Fireflies

This afternoon when I went to pick up Lilia at school, she started going on about fireflies. Earlier, a teacher had shown the kids a firefly she'd caught near her house. She showed them photos and explained all about fireflies and their semaphores. Lilia insisted on having one more look at the photos posted in the hallway before going home.

After dinner, she managed to convey something about fireflies to her father and he suggested that we go have a look. Firefly-viewing, like moon-viewing and cherry-blossom-viewing, is one of those time-honored Japanese traditions, but in all my years in Japan, I've never gone in search of flickers in the night. Fireflies remind me of lazy, barefoot summers in Michigan, and of Mason jars with holes punched in the lids. We caught them and made lanterns of our cupped hands.

Tonight, we piled into the car and Yoshi drove to a wooded area along a stream. It was very dark and we could hear frogs bellowing. It wasn't long before we saw a tiny flash. Then, we found a spot with entire constellations of fireflies. We didn't get close enough to catch any, but Lilia shouted with delight. She told me that she likes firefly-viewing better than her Nintendo DS.

The Houseboy and the Mother-in-Law

I recently finished reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's novel Half of a Yellow Sun, which included the wonderful character Ugwu, a boy from the bush who becomes houseboy for a Nigerian professor. From day one, Ugwu greatly admires his boss (his "Master") and tries to anticipate his every need. At one point, he irons the master's socks. They wind up getting stuck to the iron and the master calls him an ignoramus, but the kid was only trying to be helpful. Ugwu also sometimes listens at doors. Although I loved him as a character in a novel, I was reminded of why I don't think I could ever deal with household help. I like (no, LOVE) my privacy, what little I have of it, and even a once-a-week housekeeper would intrude.

At times, the one person Ugwu most reminded me of was my mother-in-law. In theory, my mother-in-law has her own chores and her own life, but she has taken it upon herself to do my laundry (even though I've asked her not to, even though at one point she told my husband she was exhausted from hanging out and taking down our laundry). 　My husband said that she just wants to help us.　A week or so ago, I didn't do the laundry and she was very agitated when I came home and asked me do it then (at 5PM) so that she could hang it out. This morning, I didn't get around to doing my laundry, but when I came home it was hung out on the poles. My mother-in-law told me, in a mildly chiding voice, that she had done the laundry. She came into our quarters and unloaded the laundry basket, in which hand-washables are sort of mixed with machine washables. My bathing suit was ruined in the wash. Oh, well. She was just trying to help.

I've decided that I've got enough material by now to write a short story with a laundry motif. I think it'll be entitled, "The Laundry Wars."

My Animal, My Son

It must be one of Murphy's Law of parenting that children tend to get sick in the middle of the night, on weekends, or long holidays when the only option for treatment is a clinic way on the other side of town.

Saturday night, while my husband was getting ready to take his mother to the bus for her night tour to Ise Shrine, I noticed that my son had a hideous rash. He'd had a high fever and a sore throat since the evening before, but I thought it was just tonsillitis, which he tends to get. But he'd had the rash thing before, too, and I recognized it as scarlet fever.

Scarlet fever is sort of like strep throat, and ever since I heard that Jim Henson died of strep throat, I get kind of freaked out by related diseases. I told my husband that we had to get Jio treated right away. He wanted to wait till morning, but I insisted.

Later, after he left with his mother, he called me from the road. He said that he could get antibiotics from his friend, S.

"But he's an animal doctor!" I said.

I refused the offer and told him that I would take Jio to the doctor myself. He wound up driving to the clinic across town, where my diagnosis was confirmed.

State of the Art

So Yoshi went out and bought some mouse traps and this is what they look like. Simple, huh? It looks like something a pre-schooler could come up with. The inside is sticky, so I guess the idea is that the mosue ventures inside and then can't get out.

