Emails from Kirsten and Naoto
April 2005

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 04:57:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: More Kindergarten stuff

Dear Friends and Family:

The ubiquitous icon of Japanese seasons, the sakura (cherry blossom) bloomed late this year; it was just in time for school entrance ceremonies (Japanese school year begins in april).

So to the background of a snowfall of cherry blossom petals, Mia donned her school uniform (complete from hat to socks) and walked to her very first day of school today.

It was such a kodak moment, I couldn't stand myself.

The meaning of the cherry blossom, so beloved in Japanese aesthetic parlance, is the evanescence of life. It blooms, so beautiful and delicate, and then dies in a matter of days.

It is the symbol of new life and growth, change over time, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

So how infuriatingly....apt.....it is for sakura trees to be blooming when your oldest child goes to her first day of school (or actually in this case, morning, the first week is only 9-11:20).

All these feelings of "she's still so young" and "I'm not ready for her to go" warred with "yeah, now I get a little break" and "she's growing up and can do so many things by herself."

It was the complete stereotypical mommy thing.

Mia didn't cry when I left her there with the teacher. She wasn't crying when I picked her up. The teacher, Juri-sensei, told me she spoke Japanese no problem the entire time there.

I am not surprised. Despite opinions to the contrary, Mia only clings to mommy when mommy is there. She is perfectly happy to hang out with other people she knows. (the key word there being "knows.")

As I stood there in the rain, umbrella in the hand also carrying Maika, among a passle of other mothers also there to pick up their children, I wished very hard that I could express these feelings I knew they also felt in some kind of eloquent, acceptable language.

Alas, all I could say was "I wonder if they're/she's okay?" (same grammar in Japanese)

But the biggest miracle of all, I thought, was the Saturday before when we had the entrance ceremony. This is the first day all the kids go to the classes in their formal uniforms. The parents are all herded into a hall. Then the teachers, with no prior contact with the kids, manage to get them to file into the hall in groups and sit in front of the parents by class. Amazing. Then the kids sit through an address by the Principal, his wife the Vice-principal (private kindergartens are usually family-owned here. Come to think of it, my university in chiba was also family-owned, and the kindergarten through women's junior college school I worked at in Utsunomiya before Naoto and I got married was also family owned. You might say nepotism is a given in education...) and a reading of "congratulation" cards from various businesses that owe allegiance to Tama Midori Kindergarten.

Unbelievable. All the kids just sat there. Then the teachers introduced themselves, there was a little sing along, and the kids all filed out of the hall and back to their classrooms.

I couldn't believe it. These are 3 year olds, remember, not the 5 year olds of U.S. kindergarten. While there was one kid who made a break from the line to run to their parent in the audience, most of the kids stayed dutifully seated, with some of them popping up like prarie dogs to scan the crowd for mommy and daddy and wave.

Is this the famous "group pressure" or "regimentation" of Japan? Can it be possible that 3 year olds are affected by it this early?

Or maybe just our children know more about what's going on then parents believe.

I am inclined to believe the latter.

Seeing Mia in uniform forced me to take another look at her familiar face. All of a sudden there was this separate person in front of me, as if she had gone and aged a few years overnight. And I felt this strange double vision of "my little girl" overlapped by a Mia who is all but unknowable to me.

I complain that my mother only sees me through the filter of her own personality, projecting onto me aspects of herself. I think this is the first time I truly saw how I do that to Mia.

So, with this somewhat airy-fairy thought, I will leave you with a few words from a Kahlil Gibran (of The Prophet fame) poem that is currently stuck in my brain. (especially cause the a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock does an awesome version of it)

Your children are not your children
they are the sons and the daughters of life longing for itself
they come through you but they are not from you
and though they are with you, they belong not to you
you can give them your love but not your thoughts
they have their own thoughts
you can house their bodies but not their souls
for their souls live in a place of tomorrow
where you can not visit, not even in your dreams
you can try to be like them, but you can not make them just like you

love and light,
kirsten

p.s. Here's a picture taken in Mia's class, she's "lily of the valley" class.

Click to enlarge.

See the album April/March 2005 for recent photos of the Suzuki/Lincolns. It includes photos of Mia in her kindergarten uniform, her entrance ceremony, family with sakura trees, and Maika being cute.

http://community.webshots.com/user/kblincolnsuzuki

Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:29:08 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Hafu Revisited

Dear Friends and Family:

Wow, things have picked up here with Mia going full time to Japanese kindergarten. I just realized it's been several weeks since I wrote an email. As I have started keeping a web journal, sometimes I forget to save up all those funny experiences that happen to me!

I got Mia's first "letter home" today from her teachers. Apparently she likes to feed grass to the little birds they keep in cages in the kindergarten hall. She always eats all her lunch (and this is apparently such a big deal that Juri-sensei even told us make less than we think they'll eat- this has to do with the whole concept that mommies show their love by making the lunch each day. I am not sure if I am comfortable with this, especially because I have no intention of going to the trouble of making [http://moonatnoon.com/projects/meals/0410l.jpg] wiener octopuses and apple rabbits each morning as is de riguer among loving kindergarten mommies), and has a good "rhythm" sense. Naoto will be glad to see that, as I know he worried she inherited my lack of rhythm.

