The Cherry Blossom Rarely Smiles

by Ioana Lee

  Because we had so many guests, it was hard to give my attention to just my parents. As a result, they learned how to take care of themselves and most times didn’t need my help at all. I often found my dad talking to Otoosan about cars and gardens, each speaking in their own language, using their full range of gestures and facial expressions. Ironically, they actually understood each other. My father, who has a strong passion for nature and animals, told me about all the plants and flowers that I had in my garden. I had no clue about any of them. He also told me about Otoosan’s car and the horsepower, plus a lot of other technical details that were too much for me to understand despite the fact that we spoke the same language.

  On a separate track, a strong connection was blooming between my mom, Okaasan and Obaachama, who communicated—only they know exactly how—about the importance of relationships, the joy of having children and the art of cooking. My mom offered to cook some traditional Romanian dishes. The food cooked by Ken was Romanian yet it had Japanese ingredients in it. Shortly after they got together, a culinary competition started between my Romanian and Japanese parents. All of them were exceptional cooks. They each had their own secrets, with which they secretly hoped to impress the others. There was such a wonderful family spirit and harmony. One couldn’t tell that those two families came from different cultures, had different customs and spoke different languages. That was the moment when I finally realized how simple everything was­—beyond all of our differences, we were all just people. We had similar ideals and hopes. We all wanted to be healthy and happy. We all needed to nourish our bodies. We laughed and even cried together, as we were too overwhelmed by each others’ presence. There was no radical difference between us. That was the seed idea for my television show that I later got to host in Romania.

  Sorana got along very well with my Japanese sister. They were both the same age. Actually, Ken, the oldest child in the family was the same age as my oldest sister Iulia, Sorana was the same age as Ayumi-san, Ken’s middle sister, and I was the same age as Eiji-san, my brother in law and Ken’s youngest brother.

  Ayumi-san was short, unlike her brothers who were very tall, 6’1” - 6’2”. She was very beautiful, yet non-photogenic just like her mother and Ken. I always found it interesting how some people who aren’t very attractive look wonderful in pictures and others, despite being good looking don’t look very attractive in pictures. Everyone who knew Ayumi-san from pictures was astonished by her porcelain beauty, big round eyes, beautifully shaped mouth and long legs. Her mother and aunts looked gorgeous as well, with beautifully shaped bodies, unlike many Japanese women. Ayumi-san was married to a Buddhist monk, who was a true gentleman. He had studied in Japan and furthered his education in the Unites States for four more years. He had traveled all over the world. He was very athletic, with beautiful facial features and teeth.

  Ayumi-san and her husband had two beautiful girls, Keiko-chan and Tomoko-chan. Shortly after I met them they also had a baby boy. The little ones loved me tremendously and my feelings for them were the same. They weren’t used to being pampered, hugged and kissed on their porcelain cheeks. I ignored the Japanese education and customs and hugged and kissed them a lot and played with them. They weren’t used to do this with anyone else in the family. The little ones were 5 and 3 years old and didn’t understand fully that I was a foreigner. All they knew was that they were happy whenever they played with Kiku and Ioana-san. They were always elegantly dressed and got along very well. One day I heard Otoosan whispering to Ken that “Ioana is more childish than my own granddaughters.” Truth be told, I was the one who received the most presents, got the best spot at the table, in the car—everywhere we went. I felt so loved. I loved them tremendously too. Their qualities, values and virtues were so rare that they shined like diamonds would in mud.

  One evening I got very tired with the translation of their conversations, the playing with the nieces and Kiku’s antics because she wasn’t getting enough attention. I went up into my bedroom to get some rest. Kiku and the little girls followed me shortly. I told them “let’s be quiet and watch television now. We’re going to get some rest, we’ll meditate after and then we’ll play again. Kiku is very tired and needs to take a nap.”

  I had two huge beds in my room, one next to the other. I could have hosted an entire kindergarten class there. I turned on the television, hoping to find a show in a foreign language. On one of the channels there was an American Science Fiction movie that was just starting. I didn’t like Science Fiction movies, yet I thought that the girls would be entertained by it and I’d be able to go to sleep. Or so I imagined… The movie started with some people dressed in strange clothes and monsters that were fighting each other. It looked boring, yet I thought it would help keep the girls quiet while I dozed. Keiko started asking questions though. I asked her to be quiet and let me see the movie. She insisted with her questions and when she saw that I was ignoring her, she placed herself right in front of me, with her back to the television. I asked her again to sit next to me. The movie was now violent and very bizarre. She didn’t listen. She and her sister Tomoko started to fuss around to capture my attention. I kept ignoring them.