Yoshi placed a couple in strategic positions, mused about putting some cheese in as bait, and then didn't. The next morning, the traps were empty. But after school, I was getting started on dinner and I heard a squeaking noise. It was mixed in with the feedback from Lilia's hearing aid (a loud, screeching noise produced whenever it isn't nestled snugly in her ear or when she leans on it). I paused in my vegetable-chopping, and sure enough, the sound seemed to be coming from the cardboard tunnel. It sounded like a creature in distress! Being a wimp, I didn't want to peer too closely, so I sent Jio (who is actually even wimpier) to have a look. "There's a mouse!" he confirmed, and ran away. I grabbed a broom and swatted the trap out the door, praying that I wouldn't somehow dislodge the thing and set it free. I felt kind of bad though, as it was squeaking all the while.

Then I called Yoshi and told him that we'd caught a mouse. When he came home, I asked him what he was going to do with it.

"On the box, it said to throw it in the garbage," he said.

He told me that he'd seen the traditional mouse traps with the spring action at the store, but thought this kind was better.

Hmmm. Long slow death, or immediate execution? Which is more humane? I have to admit, however, that I don't want to personally deal with either kind of trap. I'm glad the mouse is gone.

The House of Mouse

This morning I went downstairs to make breakfast and a little gray mouse scurried across the floor. Eek! Unfortunately, it wasn't the first time. After eighteen years of seeing nary a nezumi in this country, we've suddenly had four in the past couple of weeks (or maybe it's the same mouse four times). The first time, I heard a rustling over by the rice. It sounded like a behemoth rodent - a foot-long gutter rat. The children and I huddled on the sofa until Yoshi came home. He managed to trap the mouse without hurting it - what a man! - and took it outside. It was a cute little baby mouse, but it made me think of rabies or the bubonic plague.

Last time we went shopping, Jio lingered near the vermin poison and suggested darkly that we get something to kill the mice with. But why, when we have such a great mouse-catcher in the house? He's caught three so far! And besides, I can't decide which is worse - finding a dead mouse and having to dispose of it, or having to wait until my husband comes home to trap the little bugger.

The Imaginary Wheelchair

About a year ago, I ordered a wheelchair for Lilia from the (as it would turn out) appropriately named Dream Shop. I figured we'd get the chair, with its bright yellow seat, in time for my daughter to use in first grade. But then as weeks turned into months and numerous phone calls yielded nothing, I began to wonder if we'd ever see that wheelchair at all. What could possibly be taking so long? The paperwork had gone through months before. I started to think that these chairs were being handcrafted by little elves at a mountain factory. Or maybe the whole thing was just a dream. Then finally, a week after Lilia started second grade, the wheelchair finally arrived.

Lilia is thrilled to be able to wheel around her classroom. I've seen the ease with which she goes over to the cubbies to retrieve her book bag at one end of the room, and then on to the other end to grab a homework print, whereas before she balked because she knew crawling on those hard floors would hurt her knees. My only concern is that she won't be using her legs as much as before and that they will weaken. For now, though, it's nice to see her reveling in a bit of independence.

The Tyranny of the Dead

A couple of weeks ago, I was horrified to find out that, as wife of the eldest son, one of my jobs would be to put make-up on my mother-in-law after she dies. (Also, if a loved one dies as the result of an accident, the bereaved get to wash off the blood.) I told my husband that I didn't think I could bring myself to put foundation on a corpse, should it come to that, and he scoffed and told me that it was the last kind thing I could do for her.

This got me to thinking about the Western attitude toward death versus the Japanese one. In Japan, where worship of the dead is part of the culture, where my mother-in-law puts out a bowl of rice for my deceased father-in-law every day, where not putting out the bowl of rice might upset the spirits of the dead and bring about bad luck, people are more comfortable with death. After all, the dead are always with us.

On the one hand, I can appreciate this, but on the other, it seems like the dead have too much power over daily life. I remember how I once made the blunder of heaping too much rice in a bowl when I was helping prepare school lunch. One mother told me that rice is only heaped like that for the dead. Today, my mother-in-law told me that I shouldn't hang the laundry facing in a certain direction because of the dead. To be honest, I cut her off before she could give me the details, but I'm guessing you're not supposed to hang shirts, which are kind of the shape of a person, facing north, the land of the dead. I don't mind if she follows these rules, but I really could do without the added stress of worrying about offending the departed (or whatever). I regret, however, that I cut her off. It sounds like something I could use in a story.