A House is Not A (Clean) Home

Now that Christmas is over (albeit our family is in the final day of Chanukah), a powerful force has taken over our house and fills every moment with anxiousness and anxiety.  This demon sweeps over us every year yet somehow, we are never prepared for it.   What is it?  Why, preparations for New Years of course.

If you are not a Buddhahead, you will probably think I am nuts and wonder why anyone would be so terrified by the prospect of celebrating the end of 2011 and the start of 2012.  Isn't it a time to cast off all that was bad in the old year and look forward to the goodness that is coming with the new year?  Well, no matter that the Lillian Tso Fung Shui for Tigers 2012 book my mom purchases from Longs Drugs every year says, there is no way I will have an auspicious year unless I tackle the number one item on the list that has been branded into my brain since the day I was born by my late great Grandma Tsuruyo:  CLEAN THE HOUSE THOROUGHLY!

I find it extremely ironic that my Grandma pounded into me that the house had to be immaculate on from December 31 to January 2nd because for the rest of the year, the house looked like it had gone through several hurricanes, a tsunami, invasion by the huns and enough oil to fry every malasada purchased in the last hour of the Punahou Carnival (oops, make that the "Other School" Carnival in case my kids are reading this).  You could not walk through the kitchen without feeling like you had stepped onto a human sized Hoy Hoy Trap A Roach house - with each step, your foot getting more and more stuck in an unidentified shoyu-miso based substance.  Yet, on those three days, you'd swear nobody ever cooked in that kitchen ever.  Grandma even would remove the very crusty, crispy aluminum foil on her gas burners (of course, she didn't throw them away but used them again on January 3rd). 

It was really kind of jarring to walk to McCully Superette with Grandpa and return to the freshly cleaned home on Date Street.  It was kind of Twilight Zone-ish like you were in an episode of Extreme Home Makeovers but Ty Pennington had neglected to inform you of your participation.  That couch that you assumed was chacha rice brown had mysteriously been transformed into kagami mochi white.   Masking taped broken rubber slippers were replaced with fresh from the box shoes that had been salted up for years.  Toothless relatives showed up with new sets of choppers that click clacked like trains during lunch,  Uncles who looked as yogore as Tora-san were as sharp as Steve McGarrett with long sleeved rayon Aloha shirts to match.   The thing is, I really didn't like it - all I wanted to do was stand in a corner so I wouldn't drop a stray hair anywhere or accidentally spill a drop of Exchange Orangeade when I took a step. 

I attempted to follow in my Grandma's three days of cleanleness footsteps once Oscar the Grouch and I had a house of our own.  As we had the house with a view of the Ala Moana New Years fireworks show, we felt obligated to have the party.  When we first had the twins and most of our friends had not migrated to the Mainland in search of better jobs, owning homes that did not require leaving home at 4 am to get to work by 8 am or wanting to buy cereal for less than $7 a box, we did actually clean our house in preparation for our deeply beloved illegal aerial fireworks bearing friends and family members.  This was way back when my mother was convinced that a single speck of dust would result in the twins contracting fresh-eating ebola (yes, back when she would spend 30 minutes wiping a shopping cart with lysol and baby wipes before putting the twins in the seat - wiping two carts if they were anywhere but Costco with the double cart). 

However, with the addition of dogs, the twins growing into adolescent "I don't give a crap how messy my room is" attitudes, the Mad Cow's penchant for leaving bowling balls everywhere and setting up mock bowling alleys on any flat surface and our age-induced inability to bend or operate the vacumn cleaner without needing several applications of Tokuhon Chill, the New Years Eve parties have stopped at our house.  Instead, we have moved everything (this year to include three dogs and a hairless guinea pig) to my parents' home.  On occasion, we have returned home to find friends in our yard or standing on our porch at 11:55 pm waiting for the fireworks show to start.

As I type this blog post, I look out onto my living room and realize that unless I am able to recruit a team of a 100 germaphobes who are willing to work for free, there is no way this place will ever be clean by December 30, 3011 let alone 2011.    You try doing battle with the following, armed with only a bottle of generic Febreze:

• Muddy paw prints of assorted sizes, some with grass and remnants of shredded Pokemon stuffed animals inside
• 3,000 dirty left socks, desperately seeking 3,000 clean right socks
• Korean restaurant menus covered with ko choo jung sauce
• 7-11 musubi wrappers, some with nori still inside
• Three backpacks near the front door, dropped there on December 15, 2011(start of Winter Break) with estimated time of pick up on January 3, 2012 (end of Winter Break)
• Photographs of veterans from 2009 banquet, waiting to be scanned
• Half-eaten shoes, fully eaten slippers
• Enough books to re-launch the Borders chain in Hawaii
• Every Angry Bird and Club Penguin item ever produced
• Raisins or on on closer examination, guinea pig pellets

And that's just on the living room table. 

