and warmer.
I’m sure he wanted to live. To live with all of us together. I’m sure now, really sure.
“Thank you, Dad.”
In the end, the headphones covered your tears.
Now you can cry freely.

My name is Sachiko. My mother has called me “Sat-chan” since I was a little girl. But now, at 90, dementia has made her inarticulate. She can no longer call me Sat-chan, just barely “Saa-chan.” In her younger days, she was game and hard-working. “Sat-chan ! time to eat,” “Sat-chan, I’ve made you a dress. Try it on!” Going so far as to grab seats for me when we got on the train, “Sat-chan! there’s a seat over there!” With all this doting, I got through 60 years of my life without a care as far as my Mother was concerned.

Especially loud and shrill calls for “Sat-chan” have always been a signal that my Mother needed my help with something, so it’s never disturbed me. But once into her late 80s, her dementia gradually got worse. The unrelenting pain of rheumatism finally confined her to her bed, from where cries of “Sat-chan,” “It hurts,” “Help me!” and “Water!” were simply a small way to continue to impose her will on the world. Once into her 90s however, dementia made short shrift of her, and my mother lost the use of language. All of it but a single word: “Saa-chan.” Whether she wanted a diaper change, a back-rub or a glass of water, she would call out that word: “Saa-chan.”

Sometimes throughout a whole afternoon or on waking in the middle of the night, she would call dozens of times, “Saa-chan, … Saa-chan.” When I got fed up and left her on her own, she would quickly fall asleep whispering my name.
When I see my mother’s thin, wasted body, I remember the timid child that I was and my mother’s recurrent pep talks. When she would cry out “Sat-chan!” I too felt her desire to “DO YOUR BEST” and always felt energized.

Now, though every day there are 100 cries for “Saa-chan”, it is the only way she can cry out for help. There was the “Sat-chan” that brought me up and nurtured me, filling me with love. And now this “Saa-chan” that entreats and moves me to do things. My Mother’s chosen word is drawing strength from the wells of memory and meaning, and today, once again, I pray I can answer her call with the loving care it deserves.

It’s night. I’m in bed with my smartphone. I look at News and the social networking sites. When my phone slips through my fingers, I know it’s time for sleep. So am I really going to fall asleep this way again tonight? Just at that warm and pleasant moment, I hear the sound of footsteps quietly stirring downstairs. Right, this is when my son wakes up.

Our son is a truant and a recluse. He’s awake all night, plays video games till morning then finally sleeps, and it goes on and on. We hardly talk to each other.

I turn back to my SNS. I’m looking at tweets from other truants and their parents caught in the same circumstances as I’m in. They blame themselves for whatever went wrong and try to encourage each other. “How about trying to go back to school?” “What will you do now,” they ask, even broaden their concern to family siblings. I’ve been through all of this. We all go through it somewhere along the way. So now my feeling is that that’s all OK. Whatever happens happens is my present standing.

Still, it’s not like I’m not worried about my son’s future. It’s just that we barely have any time together, I’m actually always preparing what to say when we do, thinking of the shortest way to say things so he’ll understand immediately, so as to encourage him to have more contact with society. But will words really have any effect? I doubt it.

Maybe it is more important that parents show their children how much they are enjoying life. I’m not exactly saying parent’s need to take the lead by making examples of themselves. That’s an old way of thinking with an heavy odor of Showa sticking to it. And I don’t mean that parent’s should somehow get pushy about it. I’m saying that in the end, parents should be enjoying their lives, going out to visit different places, trying new things, exploring what’s around them everyday, making their own choices, in short: just plain having a good time.

In some way, my son chooses only things that are meaningful, but in trying to do only what you believe to have merit, you lose sight of what life is all about and can’t make your own choices or decisions any more.
Isn’t it better to think of life’s meaning when it’s over? If you start by basing your life on a meaning it doesn’t have yet, won’t it just all be meaningless? It’s useless to force things. I think I’d like to live a life of total nonsense from now on, to the point that others perceive it as some ancient wisdom.
It’s pointless to worry over life’s meaning till its end.

