I went home for the first time in three years to report that I was moving and visit Mom’s grave. The plum trees in the yard were pretty in bloom. Had Dad been taking care of them himself? The branches had been carefully pruned, and the trimmings were piled neatly under the eaves. It’d been a while since I’d seen Dad; he had more white hairs and seemed smaller. What had his life been like living here all alone during the pandemic?
When I told him I bought a house in Fukuoka and was moving, he was less surprised than I expected.
“...Yes, your mother always wanted to go back there.”
The fact that she had told him that was unexpected to me. I had figured she would have held back for whatever reason and not mention it.
“She was always suggesting that we move back when I hit retirement age. I think of her often these days while tending the garden on my own. I worked late every day, but she would often stay up to have a drink with me. Well, she always ended up talking about you, though.”
“About me? What about me?”
“Oh, all sorts of things. School, your friends, what you were into, what you wanted to be when you grew up. I was working on the weekends, so everything I couldn’t hear from you directly I heard from your mother.”
“You guys talked about that kind of stuff?”
“Yep. She was worried you would turn out a workaholic like me since we had so much in common.”
“Do we have a lot in common?”
“I wonder. To me, you resemble your mother. You’re her daughter, after all.”
I came face to face with time my parents spent that I knew nothing about. And I never imagined I would be able to talk like this to my dad as an adult.
They had been thinking about me together when I wasn’t looking. It made me happy to learn that. But I wasn’t sure how to act around my dad.
I was looking at the yard when he asked, “Do you remember when we went to Dazaifu just before you started elementary school?”
I had a hazy memory of going down the shrine’s approach to find a huge plum tree in full bloom.
Dazaifu’s sacred tree, the tobiume—”flying plum.” As the minister of the right at the time, Sugawara no Michizane, was leaving for Dazaifu, he was upset about leaving behind the plum tree at Kobaiden, his residence in Kyoto’s Gojo neighborhood. He composed this poem on the occasion: Kochi fukaba nioi okoseyo ume no hana aruji nashi tote haru na wasureso (When the easterly wind blows, send me your fragrance, dear plum blossoms. Just because your master is gone, don’t forget the spring.) It’s said that, longing so much to be with Michizane, the plum tree flew in one night to Dazaifu.
“Your mother really fell in love with this legend of the tobiume. She didn’t want to forget our life in Fukuoka, so she brought plum branches back to Kyoto and planted them here in the yard.”
“I sort of remember Dazaifu. We were eating some kind of manju as we walked down the approach.”
“Ah, that was umegae mochi. You said it was silly to call them that when they don’t taste like plum. A thin layer of mochi wrapped around lightly sweetened red bean paste. The great part is how simple they are, but there you were saying they should put a pickled plum inside.”
“What? I don’t remember that.”
I went out into the yard in sandals, chose a few branches from the trimmings, and told my dad, “I’m going to take these with me. Maybe they’ll bloom in my yard in Fukuoka, too.”
“Well, they did originally come from Fukuoka. Hope they take well for you.”
“Me too.”
I visited Mom’s grave to tell her I was moving and left Kyoto.
***
The scenery that hadn’t changed and the big, old house welcomed me. This place was over three times as large as my room in Tokyo. I didn’t have many things to begin with, so even after I arranged all my furniture, it still looked rather empty. The thing I was most looking forward to was buying the perfect furnishings for this house one by one. I really liked the feel of the new plaster I got put on the walls. The plumbing and all the other renovations were done. All that was left was the construction of the mudroom floor.
After getting some unpacking done, I went to visit our old house. I had gone when I took my initial look at my new house, too. It was empty now, awfully old-fashioned looking, and falling apart in places. The garage was being used as storage by the landlord who lived next door. The yard my mom had once taken care of was vacant; no sign of the plum trees, only weeds. I had heard from the real estate company that homes with no occupants age faster than you would think.
The old lady next door was out working in her garden, and I called out to her without thinking. “Hello, um, I used to live here 20 years ago...”
I wasn’t sure if she would remember me, but—“You’re that little girl? Look how big you got!”—she replied with a smile part surprise, part delight. She went inside to pull the old man out, and they told me all sorts of stories about those days I didn’t know. About Dad. About Mom. About when I was born. Honestly, I didn’t remember the way they looked back then, but it was refreshing to remeet people I had known long ago.
“Every morning you would all go on a walk holding hands. Your parents always seemed to have so much fun together taking care of the yard.”
“Your father would put you up on his shoulders to go for a walk; you used to collect flowers and bugs together. If there were any fluffy dandelions, he would pick one and you would blowww...”
I tried to fish up those memories, but I couldn’t recall my dad doing something like that.
“What happened to the plum trees that were here?”
“Oh, the plum trees. After you moved, they stopped leafing out. After a few years we ended up cutting them down. Sorry about that. Your mother and father looked forward to the plums every year.”
“No, that’s fine. So that’s what happened.”
I told them how my mother died.
“That must have been hard...”
“Well, it’s been over ten years already, so I’m all right...”
They told me to stop by anytime and gave me a plastic bag stuffed with veggies from their garden.
