'Untitled', May 2019, by late Vancouver pop artist Derrick 'Boy' Humphries.
January 5–9芹乃栄 Seri sunawachi sakau - Parsley flourishes
January 10–14水泉動 Shimizu atataka o fukumu - Springs thaw
January 15–19雉始雊 Kiji hajimete naku - Pheasants start to call
Wednesday, January 4th
Welcome to 2023. We're precisely a month out from the day that a bit of a mild temperature and scratchy throat ultimately turned into a double COVID diagnosis that scared the shit out of Mina and I, and waylaid our lives right up to the cusp of the holidays. As promised by Dr Cauliflower Ears, it's taken a full four weeks to even start feeling free and clear of it.
The salaried set were back to work today, after a shorter than usual year-end break. All of the annual Christmas and shogatsu seasonal nonsense has almost wrapped up. There's still one more national holiday to contend with this coming Monday, then that's it. The school kids will be back at their desks after that's done and dusted.
Our residential cage/monolith against an uncharacteristically appealing looking blue sky, the afternoon of December 31st. The Ape City army had the day off.
The 'festive season' (sic) in review?
Things weren't great over here. We went ahead and had the old lady back after a few weeks of isolation and quarantine. We'd promised Mina's sister that we'd pick her up, and meant to live up to our commitment. When I got up at 6:30 am on the morning of December 24th, there was 10 cm of snow on the ground, and big fluffy flakes were blowing around in the pre-dawn twilight. Fortunately (or unfortunately), it didn't last. Mayumi had called the evening before and offered to keep okasan there, but it seemed a trifle insincere. Like she was going through the motions; saying 'the right thing', because that's what people do. If we had agreed and bailed, her whole household would have been pissed off. It was tempting.
I hated being 'tested'.
Owing to the shitty roads, we picked her up a bit later than usual. Of course, Mayumi was unimpressed. I usually don't go with Mina when she drives over to her sister's to get the old lady. I probably should have stayed put, but for some reason I decided to ride along. Truth be told, I wasn't feeling so great. I was tired. I'd also been running on a bit of a short fuse, and was slightly irritable. Not that irritability in itself is strange for me...but this was a bit different. We weren't even two minutes from Mayumi's front door and the old lady was on her phone, yammering at one of her older sisters about something she wanted to send to her. Why on earth couldn't she have made the call before we picked her up?
Of course, her ninety-something year old sister is almost deaf, so the old lady had make sure she was talking LOUD ENOUGH. Fairly typical behaviour for okasan...but on that particular day, it seemed like a bit much.
Looking back, I crack it up to what Mina and I started referring to as 'COVID brain'. A sort of malaise, moodiness or confused state of mind somehow associated with the disease. It's actually well documented.
On top of all of this it was Christmas Eve AND my birthday. Never a time of emotional peace and stability for yours truly. Anyone that knows me will know this all too well.
Long story short, everything went south in fairly short order.
Okasan was simply being okasan, living in her rarified 'old lady land' - where only she and her own immediate wants and needs are of any concern - and I wasn't handling things very well.
I always used to get on alright with her, but things between us had gradually started to sour over the course of 2022. It's hard to say where all the current animosity started. I tend to think that there'd been an incident earlier in the year that sparked it all off.
I believe it was a late spring Sunday afternoon, and we'd just finished lunch. The old lady said something nasty to Mina (who was running around waiting on her hand and foot), and I snapped at her and told her to apologize. Neither of us can remember exactly what she said, but it was enough to hit Mina the wrong way. Everyone knows that the old lady is flippant and can come up with some pretty insulting stuff. The jury's out as to whether she actually means what she says or not, which is all well and fine...but when she's a guest in OUR place, I won't stand for her mouthing off at Mina. As soon as I caught wind of what was going on, I scolded her, and told her to apologize. I don't think she expected that. While she promptly back pedaled and tried to negate the situation, neither Mina or I caught any actual apology.
In any case, after that there seemed to be a bit of a sea change in her attitude. A resentment that gradually sort of spread and took root on my side as well. I suppose she thinks she has the right to speak to Mina any way she likes.
Wrong.
Our place isn't big. By Japanese standards, it's fairly spacious, but there's not much in the way of privacy. It could work out well enough for a young family, but it's not really set up for guests. If there were an extra bedroom and bathroom, things might be different, but then it would be a house - like Mayumi's. Japanese 'mansions' are small and intimate enough that if there's any ill will brewing between occupants, things just aren't going to work.
When we have her over, she essentially occupies half of our living area for the duration. Our place becomes 'old lady land'. At Mayumi's, she has the master bedroom on the second floor, right next to the bathroom. She has it set up like a small apartment, with her own mini fridge and all the amenities.
