To My Children, My Magnum Opus

I really don't need Mother's Day. I don't need a card or carnations, I don't need chocolates and a brunch at an outdoor cafe. Why would I need a special holiday to celebrate my everyday status? There is no disregard in my days that warrants a Hallmark intervention. My children love me, they love me more than I deserve. I may do 100% for them everyday but they give me double that in an hour. I don't want to be exalted and crowned with a paper tiara. I just want to keep working on the debt that I owe my children, even though I know I will never be able to repay it in full.

Thank you, Sebastian. Thank you, Nicolai. Thank you, Colette. Thank you, Luca.
Thank you for making me your mother.

The Graduate

With much ado and fanfare, this boy graduated from kindergarten last week. Two years vanished in a poof and now here we are with a genki, semi-literate, functionally bilingual Nicolai. Japanese kindergarten is not for the faint of heart. In which I mean lazy. It is a full-time job keeping up with all the events and activities that go on in a regular school year and before you know it, your kid is bowing to his sensei and singing sayonara to kindergarten. Literally...



We were lucky to be able to send both of the boys to private kindergartens, both valuing that critical stage of childhood by creating an environment that encouraged creativity, cooperation, and social awareness. Academic prowess is not central in the Japanese kindergarten; it is more about cultivating experiences that the child can carry with them through life. Sebastian's kindergarten followed a Piaget approach, granting the children lots of freedom and space for discovery. Nico's kindergarten was a Buddhist school so regular lessons in manners, sensitivity, and compassion were taught in the week.




All in all, it has been a very wonderful experience for our family and I know Nicolai is ready to start school in April. We'll have a year off from kindergarten until Colette starts (we like them to have 4 years at home in English) which will be a good chance to catch up on other aspects of our life.
Then we'll be ready to start round three.

It will be hard at first to get used to this guy being a first grader.

Thoughts of Transition

Now, it is the pleasure of my everyday chores, the warm sunshine of Spring, the songbirds, the children laughing during their recess in the schoolyard next-door.
My heart is ripe with gratitude. How lucky I am to be here, right now.

I want to chronicle the stars and air and sounds for Luca, the setting of his first chapter. Most important, I want to remember this sweet period right before he joins us so that later (perhaps when he is sixteen and pimply, sneaking cigarettes and breaking curfew) I will have something luxurious and soft to pull from my battered mothering box, a cloak to wrap around my sweet boy and protect him from my easy judgments and exasperations.

Every mother has a pile of these memories, perched on the edge of our minds, at the ready.

These quiet, mundane weeks before Luca is born are now ready to be folded and put away. I can feel a shift occurring in my body and mind. Every minute lived is another minute closer to Luca. Soon I will have memories of woven with details that only a parent can savor, like those tiny, tiny fingernails and the way his eyelids will flutter while he is lost in newborn dreams.

The whole family seems to sense the transition. Every morning I wake up surrounded by my children, all of them quietly vying for my attention, even if it is just passive physical contact. They perhaps sense that my attention will stray for a little while, to be focused on a little one instead of homework assignments and skinned knees. The boys are more understanding but I wonder how Colette will respond to this coup. In these days before she loses the Baby crown, I am kissing those sweet cheeks just a little more often, giving her more time to gather her rocks and dig in the sand at the playground. I think she will like the Big Sister crown just as well, though it might fit a little awkwardly at first.

Breaking Spring

Spring break is almost at an end. Most of my maternity leave up until this point has meant a house full of energetic kids which, for this gigantically pregnant mama, is a bit exhausting. Not many pictures to document our days as they are more of a swirling vortex of drawing pads, meals, dishes to be washed, fights to be broken up, jump ropes and soccer balls, toilet training, and the constant reminder to "BE QUIET". They start early here as the sunrises around 4:45 am now and no amount of curtain can stop Nico from rising with the sun. Of course, I assume our neighbors are not so in tune with nature's cycles so this involves a bit of stress from parents who also prefer to wait until a more decent hour for rising. The good thing is that the boys go to bed around 8:00 pm and fall into a deep, uninterrupted sleep until their early wake-up time.

Tuesday saw a tremendously strong storm hit Japan (though it was not a typhoon, just to be clear). In some places, the winds were up to 100 miles per hour. About five people were killed in the storm and hundreds injured. It hit Nagoya in the afternoon and stayed for a few hours. Talk about cabin fever at the end of that day.