My Mother likes to talk. On the other hand, my Father doesn’t. Hell just sit there going “uh-huh, u-huh” and listen to others talk.
A few days ago, my Father suddenly died. My mother and I both got two months off work. Even though she was deeply sad, she just kept rattling on like a machine gun.
When I remarked that she was talking a lot, she immediately replied without any hesitation, “If I stop talking, it means I’m sick.”
Though she went on with everyday conversation, I was worried she’d say something sorrowful like “So, your Father’s gone off and died before me.”
During our vacation, I took Mom to get vaccinated. I drove her there, then waited in the parking lot till it was over. And of course, while I was waiting, I thought about my Father.

When I got the same vaccination, my Father said, “…with your anemia and all, you might faint,” and he drove me to the hospital for the vaccination. When I came back to the car, I was struggling with the pain of the injection. “Hurts?” my Father quipped. I lost it and screamed, “Yes it hurts!!”
I was just thinking about how that really wasn’t my finest moment when my Mother came back to the car. She got in the car and immediately started talking about how she’d made a friend. She’d met a woman in her sixties and the two had sympathized over their situation. My thoughts had made me melancholy, but seeing my Mother happy over this chance meeting cheered me up.

“So, …it hurt?” “Yes, it hurts” she screamed.
Talk about déjà vu.
In fact, my Father often said, “They way you’re talking, you sound more and more like your Mother.” Maybe I am.
But the thought of keeping up with her made me chuckle.

The thought of being a match for this older woman, my mother, made me chuckle.
Trying to think of how I resembled this
Trying to think of how I might resemble this elder woman, my mother, made me chuckle.
But the thought of keeping up with her made me laugh.

I finally realized when I became a parent that I had only gotten to this point because I’d been protected by a series of miracles.
For example, the fact that I’ve never been involved in any incidents or accidents. Sensational events are occurring daily throughout the world and yet I’ve never been involved in even one of them.
Or another example is food.
Since I started living, right up till now, there’ve been people around me who put a lot of effort into what they cook. Left on my own even if I had the money, I couldn’t make the same kind of food.
Then there’s education: having the time to study.
That is not a given. You need both time and money for it to be within your reach. Only money can buy the cram school and reference books you need to really learn.
The source of all these miracles has a name: PARENTS.

When we’re young, we rarely realize all the effort that parents put into keeping us safe until we’re bigger. As we grow older, we taste the frustration of being unable to do this or that. Once you’re a parent, that frustration gets stronger when you stop thinking only of yourself and start to think “this child…” Things don’t always go as you hoped. Sometimes you get mad. But all these things become memories you look back on with pleasure. That’s why I think that the next time we meet, I need to put this into words and thank you.
I’ll say, “Mom, bringing up kids isn’t easy. So, thanks so much for all that you’ve done for me.” And I’ll probably cry.

Things were spread out across the 8 mat tatami floor.
Clothes, underwear, towels, even cups…
I started putting my parent’s names on everything.
Tomorrow they were moving into a nursing home.
Trying to prepare everything for two people as directed in the list the home had handed out, particularly the name tagging, was turning out to be surprisingly difficult.
I had a feeling that I’d done something like this before.
Was it helping my daughter get ready for kindergarten or maybe elementary school ?
I remember how putting my daughter’s name on all the pieces of the math set had made my head spin. But getting ready for school also made me dream about someone’s bright future. Looking at my daughter’s pencil box and it’s contents, reminded me of happy school days and lightened my work.
Today, I’m doing the same kind of name-tagging, but with a heavy spirit.
My Father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my Mother has broken her bones so many times that she can no longer move freely. With all this, they could no longer live alone. The Nursing Home would provide 24 hour care. But they would be leaving the home they had lived in for sixty years, What could my parent’s be feeling about that? Was this really the right decision. Could this daughter have done more for her parents? I kept going over it in my mind.

Finally, I think it’s for the best.
Getting used to life in this facility may be difficult for them. but they themselves see that their health and well-being will be better served there. My thoughts are that we should all hope for better days, so let’s finish getting ready without all these dark thoughts.
Over fifty years ago, my Father used his knife to carefully carve my name into each of my pencils, while my Mother nimbly put labels on everything my brother and I needed for school. With all these memories, I threw my heart into readying my parents’s departure.
The relation between parents and their children is special. One day, you find yourself rendering all the services you yourself have received through the years.
All the love I received flows back to them, bit by bit, with all my heart.
As for myself, I believe that tomorrow will bring new hope, of a better life, one where they will be set free of the constraints of their infirmities.