  “Ioana-san, can’t you understand that we are children and are not allowed to watch something like this? We’ll get scared and have bad dreams!” yelled Keiko at me.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I was shocked. She was right, yet I didn’t think of it that way. I felt so embarrassed. I turned off the television and apologized. I tried to explain to them that everything was made out of plastic and cardboard and that those monsters weren’t real. All my explanations fell short. That was one of the many important lessons I came to learn from Japanese children.

  The little ones were waking up before me every morning, mostly because they were going to sleep early (I’m trying to find an excuse here). They would usually sneak into my room to get under the covers with me. When Kiku was in the room, she’d bark loudly when the girls came in that she’d wake me up. However, when Kiku wasn’t in the room, I’d continue to sleep, without even knowing that they were there with me. They didn’t even breathe. They just stayed there, staring at me. One morning I opened my eyes and caught Tomoko looking at me, right next to my bed. She was alone. She got a little scared…

  “Morning! How are you?” I asked her.

  “Ioana-tan (she couldn’t say “san”)… You are beautiful even when you sleep.”

  That was the most beautiful and moving compliment I had ever received. It was very genuine, coming from a 3-year-old. “Was she expecting me to look different while sleeping,” I asked myself.

  One day I wanted to teach Tomoko to pronounce words correctly in Japanese. I felt over competent and thought that linguistically I was superior to her, which I couldn’t keep to myself.

  I took her aside and asked her to repeat over and over again the name of my puppy:

  “Ki-Ku…” I told her slowly and clearly.

  “Ci-cu…” she said.

  “No Tomoko. Ki-ku… “I insisted.

  “Ci-ciu.”

  “No, listen to me. Ki-Ku… Ki-Ku… Kiku.”

  “Ci-to… Cito. Cito.”

  That was too much. Since when Kiku sounded like Cito?!”

  “Let’s try something else,” I told her. “SAN.”

  “Tan” she repeated.

  “San” I insisted.

  “Tan.”

  “S-A-N.”

  “TAN.”

  “Tan! Tan! Tan!” she said and got red as a lobster. “Ioana-tan, when you were a little girl, were you able to speak Japanese better than me? I can’t say Tan.”

  When I was “a little girl?” I don’t even think I was saying much in Romanian, let alone Japanese. I started laughing. I hugged her and apologized again. My expectations when it came to Tomoko’s Japanese were exaggerated. My young student taught me a lesson. My linguistic ego was still hurt that she couldn’t say KIKU and SAN though …

  The Wedding Celebration �
�� Hiroen

  The wedding was approaching and the arrangements were in full swing. Wedding dresses tailored by famous designers were sent to our house from a wide selection of stores. Ultimately, I had to choose one for the long-expected day. Ken and I were supposed to wear traditional festive kimonos for the first part of the ceremony, after which we would be allowed to change clothes and wear “foreign” arrays, that is to say, normal wedding attire for us. My wedding dress wasn’t white; it didn’t have to be since I had already worn a white one at our wedding celebration in Romania… I don’t even remember how many dresses I tried on, but I remember my heart finally deciding to go with a Christian Lacroix wedding gown. It had a feminine, sensuous and elegant feel to it. It was a mauve taffeta dress, a color that I’ve never worn before but grew in my eyes when I remembered the saying in Romania that “every woman needs a touch of purple”… (I’ve been told that it was actually burgundy). I had hair accessories, jewelry, shoes and purse matching the color of the dress. Ken decided on a dapper creamy smoking jacket, which looked exquisite on him.

  Because I didn’t have the haziest notion of what kind of wedding this would be, or what was supposed to happen, I wasn’t able to answer the simple questions that my parents had asked. Ken was in a similar situation. He couldn’t understand much of what was happening around him. However, what we both knew was that it would be a Hiroen rather than the traditional wedding (Kekkonshiki). We didn’t have to go through the religious ceremony again, which in most cases is a Shinto one; it was more of a reunion of important people, mostly men, because they were the ones representing the family.