Now it is gorgeous. Birds are singing, the kids are painting and reading, and I am about to go to the doctor's office for my weekly check to see how Luca is cooking up. It is hard for me to fathom the fact that he can decide to come at any time now. So hard in fact that I have put off buying the items necessary for bringing to the hospital. I have decided that today is the day to get all that shopping over with. A good step forward in facing the reality which in turn means getting my head in a good place, the best birth preparation I can embark on.

Also, I just wanted to give a shout-out to all the friends, neighbors, former students, and of course family members who have generously given presents to little Luca. We really appreciate your thoughtfulness and kindness. Thank you so much!

I'll try to be a daily poster for a bit so that you will won't have to worry about Mr. Luca's arrival.

Take care. xoxo

The Swing of Things

It is March 21st.
Spring has sprung and it is only three weeks until this little one is set to hatch (though with my late children, I am not expecting anything until the end of April). Last week I was hit with a cold that made me inclined for the horizontal rather than vertical activities. Being sick also makes me feel lazy, especially with all the t's I need to cross before next month.

This week I am better and have managed to complete my taxes and other misc. paperwork that had a timestamp blazing. Not fun stuff but necessary stuff.
I have reclaimed my sewing table and have managed a few steps towards completing that massive list I posted before. A reversible jersey knit cap has been made, along with a quilt and a couple of blankets. Today I will finish the little kimono tops and baby towels (they wrap babies up in towels instead of blankets here). I will try to take some pictures later today to share with you.

The closer I get to the due date the closer I find the unnecessary aspects of life falling away. There are a lot of things that will not get made or written and instead of it bothering me, I find relief in that realization. There are a lot of pressing concerns around here, specifically financial worries, but at this particular moment, I am just grateful to be home and have what I do have. When the belts are tightened, it becomes necessary to use what is on hand more than we do if we have a broader income. Lots of bean dishes are being served more often now. Luca's things are being made primarily from samples I had for the shop. And a lot of the things I am making for the shop will also come from what I have in my scrap pile (it's a nice pile).

I am from a generation that started out despising the term "frugal" and has now embraced it as a lifestyle choice. I would rather have less money and more time and now I get to discover the cost of that wish. It takes a lot of grey matter to manage it but the benefits are definitely worth it. I am sincerely grateful for what I have before me right now. Which happens to be a very kissy two year-old who wants my hands to "hurry up" and play with her instead of the keyboard.

Hope you are all doing well. Take care.

be here, be aware

Colette and I had Jason to ourselves Monday and Thursday as it is test week so the high school where he works didn't require his skills. Though I had intended to use all my spare minutes for sewing, I chose instead to go tramping around downtown Nagoya with my main squeeze.

Despite looking at this glass I was served as being half full, the impending deportation hearing has been weighing on me. I am trying to use this situation to readjust how I have framed our time here.
We feel settled, we feel a part of this beautiful section of the globe, but in reality we are just long-term guests.
Or at least from the perspective of the authorities.
To counter the feeling of helplessness, we are pushing ourselves to be more aware of where we are right now. To go out and find the Japan that we would miss.

Taking our lives in our own hands

Right now I am sitting on the porch with Colette, sharing a grapefruit. By sharing, I mean that I am eating the flesh and she is daintily drinking the juice from a spoon. It is a good moment. The essential chores are completed. I organized my work space. There is a sweet warm breeze moving the curtains and drying the laundry. The boys are still at school so it is quiet besides for the birds and babies cooing next door. I had anticipated sewing during the day today but have enjoyed just being home.

In fact, just being home is decidely my favorite way to be. So much so that I am now putting all my spare energy into the ambition being home on a regular basis. I have never had such a clear purpose in my life. Moving into my thirty-second year has made me realize that no one else is going to give me this, that I will have to take it into my own hands. Which is fine and the way it should be though I wonder why it never occurred to me before.

It is strange that you can feel lost in your own life but for too long, I have not recognized my surroundings. The sirens that wailed tsunami warnings served as my alarm clock and jarred me out of my confusion. I am awake now and grateful to be so. It was exhausting living a life that I did not own. Now that I am here, there is no disconnect, no daily bridge to build and cross. As much as I will continue to mourn the tragedies of the disasters that hit up north, I am also grateful for the opportunity to open my eyes upon my own life and now have the sense to live it. I am not sure who to direct this letter of gratitude to, so I will just leave it open, for everyone and everything. Thank you.