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ge for example in messy and hard to piece together ways still the gag reflex is a powerful way of marking time i know it was boy but i no longer know when a few nights when he was 1 year old all run together for me we would wake to a horrible sound from his room something far beyond coughing and find him sitting up in his crib in the dark just vomiting all over himself eyes asking us what is going on one of us would scoop him up trying to calm him down and get him out of his pajamas and the other would start the hurried and mechanical process of searching for towels changing sheets just trying to put things in order on a good night it happened only once on a rough one it might go until morning he made his way down the list of stomach bugs as if it was a matter of pride in each case a doctor the next day was able to cheerfully point to a chart and show us that this was just another completely routine event in the life of a small person but no matter how many times a 1 year old throws up it still doesn t make any sense to him his little body is suddenly and violently completely outside of his control he s being turned inside out probably following minutes or hours of nausea and having no way of communicating it to the only people who might be able to help even for me as an adult there is no worse feeling it s debilitating it reduces us to the most powerless versions of ourselves boy is 5 now and this nighttime scene is a thing of the distant past girl never had these problems even when she was sick they ve both passed that age of being constantly ill and if they do feel sick they understand what s happening and can go hover over the open toilet like the rest of us do it s a strange ritual to see played out by someone not even three feet tall i m happy for them and for us when i see them do it it s so clean all of this is a long way of pointing to the memory of those sick nights of the moment just after we d find him retching in his crib in every telling i probably hesitate there s always that pause as my eyes adjust to the dark and take in what is happening verifying that it s already too late to make any of it ok i reach down into the crib to my tiny vomit covered boy who is trying to cry but can t because his body is too busy doing something else and he reaches back up to me and i hold him close in the dark as he just barfs all over me over and over limp and convulsing and confused intimacy is such a beautiful word and i use it often when i speak of beautiful buddhist teachings but the image in my head is of this encounter of my hand against his heaving back and the hot slow avalanche running down and into my shirt the trust and the fear in his little grabbing hands and later after he falls back asleep in new pajamas and new sheets me standing outside the house at 3am with a hose in one hand to wash everything off waving with the other hand to make the motion sensitive light stay on long enough to get the job done strangely awake in the jarring rare clarity of knowing there is really nothing more to be done than this share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized apr 24 a small matter of consequence posted by tracy franz 1 he looks so familiar i think a man in his 30s probably an immigrant from china angry and talking to himself as he strides down the sidewalk toward me and away from the scene of another man also in his 30s but with a dirty blond beard driving a bright yellow snowplow violently against a massive mountain of snow i say china because after ten years in japan i ve developed an ear for asian languages i say violently because the driver is jerking the machine powerfully back and forth to clear the evidence of two days worth of nova scotia storm when the driver sees me a white woman 40 in a fashionable coat walking toward him with a young boy in tow he immediately stops and backs his vehicle out of our path i am grateful for the chance to pass because we are late collecting my daughter from the daycare down the street then i see the bus stop and also the bus pulling away from it and i understand that the courtesy offered to us was most likely given by a man who a few minutes earlier had denied it to someone else with my son s hand in mine i stop and turn to see in the distance the man who looks so much like a neighbor and old friend in japan his name on the tip of my tongue still walking stiffly angrily toward the next accessible bus stop down the road the other man the plow driver now again assaulting snow continues to clear a path and build a barrier simultaneously boy says has been saying over and over again the whole while mama mama look that snowplow is so big and strong i think i m late i ll say something when we come back this way just something so that he will know that i know the words will come to me as i walk but then i don t think of it again we went home a different way after all until much later when i am tucking boy into bed asking about the quality of his day and thinking back on mine wondering how i could have forgotten that terrible detail that small errand of conscience as i am about to leave his room boy asks in spring when the snow is all gone can i ride my bike and this reminds me of a moment in kumamoto standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change when a man hit me from behind with his bicycle the force knocking me into oncoming traffic and him yelling bakana gaijin then the woman with long black hair leaping after me and screaming abunai abunai she pulled me back that reflex of human kindness to the safety of the sidewalk as the man continued to call me names but notably angled away from us down a different path shamed by the woman s pure action but that moment next to the bus stop how could i have known for sure for certain and am i a better or worse mother for not having said or done anything is writing this now enough and what of the boy who was standing next to me in the snow awed by the raw power of the machine and by extension the man inside it mama mama look it s so strong my son what kind of man will he become share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized apr 01 comfort food posted by tracy franz 1 when i told a friend a fellow american that our family was moving to canada from japan she exclaimed immediately oh they have a kind of cookie there that i like very much this amused me and then i thought later that this is also how i most often recall places i have been but do not know well in england a savory pastry that you can eat with your hands as you walk through the park trailing crumbs for gray pigeons in france pungent red wine legally sipped from a glass in a restaurant when i was barely 12 years old in mexico cheese curds soft and fresh and salty in thailand a coconut curry for boy and girl for the distant place they have been but do not know well it has always been in america big