Spring is on its way!

Yesterday it was pretty warm. Today too. As compared to the horrible chill before. The winter is passing, and its always shocking because its almost like it goes from being horribly cold to being very very warm in a matter of weeks. How is that!?!?!

Anyway, Jan and Marisol finally had their baby. The sight of her was a shock...Its so hard to explain. Like seeing my brother as a baby girl? Or seeing my blood that I had never seen before but knew was somewhere? Very strange feeling.
One of the great things about the past few weeks, too, is that for Valentine's Day, my grandma, Mama Nene, went to her friend Karen's house. Karen let her use her computer and camera, and Mama Nene was able to talk on Skype for the first time, and see the new baby, her great-granddaughter, Aisha. It was perhaps a huge jump, I hopefully imagine, from being totally isolated, to realizing that we are all still around, somewhere, and eager to see her. I thank goodness for internet video communications.

I have been working on my garden, which is an increasing assortment of pots. Most recently, I have been trying to sprout a variety of citrus seeds. Yuzu, Tangerine, Orange, and Kumquat(金柑). I also puchased my first large plant, a pineapple guava. I love tasting the flower petals, and the fruit is yummy.

Immigrants' Stories

We have been watching The Sound of Music in the JHS 2nd grade class. First, I would like to say that I think this movie is amazing. What a great film. It has a bit of everything very well orchestrated into it. It is funny, sad, happy, elegant, down-to-earth, and very well composed. The directing, acting, and camera work is great. And the plot is really good. I saw this movie when I was about seven, but I was too young to know enough about life to appreciate it.
It constantly reminds me of my father in Mexico when we watch it. He is Austrian, and the movie is about Austrians. It shows us the culture before the second world war. It is a culture that I know he yearns for, a beautiful culture of elegant waltzes, classical music, quiet mountains, and many other things. I am sure, if I were to see a movie about Cuba, the same thing would happen with regard to my mother.
It makes me realize that I have chosen the same path. The path of the immigrant.
The other night I had a dream. I was in the mountains somewhere in California. I had met some people at the store. A young woman, a young man and an older woman. They were laughing and talking in the checkout isle. The man began to sing a short song, an addition to what we were talking about. And then the young checkout woman said to me "Why don't you stay here? It is fun, the people are nice. You would probably be happy here." I began to cry, and I woke up crying. It had been a long time since that happened. I realized how much I still missed being in the US, the way the people so freely greet strangers, and treat people like they are important, even if they don't know them, how easy it is to make real friends. But all of these feelings and this nostalgia are meaningless. The fact is that I am an immigrant. I have married a foreign man and moved to a foreign land. No one understands or cares, why should they? They didn't leave their homeland. I have chosen a lonely path, perhaps. Or perhaps it takes years to build a life, and most people have started from childhood, but I started 5 years ago, as an adult. I am not lonely with my husband; he is a lovely man, and very masculine and very proud. He is always at my side, if I should need someone, he is there for me. So I have the seed of a life here, and slowly, little by little, am meeting people and learning the language to a point of semi-literacy. And I am learning what it means to be Japanese, not in the obvious ways, but the ways that I am sure the Japanese Immigrants miss so much when they have left their home to live abroad. The quiet nature of homelife. What it means to be proud of yourself because you have really tried and prevailed at something, and then to keep going. Patience. The art of focus. And littler things... that I might not notice until I left, to go back to my homeland, and then looking back, realized how they had struck me so deeply. This may also be the plight of the Immigrant. That time and space always move forward, but that your become a part of that moving sphere, and once separated, are lost, in some part, forever. We can never go back. To where we were born, or to the place where we lived for some years.

Immigrants never forget their homeland. They never forget the way that people interacted. They never forget the little things, like how the place looked, the shapes and styles of things, when people smiled, when people connected, the sounds, the smells, the tastes. Those things may fall away with the years, changing, but for the immigrant, and perhaps, for the elderly as well, the nostalgia of a life never goes away. It lives forever in their hearts.

I am planting a garden. There is a Pineapple Guava in it. It is a rare ornamental here. I am also planting all sorts of citrus fruits, which are very popular here. I hope that my garden will flourish. It resembles my hopes.

It gets colder everyday now. At night we use heavy blankets and an electric carpet undeneath our futons. It gets more difficult to air out the futons in the winter, with the rain and cloudy, cold weather. The futons, light mattresses, are very easy to clean. After removing the bedding to be washed, they are taken outside and pounded on for a few minutes to get rid of dust and mites, and then left in the sun for a few hours to air out. It feels so good to sleep in a clean futon! I will never forget what it looks like underneath a traditional western mattress when I've moved them after months...

In the winter, it also becomes more difficult to wash clothes, because we, like most people in Japan, do not have a clothes dryer, instead hang them up in the sun. It is much better for the clothes, and saves on electricity, but is not a very good technique in the winter.

Hmm... I guess while I'm at it, I'll mention some things I like about my Japanese home. This is not a conclusive list; there are a lot of differences, some I like, some I don't like.

The toilet. When you flush, the clean water comes out of a spout on the top as the tank empties, so you can wash your hands after flushing. As you wash, it runs into the tank. I have a bar of soap on the corner, and a clean towel there.

The hot water heater. You push a button on a controller, and the water heater turns on. It takes seconds to get hot water anywhere in the house, and you can select the temperature from the controller. On top of that, it uses kerosene which is really cheap.

Tatami and hard wood floors only. This is pretty standard in Japan. If people want carpets, they buy a carpet to lay down. The tatami is used in the bedroom. It is a grass mat. It stays cool in the summer, just cool in the winter, and is very easy to clean. Liquids don't easily permeate it, and suface dust is easily vaccuumed. Hard wood floors can be found all over the states, but it seems that usually they are so expensive, although I did see some bamboo HdWd floors that are much cheaper, on exhibit at the Green Festival in San Francisco some years ago.

Thinking of houses and the way they are built reminds me of all the houses that I've lived in over the years. They were all great. I can't think of one that I didn't like at all. They all had their own special layout, and the places fit into their surroundings as though they were trees that had grown their, in some odd way. And best of all, they all inspired some experience or another to look back on. Where have you lived? What did you like about that place?