My Year of Dirt and Water Read online

  Naoko giggles and says, “Or very special times like here, now, in ESS room!”

  Just then, the door slides open. It is Hiroe-sensei. “What’s going on? You are talking about me?”

  The girls laugh and make space for him at the table. Having lived a number of years in England to work on his Ph.D., Akira Hiroe is one of the few teachers who always has an easy, almost Western-friendly relationship with the students.

  “They were explaining this Japanese phrase.” I hold up the chopsticks wrapper as he settles in next to me. “It’s ‘seize the day’ in English, right?”

  “Maybe. But . . . it is a little sadder in Japanese. There is a kind of melancholy or a nostalgia. In this, we understand impermanence.”

  “So, ‘this moment too will pass.’”

  “Yes.”

  Friday, July 9

  Today is the last day of classes before the summer break. Everyone on campus seems distracted and happy—chatting excitedly with each other. In composition class, my students tell me about their plans: part-time jobs, trips with friends, visits with family. When I say I have decided to go to Alaska, they ask if they can come too: “Ii na! Will there be snow? Can you see aurora?” Always the same questions, the same fascinations. It is strange to see my home through their eyes—an exotic, magical place. To me, it is mundane reality. A mottled and too-ordinary bruise on the psyche.

  Later as I am locking up my office to leave for the day, a group of my students pass by in the hallway. “Tracy-sensei, tonight, TV, 6 p.m. It is Shokei promotion. Please watch us!”

  Indeed the Shokei girls are on the television tonight, though I can’t quite see them through the poor reception of that one elusive channel, only hearing something about “Enjoy English!” and “Do our best!”. . . In a way, it is perfect though. I think this is how we always see each other—through a heavy static fuzz that will never clear for more than a second or two.

  Saturday, July 10

  For the first time in a long time I talk with Koun’s parents—they’ve decided to have Viv go ahead with the permanent catheter surgery they’ve apparently been discussing as an option for some months. “We know there’s no turning back once we do this, so we’ve held off for a while. But it’s time. Hopefully it will make it easier to get around.” Dick’s voice sounds resolved and tired at the same time. I feel for them. And I feel guilty, too. From here in Japan, it’s impossible to offer much more than a distant phone call. I know Koun will be worried when I pass along this information. At least it will be in person, as I have permission to visit Shogoji again tomorrow.

  Sunday, July 11

  The last time I drove out to the monastery in the mountains of Kikuchi, the rice fields were filled with fresh water reflecting sky; now they resemble a lush spread of emerald carpet. As I drive, the van clings to the thin strip of gravel and weeds that is the “road,” and I dodge several mushroom farmers carrying pails and bamboo poles.

  When I arrive, Koun asks Jisen-san if I can assist in the dimly lit kitchen where he is serving as tenzo (head cook). She grants permission for this slight impropriety, so I spend the first half of the day working with my husband, cutting vegetables, washing dishes, and preparing the noon meal over portable gas stoves: a simple vegetarian fare of wakame-and-cucumber salad with red pepper bits for color; miso soup with cabbage; carrots and potatoes in a thick, sugared soy sauce; brown rice; and, of course, the necessary pickled daikon to clean the bowls afterward. There is also a special treat today: a small canned fruit-and-nata-de-coco salad with slices of ripe mikan on top. All of the recipes have been written out by hand on slips of stained and tattered paper.

  Though Koun and I can’t relax and just talk (we are, as always, surrounded by thin walls and keen ears), I find that I truly enjoy sharing space with him in this new way. We work quickly and efficiently, with minimal speaking—Koun pointing to the tools he needs or succinctly explaining a heating technique or the proper way to cut food so that it can be easily held with chopsticks. He tells me that we’ve got to be swift and accurate with the recipes, getting it all out on time and arranged just so. “The food matters so much,” he says. “It’s one of few great comforts in the day.”

  As per Jisen-san’s instructions, we heat the ceramic dishes with boiling water before placing the hot food on them. “It’s really too bad we didn’t add a little bit of onion and garlic,” I lament.