pizza in fact this became a saying for us about all things large as in as big as an american pizza and so later when koun and i explained that it was not america but canada that we were moving home to for some reason our kids began to talk about canada as the place with the pizza in this way our kids created context for a change that was probably otherwise unimaginable a certain comfort taken in the recollection of a massive circle of dough and tomato sauce and cheese consumed in san francisco some months earlier it must be this connection food memory that causes for many expats that pervasive discomfort that longing for the food of the well known place for years and years in japan it was my mother s rhubarb pie that i craved most of all red stalks from an alaskan garden in late summer ample sugar to temper the tartness the buttery pastry shell holding it together when i finally came to think of japanese food as the familiar i still craved the pie that when eaten on trips stateside always prompted me to say the thing that i first thought an error in translation in japan it s sweet but good i could not stand more than a few bites my palate had changed become accented but my longing had not since moving to nova scotia six months ago i can find nothing in our new home that tastes quite like what i really really want to eat obviously part of this is that the local cuisine is different as are the typical grocery store offerings there is also the overarching fact that i am no longer drawn to those original comfort foods the muted flavors of the large carb centered meals of north america but there is something else there too that i can t quite put my finger on a flawed memory drawn from a flawed flavor and so every meal is tinged with a kind of dissatisfaction good yes but not quite what i had in mind i often felt this in japan too it s my personal ongoing samsara perhaps an obvious consequence of always being out of context meanwhile boy and girl both of whom know the food of japan to be normal seem to be reasonably satisfied with their somewhat revised diet perhaps especially the canadian pizza sometimes i think because of their youth they are simply cultural chameleons taking on the flavor of whatever place they inhabit and so my simple theories of food and memory probably do not apply or do not apply in the same way who can say for sure a few weeks ago the four of us happened into a korean japanese restaurant for lunch mostly out of desperation we were out running errands the pita place was closed and the kids were starting to give off that low whine that means feed us or else inside the restaurant the offerings were few and overpriced but we ordered multiple plates of makizushi and watched as our children ate their weight in nori and delicately vinegared rice wrapped around slivers of local yams and cucumber we d forgotten how good boy had gotten with chopsticks how much he and girl liked green tea when it became obvious that we would run out of food koun and i stopped eating and transferred our remaining rolls to the kids plates we must have been mistaken after all about their chameleon palates clearly japanese food was what they had been craving near the end of the meal the waitress brought us a complimentary dish to try julienned carrots and potatoes lightly fried in sesame oil it s from my country korea my mother used to make it for me when i was a child she explained and i immediately replied oh yes we ve been there i love bibimbap boy and girl each reaching for another morsel continued to chew happily completely comfortable in this meal in this restaurant surrounded by korean families who i can only imagine were missing a certain flavor and memory the taste of a distant home i was still hungry but watching my children eat in this way with such pleasure this was the most satisfied i have felt in a long long time share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized mar 07 a story about language posted by tracy franz 4 boy who is mere days away from his fifth birthday begins to throw a tantrum in the library something to do with both wanting and not wanting to watch a puppet show the tantrum is really a gale force storm that takes him over and i drop to my knees in the center of the room and clutch his whole body tightly so that neither of us will be injured nearly five years old i thought we were beyond this i think and then akachangaeri the japanese word for returning to the baby state the state of innocence all around us there are books filled with words that convey stories and the people walking by interpret in different ways this image a mother clutching a screaming boy so completely that they are a live knot of shuddering violent emotion an hour later at home my son discovers a new love of writing and i am floored for the second time this day teach me words mama and so we make a game of it him tracing with his left hand the characters i stipple into his sketchpad b o o k d r a g o n a p p l e b i r t h d a y i choose randomly with no curriculum in mind if i had been japanese if i had been writing in nihongo i probably would have written verbs then before bed boy asks what is your job mama and i explain again that it s something to do with language but that mostly others teach me abcs mama and when i nod he tells me that he has decided to become an artist when he grows up i will draw a picture of our family and i will give it to you because i love you i am grateful for this because of the rawness i still feel from that moment in the library i have been going over and over it all day for some reason that night for the fifth or sixth night in a row i dream about moving in a classroom between students mothers and fathers from an inconceivable country about trying again and again to convince them that the red apple in my hand is represented by the sketch of an apple on the handouts on their desks and also by the letters on the blackboard that i am asking them to write a p p l e in this way we struggle with signifier and signified the idea that an image or some letters could point to a myriad of concepts red skin and spongy white flesh and sweetness and juice against the tongue can also be original sin a single fruit bringing both knowledge and a loss of innocence simultaneously a d r a g o n can be a hoarder of gold or a winged embodiment of realization and the promise of a boy s drawing of his family is really a story that can be read in many different ways share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on x opens in new window x more print opens in new window print share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin like loading posted in uncategorized feb 23 bedtime koans posted by tracy franz 3 nearly every night after a book and then a chat about the day past or the dreams to come i turn off the light and boy offers questions that feel like ko...
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