Translated…
She was born, in 1934, in the Japanese ruling era of male-oriented world, she had two older sisters, three younger brothers, she’d had her share of the household chores, getting the water, doing the laundry, planting the vegetables, feeding the livestock, and she had also need to carry her younger brother on her back, as she made the meals for everybody in the household too, and this sort of a life started, from when she was way too young to recall, day after day, like the spinning jennies that spun endlessly, continued for a decade.
not my photograph…
The man who was opening the bank in the town needed an able-bodied young girl, to look after his mother, and, her parents had, signed her away, for a five-year-term, she’d cried, as she was taken over to the rich family to work as a maid. The elderly woman loved lying on her bed with the red sheets, smoking opium, with an endless assortment of snacks and treats on the tables, all for her, to savor as she wished to, and the elderly would even, hand her money from time to time too; as the elderly woman took her naps, she’d gone shopping on the streets, for things that caught her eyes with the allowances she’d received. Being well-fed, dressed warmly, following the elderly woman around, she’d become, her happy little servant.
Before the contract was up, the Japanese had lost the war, and the family who hired her to work were, deported back to Japan, her neighbors made a match for her, at age seventeen, she’d married a very poor, a very tall and handsome man from her hometown, at age eighteen, she’d had her first child, and in the twelve years’ time, she’d had two daughters and four sons, raised them up. Her husband was extremely kind to her, hard working, sold the ironclad barrels for a living, with an old and beaten bicycle, he’d rode along the streets, hollering out, selling the items, and those ironclad barrels had, kept the entire family well, and this love that’s made by the matchmakers lasted for over sixty years.
During the days she’d worked as a maid for the household, she’d picked up on the ways of business too, and it’d, accidentally, given her some money sense, with the money to spare, she’d not gone to the banks, instead, she’d gone to the jewelry shop next door, hollered out at the owner, “Give me a cut of gold!”, she’d bought the gold pieces as if she were shopping for the groceries on the marketplaces, and although her family isn’t well-to-do, she’d still managed, to keep all her kids fed, dressed clean, and, of all the residents in her town, her children were the only ones who’d gone to school with shoes on their feet, she and her husband worked together, to run an iron factory, and they’re now finally, without worries of money.
At age seventeen, she was married, and at age thirty-five, she’d become, a grandmother, at age sixty-five, a great grandmother, the progress of her life was like a rollercoaster ride. Her six children gave her eighteen grandchildren and seventeen great grandchildren, and, on the New Year’s, meal time became like a huge banquet of sorts, and, the families needed to split up into three separate shifts in order to eat, she’d set, at the head of the tables, smiling as she watched her grandchildren picked up the foods with their chopsticks, she’d become, just as blessed as the elderly woman she’d served back then. And now, that once-personal helper girl is now, eighty-three, with four generations of children living by her side, she is, my great grandmother.
And apparently, life had, worked out wonderfully, or rather, as it was supposed to, for this elderly woman, and, her life may be considered as ordinary to some of you out there, without the ups and the downs, the twists and turns, but that, is a sort of blessing in itself, to have a life like that, that, was what I’d longed for too…
Life, the Obstacle Course 