“Hello Mom? Now listen: Thanks for giving birth to me !!”
That’s what I said to my Mother over the phone on my last Birthday.
I’d heard that Birthdays were not a day for you to be celebrated by the people around you, but a day to give thanks to your Mother for risking her life to give you yours.
I’d been through 50 Birthdays, but I’d never thanked my Mother.

After graduating from Middle School, I went to a sleep-away school for High School. After High School, I left home and got a job. So in all, I spent just 15 years with my parents. Nonetheless, I’ve married and take my children home for Obon and New Year’s. I have no problem getting along with my parents. I guess you’d call our family normal as far as that goes.

But I don’t call my Mother very much at all …like they say “No news is Good News.” So my idea was to make a surprise call and say my lines right off the bat to see if my Mother would break down. And I tried that but I couldn’t go through with it. I just got the beginning out, got embarrassed and clammed up.
That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. I never even got my strategy into play. I should have at least gone to a separate room to telephone, a place where my wife and child weren’t spectators. That might’ve helped.
As for my Mother, she didn’t bat an eyelash: “Happy Birthday ! But, I’m the one who should be thanking you. Thank you for coming to find me and becoming my son!”
There’s a line from a famous poem by Yoshida Shōin, the last poem he wrote after being informed of his imminent execution, which goes,

No matter how much we think of our parents, their love will be greater
So now, after today’s letter, I cannot bear to keep them in mind

When I thought back on my Mother’s words, I burst into tears.

I have a 4 year-old son.
My job keeps me busy on weekdays, so, though I can’t do it every week, I make a conscious effort to reserve us a day together on a weekend at least every two or three weeks. On that day, my son gets to do pretty much whatever he wants.
First, he wakes up to his favorite breakfast: waffles, and gets to watch as much anime as he wants.
After that we break out all his toys and make a giant train game.

When he tires of that, we’re off to the park where he goes from swings to RC Car and from the slides to playing tag.
For lunch we go to the neighborhood onigiri shop and buy fried chicken with nigiri.
During the afternoon we take a train ride.
We head for the big station in the neighboring town. After watching all kinds of trains come and go, we buy my son’s favorite doughnuts on the way home. We eat dinner, play in the tub, and I put him to bed where we trade the day’s stories till he drops off to sleep.

Usually, I’m at his side throughout the day, putting heart and sole into each new game until he’s had enough of it.
My child loves these days.
Children have boundless energy. I’m reminded of it when I see how far he can go. It’s awesome. And throughout it all, he is so, so happy. He always asks, “Is it still morning?”
Right in the middle of lunch, or even if it’s evening in the park, he asks again, “Hey, it’s morning, right?”
When he asks his question, his eyes are dead serious.
At his age, he has a sense of time and knows the answer to his question, but he wants his happiness to continue. If it’s morning, then there is still more time.
Such innocence, a child’s question unadorned by any doubt.
Obviously, the answer is “NO,” but if I said so I would see only regret in those very eyes whose tender regard I myself seek.
I myself become a parent playing as hard as I can to hear those words.
It’s because I know that he will not always ask “I is still morning”that I try to cherish my time with him now.
This Sunday my agenda is clear.
I wonder if he’ll ask me again if it’s still morning.

During our last two winters, I learned how there can be ild and tender climates even in winter.
One day in December of last year, there was an incredibly beautiful sunrise whose flush, red light shone in my window.
That was when my Father suddenly died.
It was just two weeks after my wedding. I was running around in the midst of everything with no time to go through all my feelings, and suddenly my Father’s funeral was over.