  “Onions and garlic are strictly forbidden—‘incites the passions.’” I smile at an image of him sweeping away all of the little dishes of fruit salad, a struggle with the ties of our samu-e. Impure thoughts from the very mention of onion and garlic. Koun grins at me broadly—he must be thinking the same thing—and hands me a lacquerware tray of food to deliver to the informal serving hall.

  During the free period that follows lunch, Koun and the monks are busy with various duties. I ascend the stone staircase with the aim of making a rice-paper rubbing of the Buddha’s feet that are carved into a boulder at the entrance to the main grounds, but it won’t take—the surface is too rough and uneven. Nature and art conspiring against a frame, I think. It’s a shame, as this was to be my special gift for Koun’s older brother, Bryan. I know that he especially would find something poignant in this small memento from his brother’s current daily life.

  As I’m putting the paper and charcoal back in the car, Koun finds me and we walk the trail that loops above the complex. “It’s okay—as long as we don’t wander too far off,” he assures me.

  “And we will be watched?”

  “Someone is always watching.”

  As we walk, we talk about his mother’s upcoming surgery, about that edge of worry in his father’s voice.

  “They must really be hurting. I know they’ve been trying to avoid that step for a while now. Once it’s done, you can’t go back. Still, if it means more mobility for Mom—that’s great.”

  When we return to the parking area, it is time for me to leave but I’ve left an interior car light on and the engine won’t start. We jump it using the Shogoji car, and I’m grateful for the excuse to stay just a little longer.

  Tuesday, July 13

  The phone rings early this morning—Koun’s voice so casual and familiar, as if he were standing next to me in the kitchen. “I just spoke with Jisen-san—she told me to remind you that you can call if there is a problem with my mom’s surgery. Just leave a message.”

  “Got it.”

  “Oh, and . . . I thought I should tell you that I had an odd chat with a visitor the other day. She knows one of the women who visited the Monday zazenkai at Tatsuda Center. Supposedly, it’s known far and wide as ‘the zazenkai that does not serve tea.’ She seemed very annoyed about it.”

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Yes, she was going on and on about how ‘zazenkai is not zazenkai without tea’—I believe she said ‘zazenkai without tea is pointless.’ She was as direct as I’ve ever seen a Japanese person be. It was really weird.”

  “Okay—but, do I own the zazenkai? Who’s responsible for providing tea? And how does said tea get prepared while we are all sitting? Is zazenkai zazenkai without sitting?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  At pottery in the evening, Sensei passes out a selection of her beautiful handmade cups to each of us. The tea is lightly astringent and shimmery grass-green. I have never been to pottery class without this ritual happening first. The tea, the pleasantries, and then it’s down to business. Is pottery not pottery without tea? What else am I missing every day and in every way here?

  Friday, July 16

  It’s been two days now since Viv’s surgery, and there is still no answer when I call, so I talk to Bryan again. “I think something’s definitely up,” he says. I call Shogoji and leave a message for Koun. A short while later he calls my cell: “I couldn’t get hold of my parents so I left a message. Jisen-san said you can come visit this Sunday—I think she must feel sorry for me.”

  Saturday, July
17

  A lot of helplessness and worry today mixed with something like a residual angst. I take the bus into town for my Japanese lesson as usual, hopping off at my stop in front of the towering downtown department stores, but instead of heading directly to the YMCA, I turn and walk in the opposite direction, toward my home of some years ago. When I arrive thirty or so minutes later to that old Suizenji neighborhood, it takes me a few more minutes to orient myself away from the main thoroughfare toward the little four-story building tucked against the claustrophobic crush of taller, newer constructions and the dilapidated holdouts of past eras. When I find it, that place where I used to live, there is a surge of emotion. I stand beneath this dirty wedge-shaped building, looking up at the new inhabitant’s brightly colored futon stretched out across the balcony railing. There are moments—like this—when it strikes me how odd it is that I am still in Japan, a place to which I gave little, if any, thought in all the years prior to my arrival.

