My grandmother has always lived alone, a two-hour train ride away in the city of Kobe. Fragments of childhood call at me all around her neighborhood: a shining blue sign in front of the convenience store across the street, the slow rumble of passing city buses, the officer that always taps his foot on the sidewalk outside the police station.
A sprinkle of cherry-blossom petals floats down as I drag my suitcase up the trail from the station. The sight feels out of place. I realize I've never walked here by myself or at this time of year—my family and I only ever visit Kobe in the summer and at New Years. For the past 18 years, spring has been the season of scrambling to begin the new school year. I pick a petal off my hair and stop to take a breath.
In all of my memories, my grandmother is an all-knowing figure of care and wisdom. A retired apparel business owner of 40 years, she always knows what she wants. She speaks with a sharpness and moves with a purpose. To me, she also represents everything warm and gracious. She knows all the ginger teas and heat packs that help with illness, and dishes out endless plates of hot food until my brother and I complain that our stomachs are bursting.
When I arrive this time, the house is quiet. My grandmother nudges me inside and tells me to sit. She is smaller now, and has to peer up to meet my eyes—but her words and movements still hold the same sharpness.
“You must be so tired,” she remarks, and the ice cubes clang against each other as she pours me a glass of cold barley tea. I look around at the familiar pieces of artwork that fill her living room. A dark green vase sits on the countertop, under a full bookshelf and an oil painting she did of a busy cafe in France. A large vintage rug covers the floor underneath the wooden table. I know all the sensations that come with sitting in this room like the back of my hand. But each time I come back, I gain a little more understanding of the amount of thought behind this house she calls home. Every placement of a plant and choice of a painting is made deliberately to curate a space, one that embodies my grandmother in its blend of discipline and artistry.
While I sip on my tea, my grandmother opens the closet and pulls out the futon to put in the guest room. The weight of the mattress reveals the frailness of her body. I quickly get up and grab the other side of the futon to help. She swats me away. “Finish drinking your tea and wash your face,” she says. The floor of the guest room is spotless.
My grandmother tells me she wants to buy me clothes. She claims I’ll need them in the fall when I leave for college. I reluctantly agree, and we put on our shoes to walk to the bus station. I walk slowly to match her speed.
It’s 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. There are only three other passengers on the bus, all around the same age as my grandmother. Sitting down, I think about how this is the gentle pace at which my grandmother lives her everyday life, secluded from the spinning 8 am to 8 pm patterns of students and workers. Outside the window, the city has changed. The cake shop we used to sit at is closed down. A shiny Nike store covered with flashy posters replaces a worn-down bookstore in the shopping area. Everything feels slightly unfamiliar.
“When are you going to leave?” she asks, while the bus rocks us in our seats.
“August,” I tell her.
“Sugoi-nee.” She remarks, a quiet sigh in her voice. How impressive.
I shake my head, suddenly overridden with a pang of guilt.
Inside the department store, my grandmother occasionally points at a long dress or a green pair of pants. “What about this?” She asks, holding it up against my body.
My grandmother has picked out clothes for me since I can remember. Now that I’m older, however, I have my own taste–it doesn’t align as much with hers. Each time I shake my head, my grandmother tilts her head and frowns. I feel guilty for rejecting her suggestions, but I don’t want her to waste her money on me. When I suggest something, the fashion critic in my grandmother comes out and she points out that the color is strange or the shape doesn’t suit me. She wants to buy me something, I know. But we walk out of the department store with almost no success.
We eat a late lunch at a small soba restaurant right outside the department store. My grandmother flips through the menu cautiously and examines every option. I order the same thing that she chooses.
She continues to ask me about my new life abroad. What is college like in America? Who are you going to live with? What will you eat? I try to explain to the best of my knowledge. Although my grandmother asks a lot of questions, she doesn’t seem to know how she feels about the answers. She simply nods, and responds with the occasional sugoi-nee.
I don’t like when she says that. When she listens to me speak of my future, my grandmother is no longer the all-knowing figure I know her to be. She seems even smaller than usual, and we are both aware that she is not part of this new world she wants to hear about. I hate the feeling. I blur my words and change the topic.
“You’re not going to come home for four years?” She suddenly asks, a while after the conversation has stopped. “No Grandma,” I shake my head, “I’ll come visit sometimes, I promise.” She laughs, saying, “I sometimes wish your mother had had you ten years earlier so I could see what you do for longer.” I look down and smile a wry smile, not knowing what to say.
My grandmother complains about the food after the meal. “I’m sorry I took you here,” she says, shaking her head. “It was delicious, Grandma,” I tell her, but the words just seem to slip out her ears.
The next three days I spend in Kobe seem to pass by like this, quiet and motionless. Every night, I fall asleep to the sound of my grandmother’s tape recorder playing in the distance from her bedroom. It’s a poetry recitation, the only way she can fall asleep. The silky words repeating themselves on the crackly recorder makes me feel like a little child.
The night before I leave, both of us have walked around too much to have any energy left. My grandmother had wanted to cook a grand meal, but we decide to heat up her favorite boxed curry instead. While the microwave spins, my grandmother pops two eggs into the boiling pot and slices pickled cucumbers. I admire how smoothly her hand moves in the kitchen, like music notes falling into perfect harmony. My grandmother may walk slower now, but her cooking is as swift as ever. She chops a burdock and carrot to create kinpira, and tops the warm curry rice with a half-cooked egg. A full steaming meal is set on the table within twenty minutes. Warm smells of spices and freshly cooked rice fill the air.
“Itadakimasu.” We put our hands together to thank the food.
The meal tastes familiar, and infinitely peaceful. As my grandmother blows on the curry to cool it down, I can’t help but wonder how many more times I am going to eat a meal in this room.
All of a sudden, I am overcome by the urge to stand up and run away. Where, I don’t know. But I want it all to stop. I want to unsee my relationship with my grandmother as a ticking time bomb towards her death. I want her to stop growing older, and to stop speaking as though my world is now much bigger and more important than she is. I wish for the neighborhood around her house to stay the way it should be. And most of all, I wish to halt the countdown toward the end of my own childhood. I want to stay here, around my grandmother and everything else I already know.
Despite my rushing desires, the warmth of the dinner table in front of me sits still. The food, the artwork, the feeling of the room–it’s all a sign of everything I am forced to sacrifice as I grow up and become my own person. It does not seem like a trade-off that I want to make.
But it has to be made. There is no prize for realizing the temporality of a moment while you are still in it: it only elongates your grief. It’s just the way it goes.
So I eat. I sit at the table and eat the curry rice and the kinpira, chewing every bite slowly to mourn what is passing. My grandmother does not bring up college, or my future aspirations, or how this is the last time we eat together before I move an ocean away. We simply eat in silence, and only the sound of spoons and chopsticks tapping against plates rings in the room.