I accidentally volunteered to be one of Mia's class officers. Talk about jumping in blind! Even though they explained at the mommy meeting what it would entail, Maika was running off and I had to go catch her. As I am unable to listen to "speech" Japanese and pay attention to Maika at the same time, I missed the explanation. None of the other mothers were volunteering and our little kindergarteners were amassed at the door about to burst in upon us en horde. Everyone was doing that "I dare not look anyone in the eyes in case they mistakenly assume I am volunteering" maneuver.

I mistakenly looked Sachiko-sensei in the eyes. It was called "trying to understand what she's saying." Whoops.

The mommy clicks are already forming. I had a mommy friend who lives nearby that I walked to school with for the first week. Then her son got chicken pox. The second week I floundered, exposed at the twice daily "standing at the gate before they let us in" ritual where I had no one to talk to.

It was sad. You can only start so many conversations with "I hope she's/they are okay" or answer so many times the "she's cute" and "how old is she" comments directed at Maika. Then my conversations skills would freeze up. Don't get me wrong, one on one I can do back flips one-handed in Japanese. Even with two or three other people I can hold my own (granted with the odd, sudden subject change or interruption, but I do that in English, too).

But when surrounded by 2 dozen or so milling Mommies already solidifying into clicks, I am speechless.

Luckily, a few days later, another friendly Mommy in Mia's class took pity on me. She stayed through our first conversation's awkward pauses. She is bright, outgoing, and nice.

Apparently she's from Hokkaido. That explains it. Not that Tokyo-ites are cold, reserved, and standoffish, no not at all. Just that I have always sensed more openness and warmth from either Northerners or Southerners in Japan. No, it's true (sorry Naoto).

Hafu Revisited

The perennial issue of the word 'Hafu' reared it's ugly head again on my Married In Japan discussion list.

'Hafu' is the borrowed, katakana-ized word used in common Japanese parlance to mean half-Japanese/half something else.

I think to most Japanese, it is just a word. They don't even think about the English meaning of the word. Of course native English speaking mothers do understand the connotations of "hafu" and worry about the negative influence it might have on their offspring to be commonly referred to as "hafu", as if everyone else was whole.

I have discussed this before in prior emails, yes. However, it seems like every time this comes up, I get a new take on it.

This time, some of the long-term mommies on the MIJ list were saying they don't care if people call their children 'hafu' because it's just a word. Another person pointed out that it is possible that parents react more negatively to the word than the children do. She said we should leave it up to our children to decide how they feel about that word.

That's all well and good, but Mia's just 3 years old. By the time she's old enough to really understand race, ethnicity, culture, and that whole pot of beans, the accumulated weight of attention, 'hafu' calling, and comments about appearance may have done its damage.

I may sound like a complainer, but its not just me. Many of the other mommies on the list said that its not the individual comments that get them, it's the accumulated weight of these comments constantly happening over a period of time.

Maybe its me, but I don't want to explain my marriage status "so, is your husband Japanese?", country of origin "are you American?" "where's your daughter from?", family rearing practice related to language "her Japanese is so good, do you teach her Japanese, too?", and opinion on relative language value in the world "how lucky they are to learn English. I can't speak English!" to any stranger who stops me on the street.

And if one more old lady at Seiyu grocery store comes right over and starts petting Maika on the head or poking her cheeks with their "god knows where they've been" hands without even LOOKING at me for an okay I am going to explode. I SWEAR I can't even buy eggs and milk there without at least one poking lady.

Naoto, how do you say "Get your freaking hands off my baby you old witch. How would you like it if I suddenly came over and starting squeezing your cheeks!" in polite Japanese?

Personal space, people. It's a good thing!

To give Tama Midori kindergarten some credit, there's not been a whole lot of comments or special attention. No, "wow, Mia can use chopsticks so well" (okay, actually she can't use chopsticks at all, but it was an example!). The one time I asked the teacher if Mia was using English to talk to her, she seemed really surprised and said "no, no, Mia's fine" as if it hadn't even crossed her mind. Juri-sensei has never stopped and asked me if I didn't understand or treated me differently than the other mothers (so far, says my cynical voice).

Bless her heart.

Even the gate mommies have showed discretion.

My guess is that its the whole "if I don't know you and have no discernible relationship to you, it's a free for all" attitude. There is a well choreographed teacher to mommy dance, and I am pretty sure there is a well choreographed mommy to mommy dance (although I haven't quite got that one. I still need practice) They can't afford to cross uncomfortable boundaries. Our roles are defined.

There's a little cardboard cut out with a hole for the face called "Mia's Mommy" or "Suzuki-san." As long as I keep my face in that cut-out, all's well.

I wonder how long I can keep that up.

love and light,
Kirsten

p.s. Maika getting busy with a banana. Despite her lack of teeth (only 2 and a half so far at 11 months) she wants to eat what we eat. And you can't feed her with a spoon, so no really mushy food. She wants to do everything herself. She even refuses to eat cream puff if you try to feed it to her instead of putting it on her tray. (yes I feed my 11 month old cream puff. get over it)

Click on image to grow the banana.

Take a stroll through THE MOSSY GLEN the fiction page of K. Bird Lincoln at http://www.geocities.com/kblincoln/mossyglen.html

More emails from Kirsten & Naoto