***
It was the day of the final renovation to my house, the mudroom repairs. I had arranged with the construction company to get a type of earthen floor called tataki.
It’s a construction method wherein three materials—soil, slaked lime, and bittern—are mixed and pounded flat. The name tataki—with the kanji “three harmony earth”—refers to the way the three ingredients are mixed in good balance; it’s also known as “natural concrete.” One of its charms is how it changes with age; stepping on it gives it flavor. I was interested in this traditional process, and the construction company said that if I helped it would be a little cheaper, so I joined as a member of the staff laying the floor.
Using cement or mortar would have been even cheaper, but when the construction company told me about tataki, I settled on that. It would take money and effort, but the deciding factor was that having moved here I wanted to have some sort of connection to the land. I was also attracted by the fact that it retains heat in the winter and stays cool to the touch in summer.
Soil and slaked lime go into the big iron urn-like mixer, the bittern is poured in at just the right time, and everything gets mixed some more. The result looks dry and crumbly, but when you squeeze it, it holds together. They said this was the right consistency. We put the soil mixture into a wheelbarrow and moved it over to the entryway. First we spread it all over and used a board to make it level. Then everyone grabbed a trowel-like tool and began pounding from one edge of the floor.
In all, it was the boss and two artisans from the construction company, my real estate agent, and a couple in their 30s from the neighborhood he reached out to who said they would help. They said that they had moved to this town six months ago. So there were seven of us finishing my mudroom floor.
Everyone pounded the soil mixture with tock-tock noises. How much time passed while I was simply working my hands in a trance? The noises we made were completely different, but for some reason I remembered returning home after finishing up my after-school activities and helping my mom in the kitchen as she cooked, telling her about my day—those sounds. My mom’s voice, the sound of chopping veggies on the cutting board, the sound of a bubbling pot, the sounds from out the window; they were always so nice to hear.
As I was pounding the floor with a piece of wood, I realized that at some point I had started to cry. My tears dropped onto the hardening soil mixture.
Mom, I guess I’ve been lonely all this time.
Unable to confront my sadness at my mom’s death, I put a lid on my memories and averted my eyes. Blaming my dad for working too much, I had been avoiding the one person with whom I could share memories of Mom.
I pounded the floor for ages. The tears on the surface were gradually absorbed. With each knocking sound, the time I had bottled everything up came unbound.
Everyone was pounding away, so no one noticed I was crying. I was kind of happy about that.
After a little while, the artisans’ boss came over and said, “You’re so focused. It’s getting good and firm, so this’ll be a great floor. You might have the knack for this sort of work.”
I hurriedly wiped my eyes with my sleeve and thanked him with a smile.
“Come down to the office sometime, if you like,” one of the young artisans was kind enough to say.
I recalled them plastering the walls. “Could I learn plastering as well as tataki?” I asked. I really liked the beautiful finish they achieved with their precise hand motions.
“You’re interested in plaster? Oh, you were watching us pretty closely when we did your walls, huh.”
“We’re always looking for part-timers. It’s hard work, though, of course,” said the other artisan with a smile, trowel in hand.
It took an awfully long time, but the densely packed earthen floor was completely smooth and quiet. The color was absolutely dirt, but it seemed to me like a canvas for painting the start of my new lifestyle. May I press my feet here and accumulate many a day in my new life.
Once I was alone again after thanking everyone and seeing them off, I laid a hand on the floor. It was pleasantly cool to the touch, and I closed my eyes for just a moment.
***
I started working a shortened remote schedule of four days a week. The company encouraged side-hustles, so I was thinking I might try working two days a week with the construction company. I’d always done desk work staring at a computer, so the idea of moving my body and making things was appealing.
I wanted to learn traditional techniques like tataki and plaster that, instead of ending when they break, can be fixed and stay with us for years and years. Since they use natural materials, there’s no waste, and if the house deteriorates, it can return to the soil. Buying this house got me curious about all sorts of things I never would have imagined I’d take an interest in.
On Monday, my team had our weekly online meeting, and everyone was excited to see how the house was coming. I had been sharing the walls, floor, and so on as they were finished.
“A white flower today, I see.”
My boss noticed the flower in the vase on my dining room table. Recently I’d been stopping along my walk to pick a flower for the house, and before I knew it, I had picked up a bunch of knowledge about flowers and grasses, too. And the old woman from next door to the house my family used to live in taught me all sorts of things about wild edible plants.
On a rainy day in June, after I’d gotten somewhat used to living here, my dad sent some plums. He included a brief note: “The plums grew well this year, big and round. Take care of yourself.”
I decided to make plum wine on my own for the first time. After collecting a jar, rock sugar, and the other things I needed, I carefully cleaned each plum on the engawa. Will there be a row of amber glass jars on a shelf in my kitchen, now, too?
I sent a little reply: “I’m making my first plum wine. Please come visit Fukuoka sometime soon.”
After a few years, will the cuttings I brought from home bloom and fruit? With that day to look forward to, I’ll take things slow and enjoy my life here.
Waiting for the day the fragrance of those pale white blossoms heralding spring will envelop me; stretching my branches as time passes, eventually bearing fruit.
