Graduation II

Today was my son’s kindergarten graduation ceremony. Here he is, accepting his certificate of completion. When each kid went up to get his certificate, a picture of what he/she wants to be in the future was projected onto the screen. My son wants to be a baseball player. Most of the boys want to be soccer players. Two want to be magicians. Most of the mothers and teachers cried. The university president’s speech was very long. Among other things, she warned the kids that they would be walking by themselves to school from now on and wouldn’t have their mothers to protect them, and they should not get into cars with strangers.

Words for a Deaf Daughter

Here’s a writing exercise for you: Go into a room with your brain-damaged, deaf, seven-year-old daughter (or perhaps a normal daughter or son) and start writing to her. Don’t ignore her, but let her frequent interruptions, a sudden screeched “Eeee,” influence the course of your writing. This is more or less what Paul West did in writing Words for a Deaf Daughter. In his introduction to the Dalkey Archives edition, West writes, “It suited [Mandy] especially that I was writing on the backs of envelopes slit open; something homespun and undignified in that appealed to her, not least because it was on such paper that she did her own extraordinary daubs and composed what passed with her for prose. The original manuscript sits in a steel drawer in a university library now, an uncouth bundle of penciled, ball-pointed, crayoned handwriting joined, quite often, by Mandy’s scrawls and squiggles: a garish obbligato in the margin, sometimes on the middle of the page. Often enough, in her ecstatically ebullient way, she would snatch a page from me and run away with it, giggling.”

Although parenting a disabled child can be challenging, to say the least, and heartbreaking at times, West ponders his daughter with good humor and wonder. The book reads at times like a sustained freewrite wherein West, set off by something that his daughter does or says, riffs on everything from wine labels to birds to airplanes, always circling back to Amanda. While it may have been written in the presence of a child, it’s the kind of dense, poetic, thought-filled book that you’d best savor after yours are asleep.

For the record, I have tried, on occasion, to write in the presence of Lilia. My own daughter, however, loves notebooks almost as much as she loves shoes and whenever she sees me with one, she tries to take it away and write on it herself. Thus, like West’s manuscript pages, my various notebooks are decorated with Lilia’s drawings and letters. I like to think that she will be a writer someday, too.

Graduation

Today was Lilia’s graduation ceremony. She had to give a little speech, and this is what she signed (as translated by me):

“In kindergarten, the funnest thing was ‘The Mitten’ play during the Culture Festival. I was the dog. I said ‘bow wow wow’ in a loud voice. Everyone praised me so I was happy.

“When I grow up I want to work in a clothing store. I want to sell pretty clothes.

“Thank you teacher and mama. When I become a first grader, I will do my best.

“That’s all.”

Sadly, her father didn’t understand her signing, but we were both very proud of her.

Arts and Crafts

Only three more days of the deaf school kindergarten, three more days of the Mother’s Room and forced arts and crafts and the competitive nature of the mothers when doing said arts and crafts. Not being, in general, an artsy craftsy type, and also not being a conformist, I have resented spending hours making obligatory birthday cards for the monthly birthday party, and also the hours spent on the name tags for the annual sleepover. (Why don’t the kids make these things? It’s their school activity!) If you look closely, you can see that we had to chain-stitch the names of the teams (in this case, kujira, or whale, and kabutomushi, a.k.a. stag beetle. We spent more time making the name tags than the kids spent wearing them.

For the past couple of weeks, the mothers have been making shikkishi for the teachers. These are the Japanese equivalent of yearbook pages, and at most schools the mothers just dash off a little note in a corner and sign it. At the deaf school, each mother-and-child had to write joint messages on construction paper cut-outs to all the teachers. That was the easy part. Then, each mother is making a very elaborate shikkishi for her kid’s homeroom teacher. One mother is making some sort of flower, a hydrangrea, maybe, and cutting out dozens of millimeter-sized flower petals, which she then affixes with a toothpick and a little bit of glue. The other mothers have been oohing and ahhing over her creation. They totally snubbed mine, which hurt my feelings, but then again, why do I care so much? I’ve been brainwashed! I have to get out of there. Three more days…

Call Me Sensei

I’ve been sort of looking for a job, which means I handed over my resume to a friend who knew of a job opening at the university where she works. It’s two classes one day per week teaching English Communication. There was an exchange of e-mails about the details on my resume, and then a committee met to discuss me and my resume. I figured they’d call me in for an interview and I would get to wear my new Armani suit, but they sent me an e-mail saying that I start in April! So now, after seven years of being a stay-at-home mom, I’m　employed!

