JAN 2024 | 'My Heart Left In Wintertime' by @TheSquareCheese
A Fresh Start Challenge Favorite (ENG) - TheSquareCheese
Holiday: Shogatsu | Japanese New Year
1. Invitation
The letter came in the mail, in a pretty envelope written in a calligrapher's hand, and inside that envelope was a letter. It was beautiful, neatly decorated with the practiced hand of a professional with my name written in kanji done in mahogany ink to match the scheme of the letter.
Hasegawa Mari.
I almost threw it away.
I knew who it was from before I even saw the sender.
Hasegawa Dosan.
My grandfather.
I haven't seen him since my grandmother's funeral. Still, every year he would send out those stupid, pretty little Shogatsu invitations, beckoning all of the grandchildren and his children to his home for a New Year's celebration.
And every year, I would throw them in the trash.
I don't know why I held onto one this year. He was turning ninety at the end of the month, and I was closing in on thirty-one. Who knew how many of those he had left? Maybe that was what stopped me. Maybe that was what made me call up my fiance and ask if he had plans and if he would be willing to drive me down from Sapporo to his little old house in the country near Lake Yogo.
The last time that my grandfather and I had spoken, there had been a fight.
A big one.
I was dating an art teacher, and I had started to teach dance. We made enough to get by and loved what we did. It was enough for my parents, but not for him.
I needed to aim higher, find something better, get a real job like my cousins who were lawyers or business people. I walked out on him that day and never looked back.
I gave my parents a call and let them know where I was going and that I would come and visit. They weren't going. Neither was my aunt. I figured someone else must be there. I doubted that they'd let him have the holiday completely alone. Some of the cousins and aunts and uncles had to have had an eye on his inheritance or maybe the old, historic house he lived in with my grandmother. He had enough things of value that someone would try to butter him up.
At least, that's what I figured.
If not for the money, then maybe for the duty of it all.
That familial obligation that seemed so hard to justify having, one I managed to get rid of as soon as I left his house that day after our very important talk that he insisted on us having. Can't refuse the patriarch, or so I thought at the time.
Funny how easy it wound up being.
Sitting in my fiance's old car, I stared out the window and remembered when this time of year would make me excited, when it was just me and my grandma.
2. Winter Memories
My grandmother had been the heart of our family. She was the glue that held us together, and none of my cousins were as close to her as I was. Every year when the winter seasons would set in, she would take me, all bundled up in our coats, to a small outdoor venue with little fires set up to watch the Noh plays by firelight.
The local theaters held them every year, and it was always my favorite thing to do. She would come and pick me up from my parents' house and take me on the train back to the little station near her house. We would walk back and have some dinner with my grandfather, and he would tell us to have fun - he always gave her a little kiss on the cheek - and send us on our way. We'd arrive there and I'd give her the chair and sit down on the grass. I was curled up against her, cheek on her knee, entranced by the dancers in their beautiful costumes and fearsome masks, drifting between sleep and wakefulness to the sound of the singers, the flutes, and the drums. She used to be a performer, in another life, when she was younger. She taught me how to dance, but I never felt I was ever as beautiful as her. She moved so gracefully, hands moving in the most precise and delicate motions I had ever seen, every movement a work of art. You would think that sort of discipline would have made her stuffy, but she loved to laugh. Her soft oval face was always bright with laughter, and her smile was bright and white, lighting up her whole visage with a radiant glow. She was beautiful and warm, and she never stopped being beautiful and warm.
She loved theater, and so did I. Apparently, my grandfather did once upon a time, and that was how he and my grandmother met. She was the daughter of a Kabuki actor, and my grandfather was the son of a Noh theater director. Their fathers hated one another with a passion, but they ran off and got married. She always told the story with a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice, and I found it romantic from the time I learned what romance was. I would see him help her with her hair, put on her coat, and lift her over puddles, and I told myself that one day I would find someone like that for me. It always made her smile, and when they were together at every family event, she made the entire place glow.
Then, she died.
It was sudden. No one was ready.
My grandfather did everything wrong. Everything. She had been a Buddhist, but he gave her a Christian funeral because he was. She requested that all of her belongings be given to her children and the grandkids when she died. He kept everything. That was when the fighting started, and when he started getting opinionated. Grandma always kept him calm and level, but without her around, his unfiltered opinions started bleeding out to everyone, and soon, he was celebrating holidays alone. Not even my father, his eldest son, could make himself do the dutiful, appropriate thing and go see him.
