I visited my old home place where I was born. It is far from Kyoto where I live now.
It takes about eight hours by car driving on the expressway in Shikoku and the national way, route 56, through the Seto Big Bridge.
It's more than two years since I last went back there.
It's a small village in Shikoku, which is one of four big islands of this archipelago.
I left my house in Kyoto for five days, because I thought I had to change my bad feelings after too long busy work and some undesirable matters I had to encounter recently. My visiting old place turned to be a good trip for my recovery.
I could enjoy driving a car on the way to Shikoku.
I visited my aunt before I reached my parents' house. The village was green and beautiful as ever before.
Though it’s in the rainy season, the weather was luckily rather fine.
When I arrived at her house, I opened the big window of her living room.
Her house is built in the form of old Japanese farmer’s house, facing to south, with a small wooden terrace at the southern side. Everyone who visits her gets into the house not from the gate but from the terrace calling her name. That is how people do when they visit her.
I opened the window. She was lying on Tatami watching TV alone.
I called her name again “ Aunt Jie! ” ,and touched on her shoulder.
She has already lost her hearing ability of her ears because of her age. She is ninety two.
She surely did not hear my voice; she raised her face and turned to me, and then, said
“ Motchan, it’s you! “
It’s her custom to call me motchan.
After some words of greeting of long absence, I showed her a pato-light, a souvenir for her.
She can’t hear other people’s voice if she is not spoken very close to her ear. But when she speaks on the phone, she can do it all right. I had known that she was suffering from loneliness since her husband died some years ago. No one can make a call to her from their side, because she cannot catch the phone ringing. So I had been wanting to present the pato-light to her. If she has a pato-light on her phone, she can get a call.
The pato-light is a rotating light. When the phone gets a call, the sensor catches the ringing sound and changes it into electric signals, and then, the light begins to rotate on the walls of her room just like the lights on the roof of patrol car. By that she can notice someone is calling her on the phone without hearing the ringing.
I set the pato-light on the column of the room.
She was so pleased to see it, she began to call her friends, relatives, her children to ask to make a call to her any time from today. But she could not succeed to catch any one; it’s on Tuesday; they were all out to work. Haha
It’s almost noon. She began to make a meal. She wanted to let me have lunch with her. She asked me if I liked curry, and said repeatedly ” I’m good at curry, I’m really good at making curry.”
A while later the curry was prepared. It was salty to her regret. Haha
We ate it together talking about things like old memories and her son who has been in the hospital in Kochi City suffering from cancer. The conversation did not go along smoothly, she had an ear-phone for herself, though.
I spent two hours and half at her place, and I could get an old song from her. It is a song about a story of “ Anchin and Kiyohime”, which my mother once had showed me long time ago. I almost forgot it, so did my mother.
Aunt Jie has known it.
I can only pray for her calm life.
