ママに伝えたい事。(The Things I Want to Tell My Mom.)
This is about my mama because I’m too stubborn, too proud, too self-conscious to tell these things to her in person. I’ll backpack around with luggage until I gain enough substance to face it head-on. For now, I’m simply going to make excuses and say that I’m too green to face this— pride(?) Perhaps sheepish-ness is a more suited term. English doesn’t wield such a single term that encases this feeling to its extent.
My family consisted of Japanese me, my Japanese sister, Japanese brother, Japanese mom, Japanese dad, and not so Japanese guinea pig. Until Ollie died. Ollie was a caramel-coloured guinea pig. He had some darker brown fur as well, and a strip of white that extended from his nose to the top of his head. He was lazy and smelled like the hay he munched on all day and night. He was a proper fatass alright, but a lovable one undeniably. A guinea pig’s not the kind of pet to leave an imprint on your heart like a dog or a cat, but when life’s duties aren’t distracting enough and your soul becomes serene, you feel that the hole in your heart is as big as Ollie itself.
Mom said she’d get a dog next, after we’ve all left for uni. “The house will become big, but the loneliness even bigger,” she says. I can’t say she has my wholehearted support in this decision…yet. A dog was about No.4 in my childhood’s “Why does everyone else have it and I don’t?” list. The list? Roughly:
A mom that doesn’t care.
Money
Money for travelling
Dog
Money for a Wii
Freedom
But I know she should get the dog. Though she conceals it so skillfully, her solitude shines through at times like a flash of silver through the fog. She mentions often that university steals time with her children. Even though it means that it also grants time with her husband, she’s never spoken once of this side of the coin.
My parents, it seems, just mutually signed a contract one day and got married. There wasn’t some destined fate nor invisible string theory in their fairytale. They each left Japan for their own reasons, met in a small Albertan town, and decided to settle down deeming it was an adequate point in their lives. They claimed to have “left everything” in their home country, but really, they’re still holding on to threads of guilt and resentment that have been weaved through their veins by their own mothers and fathers.
The Law of Conservation of Energy states: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one object to another.” I often play pretend, where I’m the wise daughter that doesn’t blame her parents for their energy of guilt and resentment that they carry. But that’s not me. It’s true that they didn’t create more of it—it as in their trauma. Yet, they made no effort to transfer any of it to some different, healthier form either. They held onto it in its purest form like some precious family heirloom, and passed it over straight to their children. I must’ve done something in my past life to be reincarnated as a first born child, but I don’t mind when I think that the alternative would’ve been my siblings receiving more of the damage instead. I always got new clothes in exchange.
The way in which my mom packaged her trauma was always intriguing to me. It was often “kindness” in a way, but more specifically unnecessary concern or assumed altruism under the illusion of kindness. For one, violin was one of these many “kindnesses” that my mom shoved onto me out of assumption for its benefit. Much of violin was a blur to me, partly because of my mind’s desperate attempt to forget it out of hatred, and partly because of the tears in my eyes I often had during practicing. I remember the wobbly notes that wiggled on the page and the way my melodies hiccuped in sync with my crying. My mother grew up in rural Japan, and never had the opportunity to learn to fiddle, and that was one of her biggest wishes as a child. She never asked for much. Rarely whined or cried or complained really. Yet, violin was one thing that the hand in her soul reached for but never got. I knew this, and this knowledge consumed me. I hated violin. Each stroke of my bow rushed rage through my body from the depths of my soul. Yet every thought of hatred was married to a thought of guilt, and I hated that too. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like,” my mom told me often. “It’s how we become persistent.” At the time I never understood what worth persistence had, that I obtained at the price of my happiness.
Summer of ‘23, l escaped my hometown for university. Toronto was free which seemed paradoxical as people and buildings crowded the city. Yet it was the anonymity here that released my constraints. To be a nobody also meant to be anybody. I wasn’t known for anything, expected of anything, analyzed for anything, and assumed by anything. It was, in one word, freedom.
But it was only when I became a nobody. It was only when I became a nobody that I could take a step back and realize what my mom gave for me to stand on these grounds of Toronto. It really was the persistence that brought me here. She made me that somebody who played these instruments, did sports, academics, worked; all of it. She gave me her everything to become this person, and what a privilege it was to be everything to her. Even if that meant being forced to do things I hated, or getting yelled at, or spending hours crying on the bathroom floor, I miss the person who did that for me. I miss my mom.
I’m not usually a writer but I want to take this opportunity to put this gratitude on paper. At least just a crumb of these feelings until I tell her in person. And I’ll leave them in the words of the language that brought me so many days of wetting my pillow, cursing at the notes on the page, laughing with my siblings until we had stitches in our stomachs, and endless arguments with my mom. These are the words of the language that brought me to today.
ママへ、(To Mama,)
いつもありがとう。自分でも全然口にしないのは分かってるけど本当はいつも感謝してるよ。
(Thank you always. I know it myself that I don’t ever say it out loud, but in truth, I’m always grateful for you.)
ママにはホームシックじゃないって言ったけど本当は授業の後、疲れて帰ってくる時ママの料理が食べたいし、朝遅刻してる時には車で送ってってお願いしたいし、くだらない話を聞いて欲しいし、ママがソファーでテレビ見ながら笑ってるのを聞きたいよ。
(I told you that I wasn’t homesick but actually, I want to eat your home cooked meal when I get home tired after class, I want you to drive me to school when I’m running late, I want you to listen to my silly stories, and I want to listen to your laughter when you sit on the sofa watching TV.)
夜中勉強してると時にお茶を持ってきてくれるママが寂しい。勉強、音楽、スポーツ、全部応援してくれたママが寂しい。
(I miss the Mama that brings me tea when I’m studying late at night. I miss the Mama that supported me through academics, music, sports, all of it.)
いつもワガママだったのごめんね。(I’m sorry I was always selfish.)
いつもありがとう。(Thank you always.)
Mom,
I love you.
-The author is a Japanese Canadian university student who is slowly trying to build the courage to say the words she hasn't been able to say to her mother. Through her writing, she tries to convey feelings of guilt, longing and gratitude even when those feelings are knotted. This piece is a small attempt in trying to translate love into language while still plodding through her pride and self-consciousness.