The pregnancy went along fine and our son was born in a rush. In January of 1994. When I say rush, my wifes water broke around 9AM and we went to the hospital, her contractions started around 12:45, I carried her into the birthing room as there was no time for her to walk or ride in a wheel chair.
Our son was born a little after 1:00 in the afternoon, with the doctor yelling at my wife to stop pushing and hold on, as he had only one glove on his hand, and my wife was digging her nails into the palms of my hands, drawing blood, screaming, and our red faced baby popped out like a champagne cork. (Note to all prospective new fathers, make sure the mother of your child cuts her fingernails before you join her to support her during giving birth.)
Everyone was happy, but things did not go so well for my wife. In Japan it is typical for a mother who has given birth to stay in the hospital for one week, for natural childbirth, and up to 2 weeks for a C-Section. Well my wife came home and the moment she tried walking up the stairs to our room on the second floor she experienced some serious pain in her pelvic region. We rushed to an orthopedic surgeon who checked her out and took some x-rays and found out that her pelvis bone had not closed properly after the childbirth. In other words she couldn't walk.
She was off her feet for one month, and I got to take care of her for the month she was off her feet. We were really lucky looking back at it that I wasnt working and was able to stay home and help out with her and the new baby. Our daughter was a great help too. She was 6, getting ready to go into 1st grade, and she was a huge help in watching over her baby brother! Grandma and Grandpa were happy too to have a new grandchild and they helped out tremendously as well. I think it made them younger too!
Around this time as well, Oyaji was feeling better and since he had retired "officially" he was home most of the time. However, just because he was retired didn't mean that he stopped being busy. He got involved in a lot of different activities in the local community. He was a licensed sanshin teacher, and started teaching the instrument to both children and senior citizens alike at our local area community center. A sanshin or samisen as it is typically called, is a traditional Okinawan musical instrument. It has three strings, the body of the instrument is covered with snake skin, and the neck of the instrument is from a hard wood tree, which when it matures has a naturally black center core.
This is a You tube video of one of the, if not most, popular Okinawan songs. An English translation follows the video.
Hana: May Flowers Bloom in the Hearts of All People
Rivers flow on and on to who knows where.
People also flow on and on to who knows where.
When they reach their ends,
I would make such currents bloom
As flowers! As flowers!
Please cry if you must and laugh if you must,
And some day, some day
Let us make our flowers bloom!
Tears flow on and on to who knows where.
Love also flows on and on to who knows where.
Within this heart,
I would make such currents bloom
As flowers! As flowers!
Please cry if you must and laugh if you must,
And some day, some day
Let us make our flowers bloom!
Flowers, being flowers, are able to laugh.
People, being people, will also shed tears.
That is the song of nature, you know.
Let us make our flowers bloom
In our hearts! In our hearts!
Please cry if you must and laugh if you must,
And some day, some day
Let us make our flowers bloom!
And this one is a traditional song, much like the one's Oyaji practiced nearly everyday at home. I probably could do an entire page on traditional Okinawan culture like the music here, and probably will later on. This is just a taste for now. Sadly we don't have any video of Oyaji performing with his sanshin.
Got off track a bit here, well Oyaji also was the head of the town's Senior Citizen committee and was a very highly respected and well thought of man throughout the town. He was a very traditional Okinawan man in many ways, how people thought of him outside the house was more important than how he treated or viewed his family. That I discussed in another post here.
Anyway, I needed a job, and in preparation for something, anything really, I went to the local construction association and got a 10 ton crane license and went to a driving school to renew my large vehicle operators license. The idea at the time was to go to work for a transport company through a friend of Oyaji's but what came up instead was I go a job working at a local hospital starting off with assisting with their senior citizen day care program, driving a bus picking up and dropping off patients and working in the administration section and doing light maintenance work as well.
Because I got this job through a friend of Oyaji's he was VERY concerned about me being able to succeed there and nearly every night after work, and after dinner, he would sit me down at the kitchen table and tell me to talk about what happened during the course of the day at work. He harped, and harped, and pushed me to learn more Japanese. In retrospect these little "talks" were the catalyst to me being able to communicate in Japanese.
However, many times these discussion became lectures about everything under the sun, and all too often he included my wife. Many times he would call us down from upstairs late in the evening and after he had had more than a few drinks in him, he preached about us, our children, our future, me, the house, everything. Many times my wife and him got into arguments because of his manner of always wanting us to do what he says and not as he did. He expected everyone under him to blindly follow his advice and opinions. He even got upset with us when we decided to name our oldest son something different than what he wanted.
He didnt like that we choose both an "American" name as well as a rather nontraditional, for the time, Japanese one as well.
He was a difficult man for me to understand, and I often felt like I was walking on eggshells around the house, and felt that way for nearly 15 years. I dont know if you can relate to that, but it was stressful to always think that the ax was going to fall. But we couldn't move out. We thought about it, but circumstances were such that it wasnt going to happen.
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