But now I'm standing here in front of his door, my fiance by my side, trying to decide if I should knock or turn around and go back in the car, when the door opens, and there he is.
3. Meeting
He seemed smaller than I remembered. He used to be an imposing man, tall with a serious face that seemed like it never smiled, but now he was old with white hair and that face creased with wrinkles. I was finding it hard to believe that over a decade ago, I was sitting in front of him and utterly intimidated by him. He looked like one gust of wind would blow him over.
He seemed surprised to see me. I never sent a notice ahead that I was coming. He and Grandma never expected RSVPs. Attendance was just expected. I had missed so many that I guessed I was a surprise in and of myself, and maybe seeing my fiance there was a surprise as well. We said our greetings and gave him our cards. I never mailed him anything anymore. He took them with more gratitude than I was expecting and let us inside, and I swore that he was almost smiling.
We stepped in and removed our shoes, and I whispered to my fiance that we'd stay for dinner, chat, and then leave as soon as we were done as we slipped some slippers on. The entryway was beautifully decorated, just like I remembered it as a child. There were beautiful bamboo decorations that I knew my grandfather had made by hand. I remembered seeing them as a child and being in awe of them, and he had made one for each of us when we were born. I never took mine out of the box most of the time now.
He quickly shuffled ahead of us, asking for us to come and sit. He had a whole table made up in one of the side rooms laid out for everyone in the family, yet to my surprise, we were the only ones there.
He insisted that there would be others and told us to sit. He was smiling, a rare thing even from my childhood that he reserved seemingly only for my grandmother. He sat down with us and asked us how we had been, and we answered every question he peppered us with as politely as we could. He seemed to forget that several years ago he had reduced me to a screaming, crying mess and never batted an eye.
Time ticked by with vapid small talk and as the day got darker, he would disappear into the kitchen from time to time and start bringing out food. I recognized recipes that my grandmother used to make, and the smells dragged me back to old Shogatsu dinners with me sitting beside her and my grandfather as they told old stories about when they first got married. He made a point to point out these little confectionaries. They were my favorite, he recalled, and encouraged me to have a few. The others would be there soon. However, I could see the realization setting in.
We were the only ones coming.
That was when my fiance turned the topic to my grandmother. He asked about the little sweets, and my grandfather's eyes lit up at the same time as mine, and the next thing we knew, the conversation had turned to somewhere new.
4. Memories of My Grandmother
It was like she was there again as we told my fiance stories about her. We were laughing together for the first time in ages to the point where we were both crying, and I found myself listening to the stories coming from my mouth and my grandfather's with her voice in my ears, laughing merrily in all the same places.
It was like the fight had never happened, and we forgot to even wait for the others as we all started to eat.
We were several dishes in when my grandfather finally stopped, and I saw his eyes hold onto me before they started misting over. He set down his bowl and pulled off his glasses, trying to disguise tears as needing to rub his eyes. He apologized at first, and for a moment I wasn't sure why as our old feud was lost among the sea of my grandmother's memories.
Before long, he was weeping, and I wasn't sure what to do. Confessions poured forth from his mouth laced with apologies, words I never thought I would ever hear uttered by him as long as he lived.
He was sorry that he did what he did after she passed away. For the first time in sixty years, he was alone, and the grief had drowned him as badly as it had smothered us, though I don't think any of us had known. He knew how hard that he had hurt us, and finally told me how it had felt for him.
He had lost a part of his soul, and every decision he made had been to try and save a part of her, to push us to a life he felt he never could give her even though now he realized that all of that would have just hurt her had she seen it happen. It didn't make it better, but it let me understand, and for the first time in perhaps the full time that I had known him, I saw my grandfather for the first time. I saw a grieving old man who had lost all of his family at once and who was desperately trying to make things right.
I couldn't say that I regretted my choices. He needed to know how I felt. Now, though, as I took one of his wrinkled hands in mine, I was happy that I hadn't thrown the invitation away.
Maybe there was a little bit of my grandmother there after all, bringing us both together like she always had, to let us try and start again.
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