Perhaps, what keeps me from cleaning is a subconscious desire to recreate my Grandma's house in my own home.  When I lived in Los Angeles for law school and would come home, the first place I always wanted to go to when my plane touched down at HNL was my Grandparents' home on Date Street (yes, the second place was to Zippy's to have chili and macaroni salad).  I would smell the sweet Tahitian gardenia as I opened the car door and my nose would immediately start to run if it was mango season.   If my Grandpa was in the house, I'd go down the abunai side of the yard rather than use the steps to get there even faster.  I would trip over the Otafuku slippers at the front door as I ran into the house like I had done many, many times before (knowing full well that Grandpa would yell, "Ey, no slam da doa!" or "Close da doa, get plenny flies!" as I bounded in).  I knew there would be a big black cast iron pan of my favorite - miso eggplant with tofu - on the stove with a freshly cooked pot of hot rice (a biggie since Grandma only made hot rice in the morning to put on the butsudan and we'd have this rice cold for dinner) and tea with that popcorn looking stuff inside.  In later years, I'd go to McDonalds to buy my Grandpa's favorite Filet-o-Fish and to St. Germain for some Tsubushi Anpan for Grandma. 

Even though my Grandma would inevitably greet me with, "Aya, Hachi, how come you so fat?",  my heart was always light and my spirit always lifted when I stepped foot in the living room.  Here were people who had loved me from the moment I was born (even though they told everyone that they wondered where I got that curly Popolo-kind hair from) and continued to love me even though I was somewhat less than the ideal granddaughter (math and science challenged).   For me, it was not a complete homecoming until I walked into the kitchen and stuck to the floor.

Since my grandparents passed away, I can count on one hand the number of times I have gone to their home.  My aunty who lives there is a cleaning machine and you can now walk in the kitchen without making a "tsk, tsk" suction noise with each step.  Everything is organized and there is even plastic and doilies on the furniture.  While we still call it "Grandma's house", for me, it is not the same.  A clean house is simply not Grandma's house. 

So, if you do pop in to see us during those precious three days of December 30 to January 2 and my house is clean, please file a petition for involuntary commitment because it is highly likely that I have lost my mind.   Even more so if I am actually dressed in an appropriate t-shirt and not one with a rude saying or curse word (the Diva allowed me to walk within 10 feet of her at Ala Moana last night because I wore a plain, unprinted t-shirt  and was, according to her, "dressed properly".  Well, that and I had her Christmas money from her Grandma as well as Oscar's credit cards), if I am surrounded by cats or if I have not checked my Facebook that day. 

Oh well, Akemashite Omedetoo y'all!

I Am Woman

While the Congressional Gold Medal events held this past weekend were very moving and powerful, I could not help but feel that a very important group of people were inadvertently ignored throughout all of the event. This group was an essential part of the WWII Nisei veterans successes during the war and for decades thereafer.  Without these people, it is unlikely that the majority of the veterans would have been able to even attend the ceremonies yet hardly any mention was made of them by any of the keynote speakers or other high maka maka folks.

Of course, I am writing about the wives and widows of the veterans.

Perhaps it is because I am an Japanese American woman myself that I felt a bit angry about them being slighted during the whole CGM brohaha for months.  Perhaps it is because I see these women interact with the veterans several times a week and know first hand how dependent our heroes are on them for day to day living.  Perhaps it is because a few of them came up to me in tears during the events, feeling that they had not properly honored their late husbands due to their inability as spouses to fully participate in the parade, luncheon and memorial service. 

I try to put myself in their shoes and realize that there is no way that I would have been able to cope with all these women went through in the 40s.  Many of them were married days before their new husbands shipping out to almost certain death in the European Theatre, some doing so while living behind barbed wire in internment camps.  There was not time to dilly dally as our generation does, living with our boyfriends for years (often having kids with them out of wedlock) before deciding whether they are the right ones for us to marry.  You have to be an incredibly strong woman to sign up for the job of a military spouse, particularly one back in WWII, as there was no way to know when or if you would hear from your husband.  I have heard more than once of a widow receiving notice that her husband was killed in action only to receive a letter from him weeks later that was written prior to his death.  Can you imagine reading in the paper about only 8 men in your husband's company surviving a bloody battle and wondering if he had beaten the odds and was still standing? 

On top of that, throw in trying to make ends meet on your husband's $20 paycheck as a single parent largely on your own.  While many women did have support from their own families and friends, they did not have access to Family Support Group services, counseling or financial aid like current military spouses do.  Even if they did, it is unlikely they would have looked outside of their families for help as that simply was not the Japanese way to do things.  I think of the women I know, teeny little Japanese women who are so soft-spoken and shy, and am awestruck with all that they have achieved in keeping their families together, running their households, maintaining a marital relationship and living their lives for these many years.  Like the vets, these women never complain about what they went through.  Like the veterans, they reply that they simply were doing their jobs as wives as mothers - that when their men enlisted for duty, so did they. 