Nonetheless, she's still the source of enough ill-will and conflict with the house's other occupants that they see fit to shuffle her off over here every second weekend.
Alas, I digress...
The dystopian entrance to our Ape City cage/monolith. It's been like this since the second week of September. Really cheerful looking fucking place. Word is the tarps come off sometime in February...but the Ape City army will be running around until May.
After we got her back and loaded her in, I gave her tea and set her up in front of the TV while we went out and picked up some baked goods and a lunch bento thing. We came back just under an hour later and set the table. After we finished, I cleared the dining area and took the tea cups to the kitchen sink to wash out. While I was at the sink, Mina started nudging me and whispering that her mother was 'waiting'.
Every year okasan slips me a little envelope on my birthday/Christmas. She does the same with Mina on her birthday. It's always money. The same amount every year. Of course, it's thoroughly un-necessary - but it's something she always does and it's appreciated. It's an annual good will gesture that kind of smooths over all the bumps in the road from the year gone by. Smiles and happiness always abound. I liken it to sort of a 'tip' or gratuity for the past year of tolerance and good service.
She gestured to the pinkish coloured envelope on the table, and I did my best to look surprised.
"Wow! Okasan, you shouldn't have. Thanks so much!"
Something seemed a bit off this time around, though. Before I'd even picked it up, she started apologizing for it being, 'not so much', and so on. Strange. It seemed slightly different from the usual sort of self-deprecating dance some people do around gift giving time. Demeaning the gifts they give. She'd never been one to do this before.
Odd. I brushed it off and pulled out the tried and true,
'It's not the size of the gift, but the gesture, and heart behind it', and thanked her very much.
She then pushed a white envelope that simply had 'Thank you' written on it toward Mina.
'What's this?'
It was basically a straight-up 'tip'. Similar to what a housemaster would give a servant on the holiday. She does this every once in awhile, and it makes Mina absolutely bristle. To be treated like 'help', in our home, by her own mother. It's always caused hard feelings. Mina's mood soured.
"I don't need this. Keep it"
With that, she pushed it back across the table to her mother. The old lady half-heartedly protested, then simply snatched it up and tucked it back in her bag. Let the 'games' begin. I'm sure she would have fallen over had Mina accepted it. If she'd have written 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy Holidays' on it, Mina would have gladly taken it and thanked her.
This is part of 'the dance' okasan does with money. It causes needless hard feelings, and the envelope always ends up right back in her purse.
This was not the way we wanted Christmas Eve to go.
I excused myself, went to the classroom, and peeled open the pink envelope she'd given me. I had to follow up on the odd feeling I'd got when she started dithering and apologizing for it; as I suspected...it was light. Exactly half of what she'd given me every other year. Talk about sending a message. Her timing was impeccable. Christmas, my birthday, and still unsteady from my bout with COVID.
Mina came in, asked me what was up, and I showed her. She puffed the pink envelope open between her fingers and peeked in to make sure that I hadn't missed anything. Nope.
"She shorted me"
From there, everything pretty much went south.
With a couple of envelopes - and in two easy moves - Christmas had effectively been taken out back to the woodshed and given a shit kicking.
Lovely.
We had to go out and run a couple of errands, which was a good thing. I needed out of there as soon as possible. I was disappointed and hurt. Mina tried to diffuse me.
"Suck it up. Who cares..."
I guess I felt that beyond the small money issue, there was something else at play. The old lady was using this opportunity to say something to me that she couldn't express in words due to the obvious language barrier. People use money as currency for all kinds of things. To be perfectly honest, I shouldn't have been the least bit surprised. When she started dithering at the table, I had a hunch what was up. This had been brewing for quite awhile, anyways.
My solution?
"I think it's better if I just give it back. I don't need it. Thanks... but no thanks".
Mina called Mayumi and they both concluded that giving it back would aggravate the situation even further. Mina didn't want to be stuck in the middle, either.
Nope.
"You should just keep it. Say 'thank-you', and 'suck it up' Don't make this any worse than it it already is, and don't put me in the middle"
It's amazing how the Japanese can be so...cool. They can just go full stoic and endure anything.
We went and picked up the Christmas Kentucky Fried Chicken Christmas Bucket that we'd pre-ordered a month earlier specifically for the old lady's visit.
When we got back just before 6pm, I ran the bath and told Mina to go ahead and serve the food up to her mother. We'd tried to get her to take her bath a bit earlier, but she hadn't wanted to.
Mina and I typically eat after we're done with the bathing business. If we held off on supper until everyone was done, we wouldn't eat until almost 9 pm. A bit late for the old lady. Not to mention the fact that I'd pretty much had enough of looking at her for the day. I decamped to the classroom and our bedroom, and re-heated the remaining KFC around 8:30, after Mina was done. We sat down just short of 9pm, and without a word one way or another, the old lady scooted off the couch and went to lay down under the electric blanket and down comforter on the fold-out in the adjacent tatami room.