The Long Sayonara

The end of the school year in Japan is filled with emotional events and ceremonies. The farewell activities at the deaf school started a couple of weeks ago with the wakare ensoku (translated, it means “separation field trip”). This was supposed to involved a picnic in the park with all of the kindergarten classes, giving the three-year-olds and four-olds one last fling with their elders, who will be moving up to first grade. It rained, however, so they ate lunch in the playroom.

For the past couple of weeks, the different classes have been preparing gifts and performances for today’s wakare kai (farewell party, I guess you’d say). This began with a ceremony in the playroom. The three five-year-olds took turns as master-of-ceremonies. The first event was the ceremonial giving of presents. The four and five-year-olds made medals and bags out of construction paper and presented these with as much formality as you’d expect. Then the mothers of the younger kids gave the graduates-to-be bouquets of flowers and wrapped gifts (which turned out to be pencils and erasers to be used from April).

Next, the six-year olds presented their gifts - handmade furoshiki (wrapping cloths) and pictures of themselves decorated with origami roses. Each kid had to say a little something. Lilia was supposed to say/sign, “We made roses out of origami. Let’s be friends always.” She got the first part right, but she was really nervous and forgot the second. She wound up signing “We were always friends.” Oh, well.

This was followed by the entertainment portion in which the two three-year-olds and their teachers managed to perform “The Three Little Pigs,” the four-year-olds acted out “Billy Goats Gruff,” and the six-year-olds played the castanets. Finally, the mothers did a song with sign language, which we practiced for many times.

After lunch, everyone played at shopping together. The big kids had a crepe stall.

The next big event in the long sayonara is the graduation ceremony which will be held next week.

Origami

I have been worrying about how I will keep up with my kids once they start first grade and I have to help them with their homework. Yesterday in the car on the way to school, Jio asked me the English definition of three Japanese words that I didn’t know, and the day before that, Lilia was supposed to practice writing the word for the kind of rice cakes you put out for Girl’s Day, and I couldn’t remember it. Neither could she. Luckily, her dad was home, so we asked him. (The answer, in case you were wondering, is hishimochi.)

Worse, Lilia is supposed to fold five origami roses by Monday. You’d think I could help out with that by looking at the printed instruction sheet we were given, but I can’t get past the eighth fold.

Terebi Champion

My son’s favorite TV shows these days is “Terebi Champion” (Thursday nights on Osaka TV at 8PM, if you’re in Japan). Translated, it means “Television Champion.” Every week, contestants compete at something. One time, everyone built masterpieces out of Legos. A Japanese high school kid constructed the golden temple, Kinkakuji, and a European guy made a ship with a sushi restaurant hidden inside. It was very impressive. Last week, owners of Vietnamese pigs put their pets through the paces, nosing along balls and such.

This evening, my son made me sit down and watch a bit with him. The event was sausage-making. One guy made a soccer ball out of sausage, and then there was the loaf that, cut crosswise, had a picture of a pig on every slice. The winner made his face out of sausage. In addition to being highly original in presentation, it must have been delicious, too, as good taste was a factor in scoring. My personal favorite was the picture book made out of sausage. It was a story about ogres.

In future, I propose a bento-making competition. Get a bunch of ambitious mothers together and see what kind of box lunches they come up with for their pampered darlings. On the last deaf school outing, there was one kid who had link sausages in his lunch that were carved into the shape of crabs. I still don’t know how his mom did that.