On the ride home, I stared absentmindedly out the window while holding my Father’s funeral urn on my knees. There was so little of him left. He fit easily in my lap. The lingering warmth of the ashes sank bit by bit through my lap, spreading from my knees throughout my body. This must be what it feels like to hold a new-born baby, I thought. Even though my Father had quarreled with me right up till the last time I saw him, I sensed warm and tender emotions welling up within me. I suppose it was a moment when I should have been feeling empty and sad. I felt sure that once people gave up their mortal existence, they certainly returned to the state of a newborn child.
Just a half-year later, I discovered that I was pregnant.
It was the winter after my Father’s passing.
I gave birth to my first son on a beautiful day full of blue skies.
I held a newborn for the first time. Holding that small soft body, I could feel that same tender, loving warmth again
My one and a half year-old Ōchan is always happily smiling.
It may sound odd, but he points to pictures of my Father and says“Gramps”even though he never had the chance of meeting him.
“They must have crossed paths in the sky,”my husband says.“He must have told Ōchan to come down and be your baby to take away any sadness over his own passing.”
Every time I squeeze my baby when he’s lying on my chest, I feel that same warm and tender love. It reminds me of when I had my Father on my knees filling me with warmth.

Some years ago we did not go back to the family home for the New Year, but I still wanted to do something to mark the occasion. So, on New Year’s Day, we got up early, had a quick breakfast of Ozōni, and the three of us set out for Meiji Shrine. On the way home, we were walking down Omotesandō, which was much less crowded than usual, when my husband suddenly ran in front of me with our son on his shoulders.

At the time, my husband was often in a bad mode due to illness. I was having trouble deciding how to deal with him and in many ways had come to ignore him. He paid little attention to his son and his son’s upbringing. So that day, like most others, my position was that it didn’t matter if my husband was with us or not.

At the Shrine that day, I had prayed that our Family would find its way to its very own form of happiness. So I was shocked when I saw my husband carrying our son on his back down an Omotesandō that felt a bit different than usual. It was as if the Gods were playing with me, saying,“Hey now, here’s that happiness you asked for!”

Just at that moment, my lively memory brought back the image of the man who was once a caring husband. Even now that image makes me cry. But happiness is not something you can perceive in a few well-defined spots. It’s more of an accumulation of moments which capture your heart, From that day, I decided to let go little by little the way I’d become accustomed to doing things let my husband do as he wanted with our son.

I thought it was natural and for the best.
Just look at the smiles on the two of them. I’d been dealing with my husband’s illness and fighting to bring my son up alone, but all the pride and willfulness of that struggle had no meaning at all.

Now my son is in his second year of elementary school. As for the Father, his son has gotten a little bit too heavy to put on his shoulders, and the son finds it embarrassing to be there in front of his schoolmates. Nonetheless, the other day he quietly whispered in my ear, “You know, I really like Dad a lot.” That convinced me that my happiness was always right there in front of my eyes.

When was it that I stopped taking baths with my Father? I know it was over by middle school. My secondary sexual characteristics began to kick in and that was that.
As I remember it, we always bathed together up till then. Mom bathed with my sister. I naturally bathed with Dad. Generally he was a quiet man, but he talked a lot in the tub.
“How’ve you been doing lately? Do you like school?”
“So do you have any close friends now? Where are they from?”

I was obedient and would do my best to answer earnestly. But then my Father wasn’t much of a conversationalist, so maybe he was just asking because he felt he should have something to say.
I remember he once invited me to go fishing when I was in elementary school. This was even though he would usually get up in five in the morning and leave alone. I thought that might be a pain, but I said yes since he took the trouble to ask me. That made him light up with a bright smile. “We’ll need to get up and out of the house early tomorrow,” he said with a chuckle.

The following morning I couldn’t wake up. My Mother helped me get ready, and then I fell asleep again as soon as I got in the car. When I opened my eyes, my Father got me up and we set out to fish in a mountain stream. My eyes were so blurry from sleep that I could hardly see my rod, but I’d barely gotten my line in the water when a giant fish hit my bait and started to fight desperately to get away. That woke me up!
My Father helped hold my body steady and we fought as one to bring the fish in. We kept at it for a long time but finally the line snapped. We both landed in the water and were totally soaked.

As soon as we got home we both headed straight to the bath.
“That fish, it was a char. If it was just a trout, it’d never have that much strength.”
Losing that fish brought us together, and after that, I always liked going fishing with my Father.
My Father died five years ago. We keep a fishing rod in his old room as a keepsake. My mother always tells me I should use it. Using it without him would just be a waste of time, so I just leave it in his room.

Senile dementia causes changes the character. And so it is with my 96 year-old Mother, who now lives her life with less heart and limited emotions. As if singing,“Met and seen, forget my fears, the night’s dark road alone…”she sang a lament for so much living through so many years. There was nothing I could answer to that. From morning on, my Mother sang her lament in the hospital ward.

