Hidemi’s Rambling No.410
Because my grandfather’s sister lived a few steps away from our home, I saw her frequently in our house in my childhood. She always spent time complaining and sighing. Actually, I had never seen her laughing or smiling. She pulled a long face all the time and wept often. In the daytime, the listener of her complaining was my grandmother. But her favorite was my mother who was only available in the evening after she came home from work. Although I had waited for my mother to come home and to have dinner together, my grandfather’s sister would come in when we were about to eat. We had to wait until she was done talking to my mother. To send her away as soon as possible, I used to count loudly standing beside my mother, which wouldn’t work. It was a wonder her sources for complaining never dried up. She whined about almost anything. Mainly she complained about her daughter-in-law. As an old Japanese custom, her son lived with her in her house after he got married. Since her husband had already passed away, her son, her daughter-in-law and she lived together under one roof while the two women didn’t get along well each other. They had constant quarrels that were her chief resources for complaining. She once bought a summer dress for her daughter-in-law as a present, which was bluntly rejected and thrown at her. She ran into our house crying and gave the dress to my mother. She was again crying and rushed into our house one morning when she found her son and her daughter-in-law had run away secretly during the night. She became all alone in her house. She lived by herself and soon passed away. All of us didn’t call her by her name and instead we called her ‘Aba’ as kind of a nickname. There’s no relation between her and a Swedish band Abba…
Filed under Life | Tags: Childhood, Family, Japan, Kindle, Life, Music, Pop Music, Singer and Songwriter | コメントは受け付けていません。Hidemi’s Rambling No.409
One day, an unfamiliar middle-aged woman visited my family’s house when I was little. She was the first daughter of my grandfather’s sister. A long time ago, a man tutored my grandfather’s sister at our house when she was a high school student. She got pregnant, and the tutor ran away. She had a daughter whom she gave up for adoption right after her birth. A few years later, my grandfather’s sister got married by arranged marriage and had lived with her husband and her children at the back of our house. And now, her first daughter came up to see her birth mother, and we met her as her relatives. When she came to our house again, she asked my grandparents to go out with me. To my surprise, they allowed her to take me. Although I had met her before, she was practically a stranger to me. I felt nervous, but my grandparents’ decision was always something that must be obeyed. We set out and she bought me an expensive toy at a kiosk in the train station. I began to feel certain that I was being kidnapped by her because she was so nice. During the train ride, all that I was thinking was she found her birth mother for revenge and would hold me for ransom. I imagined I could be killed by her. I was trembling with fear when we arrived at her friend’s house. Her three friends were there, all dressed gaudily, and they looked like accomplices to me. We had a backyard party with delicious food under blue skies and had fun except for me who still thought of the whole thing as kidnap. Then, the party was over and she took me home safely. Finally I realized it wasn’t kidnap. I was so stupid that I was sullen all the way of the merry trip. I haven’t seen her ever since. I hope it has nothing to do with my attitude from misunderstanding…
Filed under Life | Tags: Childhood, Family, Japan, Kindle, Life, Music, Pop Music, Singer and Songwriter | コメントは受け付けていません。Hidemi’s Rambling No.408
My grandfather’s sister lived in a small house right at the back of our family’s house a long time ago. Until I was five or six years old, I had visited her house alone frequently. The main reason I spent a lot of time there was that my strict grandparents took care of me instead of my busy parents and I couldn’t feel comfortable with them for tension in my house. But, there was another reason. Half of her small house was a print shop. It was a tiny typography place run by her husband, which mostly printed fliers for neighbors. I liked to watch the shop so much. The printing machine was running only occasionally, but looking at innumerable wooden types arranged neatly in the shelves was interesting enough for me. I used to spend hours sitting toward the shelves and just gazing the wooden types. If it was my lucky day, her daughter was home and cooked me fried rice. Back then, I had been troubled with autointoxication. I spent so much time in her house that my mother instantly imputed the cause to printing ink when I was diagnosed at the doctor’s office. In the following ten years, both my grandfather’s sister and her husband have passed away, her children have left home, and the house was demolished. The print shop was gone. A new house was built for sale and a young couple moved in. The husband was an office worker but soon he quit his job. He started his own business at his home and that was a print shop. The couple was newcomers to our neighborhood and had no way to know that there had been also a print shop on the site of their house. The site must be predestined to be a print shop…
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