Konbanwa (Good Evening!)

During my morning walk with the dogs I was struck with memories of when I was a little girl living in Japan. I’m not sure what exactly triggered the memories, but I think it may have been a combination of cool dry air with the bright sun coming up over the horizon. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I have these memories because all my senses were ignited growing up in Japan.

It’s amazing how much I can remember even though I was only about 3 when my Dad was stationed to Itizuki Air Force Base (Fukaoka) and almost 7 when we left for Big Spring, Texas.  Evidently my brother and I could speak Japanese with our maid/nanny and left Japan with various phrases in our vocabulary.  Both our parents still pepper their talks with Japanese phrases and both of them take on the same deference of a polite Japanese person when talking in the language even though they’ve been divorced for several decades.

There are two spectacular scenes that are imprinted on my brain and both of them involve me showing the signs of being a burgeoning hoodlum at only five years of age.  Evidently I got kicked out of kindergarten because not only did I willfully disregard what the teacher was telling me and I almost scared her to death in the process.  For whatever reason, in our particular classroom they had placed the rack where we hung our coats right up next to a big plate glass window.  Of course you know that the teacher’s “rule” was for us not to hang on the coat rack for obvious reasons, but I just could not resist hanging on the rack that was right at my height and so easy to grab.  The coup de grace was when I swung the coat rack full of coats into the window knocking all the coats on to the ground and thankfully somehow narrowly escaping breaking the floor to ceiling window.  I was relegated to a private school run by nuns with rulers soon after this fiasco.

The second scene was in our neighborhood on base.  The houses were a lovely white adobe, which to my little artist’s eye made the perfect sketchpad for practicing my writing.  Somehow I found a piece of coal and I vividly remember writing my name as big as I could with a back ward’s “y” onto one of the houses. I couldn’t wait to show my mother.  I think she almost had a heart attack (I was quite the little killer at 5…) when she realized that I had chosen to write on the walls of the Base Commanders’ home.  I do remember walking up to the door of the Base Commander’s home and apologizing to his wife who very graciously invited my mom and I inside for hot chocolate and crackers.  Even though I could tell that the BC’s wife was more entertained by what I had done than perturbed, I had to march home and get a bucket full of sudsy water and rags and cean my name of their wall until not a speck of black showed up anywhere!

I’m grateful today that I have learned how to play and have fun without breaking things (or scaring people have to death) and I’m learning all kinds of ways to express myself creatively.  Now when I remember the Japan of my youth, I can smile upon those times and feel good about my natural exuberance, my need to be recognized and my desire to express myself creatively which enables me to remember all kinds of other sweet memories just resting along side that I can bring out and dust off to enjoy with pleasure instead of pain.

What postcards from the Divine do you have inside you waiting to be dusted off and enjoyed?

Ko-in ya no gotoshi. Time flies like an arrow!