This essentially means, 'Shut off the lights and TV, I've had enough and I'm going to sleep'.
We had a quiet glass of wine - our first drink in over three weeks, and quietly picked over the limp, reheated KFC. Not much of a festive dinner.
Still smarting, I pretty much kept to myself until Mina took her shopping, then back to Mayumi's the following afternoon. - a few hours earlier than scheduled. As they got ready to go at around 2pm, I tried to put on my best 'big boy pants', dug deep, gave the old lady the hug I could muster, and thanked her for 'the kind birthday gift' at the door.
She mumbled some sort of apology, we bade each other farewell, and they were off to get her shopping agenda taken care of over at the local AEON Mall.
Of course, she came across like she had no idea what had happened...only that things had gone badly, and I was upset 'for one reason or another'. Probably a 'gaijin thing'.
Mina simply cracks it up to her brain mis-firing due to age. I don't know. If I press my opinion on the matter, it goes nowhere good. Of course, the old lady is her mother, and mothers ultimately tend to get a pass at the end of the day.
Mina loves her mother. She doesn't always necessarily 'like' her, but there's that filial loyalty. I understand her position all too well.
My mother was a massive problem, and up to all kinds of trouble and nastiness all the fucking time. She hurt a lot of people, and never failed to portray herself as the victim. Things got so bad that we didn't speak for years on end. I finally put an ocean between us in an attempt to get away from her toxic behaviour.
When she received her terminal cancer diagnosis, she made sure that I knew about it first...and I was back there as many times as I could manage.
No matter what, I loved my Mum. Had it not been for Mina's big heart and generosity, I wouldn't have been able to make those trips, either. I owe her a real debt of gratitude for making those last visits possible.
Going up against okasan is an exercise in futility.
Somehow this track became synonymous with all of the conflict and upheaval that December 2022 dumped on us. I picked up this soundtrack CD cheap in a used bin at the trade-in shop up the hill a few days before getting sick, and it just kind of stuck. 'Duel of the Fates', indeed.
Looking back, I can't help but feel that I over-reacted. Mina was right. I should have 'sucked it up'...but for whatever selfish reasons, I just couldn't. Maybe it had something to do with my overall condition being a bit compromised. 'COVID brain', or whatever. Maybe I was feeling sorry for myself, and in that dark place I often go to around the holiday season...post-COVID or not.
Most likely these are all just convenient excuses for my own shortcomings. I feel bad that I made it all about me, instead of considering how Mina was feeling. That should have been my main concern. We could have just soldiered through it, all stoic and poker-faced...but I let my emotions get the best of me. Worst of all, I feel that I let Mina down, put her in an awkward position, and ultimately contributed to triggering a larger, more toxic situation with Mayumi and her crew - one that could have easily been avoided had I simply listened, and just 'sucked it up'.
Everything's always 20/20 in hindsight, as they say.
(to be continued...)
That's where I'll leave it for now - but fear not, we'll pick up and hopefully resolve this unfolding tale of seasonal family grievance two weeks henceforth, or thereabouts.
A bit of a shorter go round this time, as matters other than keyboard pounding and yarn spinning in the corner of my frosty little backroom demanded my attention over this year's shorter than usual shogatsu break.
In the absence of any further family-oriented holiday obligations (as detailed in the next dispatch), Mina and I took a much needed time out. We caught up on sleep, cooked, watched a few movies, and focussed on overcoming the stubborn dregs of our shared Covidian Odyssey. The time passed all too quickly, and our endeavours appear to have largely paid off.
With the exception of what felt like a slight relapse early on New Year's Eve (scary), I feel like I'm pretty close to 85% full impulse power. It's hard to say whether the lingering bouts of fatigue are after effects of the virus, or simply my age and early morning schedule giving me the finger.
Aside from a little persistent coughing around bedtime, Mina appears to have returned to her pre-COVID default, which is wonderful news. She bounced back just a little quicker than I did.
While we both continue to feel a bit of the COVID brain 'disconnect', it doesn't seem as bad as it was even a week ago.
The next dispatch is also going to be the final one in this series, as I will have reached the 72nd Japanese micro-season of my discontent.
From there, we can look forward to the first stirrings of old-world spring, a short 'creative pause', and yet another vehicle to carry forth with pretty much the same narrative...assuming we're all still present and accounted for, that is.
Oh, and to the stalwart few who've stuck with me through the 72, a hearty thanks and 'Happy New New Year!' from this rarified and frigid little corner of Deadbeat City. Cheers.
Until then, you'd do well to remember that,
"No matter where you go, there you are".
There, and nowhere else.
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