Things floating in the heart, everything pent up in her lifetime is purged in Mother’s songs, sung to strange melodies. They are not just ordinary songs. “I’m too much longevity, I’m this world’s parasite, And that world’s Lord Enma’s mis-entry”

Many of Mother’s songs are incoherent. That’s when I pretend to take no notice. If I look earnestly into my Mother’s eyes then, she loses all her will and tears come to her eyes. “I can see the sea. The pure, red sea. The old, wooden comb is floating, the toothbrush with worn-out bristles is floating.”

I wonder if everything that sunk into the heart’s darkness will surface now to increase my Mother’s suffering now. I know that my Mother was often poor. In/From an old dresser drawer : a wooden comb soaked dark black in Camellia Oil, a toothbrush with worn-out bristles, a bottle with salt to be used instead of toothpaste. Despite what I may be thinking, my Mother’s expression is bright. She keeps singing. She bleaches her heart in the bright lights of the hospital room.

Can these songs be born in some place unconnected with my mother? I believe it’s possible. These songs are made to allow her to return to the life of silence that was hers. Perhaps I am the only one she wants to hear them.
“I’m the one who gave birth to you.” she says.
There are times you look at me with those words in your eyes.
I was your frail feet and hands.
I comb out your pure, white hair.
“Even if I die, I’m your parent.”
I still can’t say that word.

My family ran a small printing shop in Morioka. The store was old and built on the road to the school I attended, so my classmates often looked at me with curiosity. Still, for me, who had watched my Father work up close, there was no doubt my parents were proud shop owners as well as proud parents.

When I finished school, I left home and got a job with a company in Sendai. Since my work was concerned with only internal affairs at my Company, I never had any need to make a visiting card. Once, however, the company suddenly decided to send me on an errand to Tokyo, and all of a sudden I desperately had to get some visiting cards. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time, so finding a shop that could react that fast seemed difficult.

“I apologize for the rush, but I would like you to make a visiting card for me.” At the other end of the line, my Father answered immediately in an aloof tone,“My pleasure!” Even though it was New Year Card season, so he must have been busy, I soon received an email containing a PDF file with images of some design suggestions. I chose my design, corrected the proofs and two days later 200 visiting cards arrived by express mail.
When I called home to thank him, my Father just asked if he’d sent enough.
When I answered that just 20 would have been fine, he just laughed with embarrassment.

My business trip went off without mishap, and I’d been back in the office for a while when I got a telephone call from my Mother.
“Your Father was so happy you asked him to make some visiting cards for you. It’s something he’s always dreamed of doing. He was so happy working on them. He was quick, right? The fact is he made the designs years ago, hoping that someday you might ask. Making those card for you was his dream! Thank you!!”

It’s been more than ten years since I got those cards and in the meantime, there’ve been many changes in my position within the company.
Nonetheless, I’ve kept the cards my Father made for me.
In fact, I must have about 180 cards that I’ll never use.

It’s what he wanted more than anything in the world.

I’ve hated my Father for as long as I can remember.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean he was a bad guy.
He shows up at work even when he’s sick, doesn’t go out drinking, and always gets home on time.
On holidays, he works mutely in the garden, and is always ready to drive me to school and back.

However, he was a regrettably clumsy man. Judging by exterior appearance, he looked like an affectionate Father, but I was sick of his uncommunicative nature. He almost never started a conversation, and I hate the way he eats, passing the whole meal without saying a word. But the sum-mum was my coming-of-age ceremony.
I was so excited that I put my kimono on at around 4:00 in the morning and then just sat there waiting till it was time to leave for the ceremony. When my Father saw me all he had to say was, “Looks a little tight.”
Really, …if he found it too embarrassing to say how pretty his daughter was, I still would have liked it if he took some pictures of me dressed in my finest.
That was the last straw. I tried to forget the man existed.
Which is why I never spoke to the man at the turning points of my life.
I graduated from college and got a job. Quit the job and set up my own business.

