I HAVEN'T SLEPT MUCH THE LAST COUPLE NIGHTS. Thoughts swirling around in my head. Memories of visits to Japan...family...friends.
I wake up early and lay in bed thinking. Hoping Yoshio is OK.
I get up and listen to one hour of Abraham's meditation CD.
Somehow I fall asleep.
At 11:00 am I wake up again and check on Bachan.
She's in bed...watching the Japanese channel.
The death toll climbs. It's at 1500.
We all shuffle downstairs and huddle around the TV watching CNN. Most other channels have moved away from Japan and now focus on local news.
It's strange. All of us living in front of the TV.
I rarely watch TV, yet now I sit in front of it, afraid to leave for a moment lest I miss something.
Bachan is hoping Yoshio will appear on television. Pushing through a crowd, grabbing the microphone and yelling, "Ogenki desu!" (I'm in good health), knowing we would be watching TV.
But that would be very un-Japanese, even in a crisis such as this.
The world moves on. I hear children laughing in the park behind us. Cars driving by. But here, in my house, time stands still. We do not brush our teeth, we do not get dressed, we just sit...in front of the TV.
Alexis made Dutch babies (puffy pancakes in the oven) sprinkled with powdered sugar and a side of smoked sausage. Bachan loves them. We eat when we're sad.
Someone translated a Japanese Facebook comment: My two year old was putting his shoes on himself saying, "I'm going to go arrest the Earthquake!" I realized that inside a tiny body, there is a lot of courage and justice.
There are many images of Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. I am haunted by the woman wrapped in a blanket looking at the destruction of Ishimaki City.
Yesterday, I heard that people had a 5-minute warning of the tsunami. But this morning, I heard they had 15-30 minutes. Maybe there was time for Yoshio to grab his mother and climb the hill near his house. Maybe he's safe. Maybe he's OK.
The warning would have come just as he was closing his noodle house. He is a businessman, who sells pipes and industrial parts to businessness I think. He's thinking of retiring soon and decided to learn how to make noodles by hand. He studied under a master for many months and then opened a tiny noodle house on his property in Nobiru. It must be very good. People have driven several hours to eat there. I've always wanted to try his noodles and to work in his kitchen for a little while to help him a bit.
We just want to know if he is OK.
I guess it would be more sensible to catch up on the news first thing in the morning and then turn off the TV. It's all repeats after that.
But we just can't seem to tear ourselves away from the screen.
No comments:
Post a Comment