  As my gaze falls away from that third-story apartment, something catches my eye. Beneath the building, taking up half of what would be the first floor, is a small open parking lot for bicycles, two-wheeled vehicles, and various building maintenance items. There also, tucked into the shadows, is a modest wood-and-metal computer desk—constructed so that the user can type while sitting in seiza. It is my desk, the very same one I abandoned out of desperation because it would not fit into the car on the day I moved in with Koun in Aso, in the months before our wedding. This relic was my first piece of real furniture in Japan. The desk at which I began to put words to the experience of being out of context. The writing—I threw it all away, into the electronic ether, or into the garbage, on the day I left. But the desk, it seems, has been waiting here for me for over five years. I walk under the awning, run my hand over the dusty piece of furniture before becoming aware that probably everyone in the neighborhood knows that an unauthorized foreigner is standing beneath a building that is not (no longer) her home.

  And so I move on, following the slender line of water that flows past my old building along a concrete streambed and beneath the tiny urban bridges before opening out into the river that feeds Lake Ezu. As I enter the trail into the park surrounding the lake, I see that in the widening river next to me colorful koi swim lazily, sunlight catching along the gold and white of their scales. I know if I trail my hand along the water’s surface, the fish will nip at my fingertips. On several occasions while out on my daily walks, I found all manner of fascinating and idyllic scenes here: an old man playing shinobue, the mournful tune of the flute carrying all the way across the lake to my ears; fat, drowsy cats leashed to the open doorways of dilapidated houses; men fishing with long bamboo poles; brilliant white blooms of lotus flowers; children with their trousers rolled up to the knees, catching frogs in a creek. And at the furthest point of my daily walk—if I was lucky—a view of Kumamoto Zoo’s Indian elephant standing forlornly in his pen.

  Yes, I walked here a lot. Sometimes I wept here, too, as I grappled with the strangeness of a new and immediate country juxtaposed against the memories of a distant home.

  But mostly, I spent long hours staring into water reflecting sky, a stone slowly turning over and over in the hand as I turned all those old stories over and over in my mind, trying to understand and let go.

  Sunday, July 18

  Koun and I stand in the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of Shogoji, trying to get phone reception beneath the fickle clouds. Finally, the call connects, and I’m standing close enough to Koun that I can hear his dad answer on the other end. “The doctors don’t know what’s going on—she’s been talking to her twin sister as if she were still alive. She’s saying ‘help me’ over and over. It’s just terrible. I don’t know how much more I can take.” His voice sounds gravelly, raw.

  “Dad, you need to tell me if I need to go home. Call Tracy. She can call the monastery. I’ll just do what I have to do. But you have to tell me if it’s time.”

  After he hangs up, the phone rings again immediately, and I move away to kick at stones while Koun listens and responds again and again in the affirmative in Japanese. “What now?” I ask, as he tucks the phone into his sleeve.

  “That was Ganzoji. The head of the temple board has just passed away. The wake is this evening. They’re coming here to pick me up now, to take me to Aso.”

  “I could take you.”

  “No—it’s bad form. They’re already on their way. And they’ll need to explain the situation to Jisen-san. It should be okay for you to follow along, though, if you’re up for it.”

  A couple hours later, we arrive at the house in Aso. Koun and his teacher are led to one room to dress while I am waved toward another room full of mourners in black suits, kneeling on tatami.

  The priest’s wife pats me on the arm, and I hesitate. “Are you sure it’s okay?” I whisper.

  “Of course. You are from Ganzoji.”

  I nod and enter the tatami room, choosing a spot near the back. Incense burner, candles, and flowers have been carefully placed on a low table in front of the body, which lies in an open casket beneath an opaque white lace cloth. Black-suited people continue to file in and, at some point, the priest’s wife decides that I’m sitting in the wrong spot, so she waves me to the other side of the tatami. “Family side,” she whispers. Koun and the priest enter, and the wife of the deceased begins to sing—an anguished, wailing refrain. Afterward, the priest offers a short eulogy that is difficult for me to follow in his countryside accent, but for this one unmistakable, heart-rending statement: “We were the same age—we were growing old together. He helped me to be a better man all the time.”

