Living in Japan has been an incredible experience for me. Almost every day, I am thankful that I made the steps to come here. It took a long time and a lot of hard work, but I’ve never been happier.
There are drawbacks, of course. Aside from the glaringly obvious distance between friends and family, there are some small inconveniences that I have to contend with. Generally, these inconveniences are simple, daily life struggles that don’t seem very significant in the grand scheme of things. For example, before I left the US I finally found a deodorant that is perfect for me. The scent, the texture, the effectiveness - everything seemed to finally align for me after years of trial and error. Unfortunately, this specific brand and scent is not carried in Japan. I’ve found ways to work around it, though. Similarly, there are certain food ingredients or other toiletries that I can’t seem to access regularly in the Japanese countryside. Some ingredients are very rare, or very expensive, so I often find it to be too much time and effort and money to make a simple dish from back home.
With that said, when I do come across something irregular or rare I tend to snatch it up right away. As such, I happened to come across lasagna noodles in the supermarket of a city far from my countryside town. Lasagna noodles? Just out here, in the wild? SNATCHED.
Having the noodles is one step, but another ingredient is just as elusive. My family has a recipe for lasagna that uses cottage cheese rather than ricotta. I know, scandalous! But I wanted to recreate the recipe. Unfortunately, I was so excited about the noodles that I didn’t realize my local supermarkets didn’t seem to carry the cheese I needed. So, I packed them away for a later day and hoped I’d be able to find some ricotta or cottage cheese at some point.
Then, just the other day, I saw there was cottage cheese at my local supermarket. The one right next to my building, only steps away. I don’t know how long it has been there, but I did notice a lot of newer products hitting the shelves in the past month or two, so perhaps I was blind before or just lucky with my timing.
So, I sent a message to my mom and asked her to send along her lasagna recipe. In truth, the recipe was given to her from my grandma on my father’s side, who we had lost in May of last year. I vaguely recalled that the recipe was from Grandma, but it wasn’t until my mom sent me pictures of the recipe notes that it fully set in.
It was a little shocking to see at first, since usually my mom copies recipes onto her own notecards. For whatever reason, she kept the paper Grandma gave her and instead of copying each line into a message she just sent the snapshots.
A few things crossed my mind when I saw the pictures:
This isn’t my mom’s handwriting.
Isn’t this Grandma’s recipe?
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Grandma’s handwriting.
Hey, I write my S’s just like her.
It was a touching moment. Just like that, I was sent back to the moment when she was writing it down. Where was she sitting? At the cluttered kitchen table, surrounded by the smell of home cooked meals and vinegar? Was she wearing one of her sweaters from Up North? The one with the loons, or maybe the one with the cardinals? Was Shadow sitting at her feet? Or did she write it a few dogs before Shadow. Tyler? Keegan?? What expression did she wear when she wrote her adorable “hints” for the recipe? What was it like in that moment I wonder.
Her handwriting was familiar yet strange to me. The way she wrote her letter P was very familiar. I think the last time I saw her writing was sometime when I was 14 or 15 years old. She had a terrible stroke when I was around that age. The stroke paralyzed the right side of her body, and even after many years of physical therapy she was never able to fully recover. I spent a lot of time with her, of course, but it was hard for her to communicate. In the most recent years, it was painful to see that her memory had started to fade as well.
Whenever I visited her, we would talk about school, or friends, or family. Easy topics that didn’t exhaust her to think about or try to talk about. Sometimes she would tell me about her experience and her struggles. Often, she would say a wrong word and try to correct herself. She explained that her mind was trying to say one word, but a different word would come out instead. She had a hard time controlling her muscles, even on her left side, which led to embarrassing moments at the dinner table. She used to read a lot, too. I remember she was a fan of the Harry Potter books and would read them as soon as they came out. But as her eyes grew weaker, she could not read comfortably anymore. All too often, it was simply easier to just watch TV. On a good day, she could be found doing puzzles but I think after a while that was also a little exhausting for her. Simple tasks that I took for granted. Thankfully, my aunt lived with her and was able to take care of her for many years. My aunt was also a really good cook and would often make very delicious meals for Grandma. She was able to have a comfortable life due to my aunt’s care and attention.
During my college years, I started to help out more with taking care of Grandma. My aunt was hardly able to leave the house as her primary caretaker, so it was important for her to have some time away. This usually meant she would go to her friend’s house on Friday evenings. My aunts, uncle, and cousin would often help out and I decided to help, too. It was a nice way to spend time with Grandma. I have many good memories from this time. I also have some bad memories. I was a full-time student working multiple part-time jobs and I struggled to keep up with assignments for my classes. I tried to do everything and I couldn’t make it happen.
Eventually, I had to accept that I couldn’t help out anymore. The physical labor of my part-time jobs created injuries and it was not safe for me to help Grandma. Part of helping her required lifting her out of her chair to take her to the bathroom. I simply could not do it safely anymore. It was a sad reality and I was so torn up about it, I still am. On the one hand, I really wanted to keep helping Grandma. But on the other hand, I didn’t have time to do my school work and I was always sick or exhausted physically. Sometimes, my aunt would be at her friend’s house until very late at night, so by the time I left my grandma’s house I only had time to sleep before going to work the next morning. No time to finish assignments. Or canceling plans with friends or family because I didn’t get to finish the assignments before the weekend. As a student, I was constantly reminded that my studies were my main priority. After that, work. After that, housework at home. And so on. It seemed like Grandma was just added to a list of priorities. Such a dehumanizing thing. Being torn up about having to stop spending time with and taking care of Grandma doesn’t even begin to touch the surface of how I felt about it.
In a perfect world, I would have been able to study and take care of Grandma. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have had to take on so many part-time jobs to barely pay for my tuition. In a perfect world, Grandma never would have had a stroke to begin with. In a perfect world, I would have been able to see more of her handwriting. In a perfect world, I would have been able to cook the lasagna with her. In a perfect world, I would have been there by her side in her final moments instead of being on the other side of the world.
When I next visit home, I’ll have a hard time adjusting to all of the changes that happened while I was living far away. I’ll never see some people ever again. I never had the chance to say goodbye to loved ones. There are places and things I will never see again. The finality is heartbreaking. I’m not indifferent to these changes, I am very aware of them, but I also must continue on and live my life in the best way that I can in spite of the losses I’ve experienced.