So different again for our generation that lives for the next Oprah moment that will bring us individual fulfullment.  If we put our children's needs before our own, we feel guilty because we are told that we need to nurture ourselves first and fully before we can competently care for anyone else.  Yet, when we put ourselves first, we are told we are selfish and worst of all, bad mothers.  For the WWII wives, self-reflection was a luxury that they could not afford.  There was just too much to do and too little time to do it.

I think of the times when Oscar the Grouch is out of town and I am in a panic over how I will deal with the kids on my own.  Even though they may be at school for most of the day, I still brace myself for the hours when they are home or having to get them ready in the morning as well as deal with the traffic at school.  I will call Oscar and grumble as often as I can as well as call in my parents to help out when things get too frenetic.  I also will get on the phone or on Facebook to vent to my friends about my terribly stressful and pitiful situation.  Even this morning when Oscar mentioned he will have a bunch of out-of-town depo trips, I could feel the blood rush out of my body and I froze in terror.  How would I cope with this?  How can I juggle everything?  And we're only talking about a few days and not years of absence. 

Even more so, I wonder if I would stay to care for a husband who returned home from war, physically, emotionally and psychologically damaged.  War is hell, not only for the soldiers who survived it but for the families who must cope with the fallout from battle - the PTSD, the endless medical treatments, the use of alcohol and drugs to deal with horribly painful memories.  Part of our Japanese American culture is the art of gaman, to put up with it, to deal with it, always with a dark cloak of silence and shutting down.    Very honorably samurai but not the best character trait to become a loving husband or father.  However, this was the way of the Japanese American warrior returning home in WWII.  They often say that the only people who understood what they went through were their fellow WWII vets or any other soldier who had engaged in combat. 

My friend BT who did two tours of duty in Kuwait said he cannot even imagine what the WWII vets went through because they engaged in hand-to-hand combat, looking the enemy in the face as they fought for their lives.  We all know of the high rates of PTSD, depression and suicide faced by our current corp of returning veterans from Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan and the efforts made by the military to help them heal as well as teach their families to cope.  I am certain that the rates were even higher for the WWII generation yet because of the fear of being "lolo", very few veterans sought help of any sort.  Sadly, even now almost 70 years later, the ravages of WWII are evident in them if you look really close.  Even more tragic is that many did not and will not seek treatment which could make their golden years with their wives pleasant ones.   Nonetheless, the women remain by their sides - coping with the darkness that envelopes their husbands as they have for years.  With inner strength, dignity and courage.

Many of these women sent their sons off to the Vietnam War and their grandsons off to Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan with the same stoicism that they sent off their husbands.  I wondered how they could do that, having first hand experience of what war can do to a person.  I look at the soldiers of the 100th/442nd, many in their 20s who have gone through several deployments abroad and I see my two boys in their faces.  Not the grown up Mad Cow or Professor, not even the 8 year old or the 13 year old.  I see them as little defenseless babies being sent out to slaughter.  I know I could not wish them good luck and send them off on a C-17 plane to a foriegn land. I don't have the guts for it.  But again, these ladies tell me that they were doing their jobs as mothers to support their children's dreams.  That their sons wanted to do their families proud by following in the footsteps of their fathers in the 100th, 442nd and MIS.   Me, I know I am too darn selfish to put the needs of my country before my own needs.  I want to keep my boys here, safe and sound, away from all that is evil in the world.    I do not have the strength of these women and I know I never will. 

What continues to impress me is the ability that these woman have to live on their own terms and to change as needed whenever needed.   The women who get their drivers licenses when they are over 80 because the need to drive their infirm husbands to doctors appointments at Tripler.  The women who care for their husbands who suffer from alzheimers while babysitting grandchildren or even great-grandchildren.  The widows who comfort those who come to pay respects at a funeral while putting aside their own grief until they are in the privacy of their homes.  The widows who, after a long bus ride from home and a hike up to Punchbowl, faithfully place flowers on their husbands' graves at Punchbowl every week.  The women who, even when hospitalized, do not have a hair out of place and make it their job to make sure you are comfortable when you visit them.  The women on limited incomes who always drop off snacks or presents for my kids.  The women who, although barely able to hear, call me when they don't see me for a while to make sure I am okay.  The women who are the heart and soul of every veterans organization, whether you see them or not.

The next time you see a veteran, I bet you will see his wife beside him - helping him walk, pushing his wheelchair, sitting beside his bed in a care home.  Please remember not only to thank him but to thank her for her many years of service.