  As he begins to cycle through the Heart Sutra, Koun serves as doan, hitting the bells and wooden fish block on cue, his voice layered in with the priest’s. One after the other, mourners step forward to offer incense and to bow. Makizushi and green tea are passed around, the guests nodding as they accept the trays. There is also the stillness of the deceased, the stillness of his wife as she sits in seiza.

  The wake is still in progress when I excuse myself, and Koun walks me to my car. “It’s the first time I’ve seen the priest really choked up at one of these things,” he says.

  “It was a hard day, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, and the funeral will be harder. But maybe I’ll have a chance to check in with my folks on a decent phone connection before going back to Shogoji.”

  The priest’s wife strides toward us to collect Koun, nodding at him that it is time, and he clutches my hand for a moment before turning to leave.

  Monday, July 19

  Koun calls in the afternoon, and it is frustration tinged with a wrenching feeling: “Jisen-san let me use the phone to check in with my folks. But, you know, the connection here is so bad. Dad says my mom’s lost most of her motor skills since that surgery. She still can’t feed herself. I didn’t realize—[click-click].”

  And when he calls back: “Sorry, oh, this connection. Anyway, this is the hell she’s been imagining herself in her whole life. A lifetime of worry leading to the exact thing she’s worried about. Now it’s here—right now. Trapped in her own body. It’s just—[click-click].”

  And again: “This is so irritating. Well, I just don’t know what to do. Mom doesn’t want a rumination on the nature of life. What [click-click].”

  And again: “Oh, T, someone’s hitting the bell. I should say good-bye before it cuts [click-click].”

  ~

  It’s just Stephen and me again at zazenkai this evening. It is quiet but for the usual passage of trains and the cough of the night watchman, who seems to have developed a summer cold. This is becoming normal, this falling away of attendees. I wonder how long our group will continue, especially given my upcoming absence. (And then, of course, there is the matter of the tea for the visiting Japanese. I have yet to address this issue.)

  On the drive back, Stephen assures me that the waning zazen group is not a failure. “It’s just how it is—people get bus
y with things that feel more important.”

  “Yes well, I guess it doesn’t help that I’m just sitting with this general guilty feeling lately. I feel that I’m letting Koun down, and at the same time I’m worried about his mom, about being so far away. I’m terrified that she’s going to die, honestly. I feel that I should be doing something for her.”

  “What can you do? I lost my sister some years ago. I was here at the time, but I went back for the funeral.”

  “That must have been hard for you, being so far away.”

  He shrugs. “Yes and no. Everybody dies. That’s just reality.”

  Tuesday, July 20

  In pottery class—our last before the summer holiday—Yoko-san announces, “I got the tickets!”

  “What tickets?”

  “To Alaska! I will bring my granddaughter, Satsuki-chan!”

  Oh—right. “Yoko-san, my mom’s condo is very small. . . .”

  “Don’t worry! It’s package. We have a hotel in Anchorage.”

  Yoko-san has an amazing ability to delight and annoy and make one feel guilty all at the same time. Mostly, in this moment, I feel annoyed. Meanwhile, the cups I’m trimming simply won’t hold their form—the edges fray up and smudge where I carve. Sensei points out that I’m not using the correct finger, the middle one, or enough chikara (power) when pressing at the center of the pot. The muscles in my hands tense up and lock while I try to maintain this posture, and when I pause to massage the pain away, I note that the pottery ladies seem to be now discussing fortunetelling while peering into one another’s palms—much too complex a topic for me to engage with. Starting my wheel up again, I concentrate on the pressure of my fingers against the pot.

  “Te o kudasai!” (Give me your hand!), says Sensei.

  “Hai, ganbarimasu” (Yes, I’m working at it), I say automatically.

  “Iie, te o kudasai.” (No, give me your hand.) I look up, see that she’s holding out her hand expectantly. I stop the wheel and hold out my right hand. She squints at the lines in my clay-wet palm for a long moment before sucking air between her teeth and cocking her head.