I became independent in my early twenties. Starting my own business with little more than twenty years of experience was the harder than I ever imagined it would be. I had trouble with money, half-starved and cried over how pathetic I was. But never once did it cross my mind to talk with my Father about it. He’d never cared about me anyway…

Then came my 25th Birthday.
It was the end of another long day when a short message came in on LINE.
“Happy Birthday. Are you OK?” From my Father.
Indifferent words from an awkward Father, but still it was the first time words from him actually made me happy. Just when did I start hating my Father? Before I realized it, I was saying I’d never marry anyone like him. But this year, at 28, I’m marrying someone very much like him.
My two awkward men laughing while exchanging drinks at table.
I wish this could go on forever. I hold this thought in my heart but need to put it into words to tell my Father the next time we meet.

It’d been a while since I’d gone out with my Mother to eat lunch together. She was walking just a little ahead of me in a crowded restaurant district when she suddenly lifted her hand in the air with her palm turned upwards and started waving it around. Since she was facing forward at the same time, she looked just like a runner in a relay race receiving her baton.
What in the world are you doing?! She twisted her head round for a second, and I had a tremendous jolt of déjà vu, so strong it was like being swept into another a time.

I was a child full of curiosity, who showed interest in anything and everything around him. Whenever we went out, I would run off on my own ahead of the others, dragged forward by all I was seeing and never getting enough of it. So my Mother, who worried about me getting lost in the crowd, rather than just yelling, “Over here, over here!” would throw her hands up in the air and move them so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowd.
When I saw her hands like that, I would zero in on them like catching fish in a barrel and take her hand in mine.

As long as I could see her hands in he air, I could never be lost, Those fluttering, swimming hands were like a landmark that gave me sense of security I can still dimly feel to this day.
No, but I’m way too old to be holding hands …suddenly laughing, I blurted out, “Im not a child anymore!”Then my Mother looked surprised,“WHAT !?” Apparently, she wasn’t even aware of what she’d been doing. It was an old ingrained habit, built up over years of usage.

Maybe that small, unreliable child I was is still living somewhere deep inside her heart. Since it had been more than 20 years ago but I immediately knew what those fluttering hands meant, it was evident that the same young child lived in me. And maybe someday, when I have my own child, I’ll act just like my Mother, singing out, “Over here!” and waving my hands in the air.
That’s when I’ll tell my children about their Grandmother.

The first time I learned I would not be with my family forever, I cried. I was six. It was mother’s day, and the song we sang that day was about leaving home. The idea of being alone scared me.
With time, I came to realize that change was inevitable. Not only did children leave, but also parents, siblings, grandparents. Sometimes willingly, sometimes not. However, in a sense, families are forever. Even if people leave, something remains with you. Further than memories, what stays with you are little things. Lessons, feelings, ways of thinking; invaluable gifts that are a memento of people important to us.
It is thanks to my family that I am who I am today.
My older sister, who taught me family could also mean friendship. Being siblings does not mean constant rivalry, instead it is a bond filled with chatting, philosophizing and endless laughter. She taught me that books were powerful and entertaining; the constant presence of her books around me made me interested in picking one. It was a compelling experience that would change my world forever. The continuous sound of her Japanese tv series made me intrigued in the language they spoke.
My dad, who taught me comfort and discipline. I would do my best in school and come home to show him my results. His proud smile would make all the effort feel worth it. Strict and comforting at the same time. He would come home from work at night, and I would lay my head on his lap while he patted my head. It was in those moments when I felt the safest. He was, and is, a constant reminder of what a safe place feels like. For me, that place is my father’s arms.
And finally, my mother. There aren’t enough words nor paper to write my gratitude for her. She taught me to believe in myself when I couldn’t. “I would like to learn Japanese but I don’t think I’m capable,” I said to her one day. “Why don’t you try it?” She told me. “I would love to help indigenous people around the world but maybe in another life, I don’t think I can in this one,” I commented when writing my career proposal. “Why not in this life?” She answered. And here I am, with a N1 JLPT certificate, applying to an anthropology major in a Japanese public university. “Don’t leave things incomplete” was her motto. If it weren’t for her, I would have left my dreams to be only that: dreams. Instead, she taught me that aspirations could become reality. It is not “I would like” but “I will.”
I am nineteen, and I am still scared of being alone. But all I need to do is remember their lessons, smiles and the love they gave me to realize I will always have my family with me.
We are walking legacies; a collage of mementos from our loved ones.