  Women were allowed to attend only if their husbands were deceased. The celebration was going to be held in a luxurious restaurant where there would be organizers everywhere, guiding us step by step on what was going to happen. Everything seemed interesting and I was really looking forward to it, only that, two days before the wedding I woke up throwing up and with a dreadful abdominal pain, arriving at the hospital almost unconscious. My father and Ken accompanied me. All the other people continued with the final details for the wedding. The word had spread that the “bride” wasn’t in her best shape.

  We all went to my uncle’s hospital where he personally greeted us. At first he said that there was nothing seriously wrong with me, but that he would put me in a private room where I’d be given two injections with analgesic solution and also the most needed intravenous treatment. I was dizzy, and, even when the doctor and the nurses were coming to check on me, no health improvement in my current state could be seen. I was in terrible pain. They administered another injection with an even stronger dosage and I believe that they also added something else to it, but I couldn’t see clearly what it was. My dizziness persisted… Little by little the pain went away and I was feeling strong again… The doctor’s wife, my aunt, made a special trip from home to see how I was feeling. She encouraged me and said that I had to be strong and get better soon, because in just two days hundreds of people would be coming to see me.

  After she left I realized that I was alone with my father in the room. Quietness felt good, as there had been too many people and too much noise around. Meanwhile, my family was in charge of the wedding. I remember vividly the moment when my father was sitting on the couch right in front of my hospital bed. Generally, he is a very quite man, who speaks only when he thinks he has something relevant to say. He is also very sensitive as well. Being in a hospital didn’t make him feel good, especially when he saw his own child suffering. He got into a spin of consternation… I smiled at him.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asks, anxiously.

  “Yes daddy. The pain eased off. I’m just a little tired.”

  “My little girl (he always calls me this and I’m sure he will still do so even when I’ll be 60), you have to understand that you must eat. Even if you don’t like it, if you’re not hungry, you have to make an effort to eat so that you can function normally. Not eating was always your problem. Tell us what you wish for or what you would like us to buy and prepare for you, please tell us what you have an appetite for and we’ll get it for you.”

  “Yes daddy…”

  A tear rolled down my cheek… I love him so dearly. Yet, in our Romanian culture, in our traditional family model in which I’ve been raised, we're not used to expressing statements of love like the ones so commonly seen in American films, especially when all the family members are repeating continuously, several times a day, that they love each other. Declaring “I love you” so frequently seemed to us to devalue such a profound feeling and heart-to-heart affection… It was so deep for us that we never dared declare it in words, trusting instead that it could be seen and felt in our deeds. That it was implicit was enough. It was more powerful and fulfilling to know that it exists deep within, undeclared.

  In that moment, more than ever before, I felt that this emotional limitation of ours doesn’t serve us at all. Especially when you travel a long distance away from your homeland and the nostalgia rifts your heart, when you deeply feel the need for a caress, an endearment, which can only come at the deepest level from the ones most close to you, from your family. And how wonderful it would feel to hear them say I Love You, and you being able to express this feeling that you long ago wished to whisper.

  The simple thought of how fragile life is, how unstable, ramshackle and weak the world we live in is—that any catastrophe could unpredictably come your way, in the least expected moment—makes you seriously think of continuously expressing your love to the ones that deserve it the most… The sorrow of being unable to say to loved ones that you deeply love them is an unbearable and frightful state. With all this agony going on in my head, with my father sitting right in front of me unconsciously witnessing my thoughts, the mental barriers, which had formed since I was a little girl, were stronger than my feelings, and I didn’t dare say a word…

  “Why are you crying? Are you feeling sick again?”

  “Oh no, I feel much better now. I am feeling a little dizzy and I’m pretty weak because of the medication. Plus this intravenous treatment seems to last forever.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes my little girl.”

  “Tell me about you, your childhood, about your student life and what made you decide to be a judge, about what you felt in your heart when you pondered that you have three daughters and no sons… ”

  My father talked a lot about himself, he, who is the total opposite of a talkative person, who only speaks the necessary things. He told me about my grandmother who passed away when I was only five years old, about his father who left this world when my father was only eight months old, about the people in the old days, about the fact that he never regretted, not even for a moment, that he has no boys, and that he was very happy, and still is, to have three girls.

  “I believe that your mother regrets the fact that she didn’t have a boy. When she was pregnant with you we were both pretty sure that you’d be a baby boy, but when you decided to came into the world, we were all surprised and outrageously happy to have you, a beautiful baby girl.”

  He is a good storyteller; calm and with an inborn talent for recounting everything with a genuine sense of humor. All my family members have a thorough talent when it comes to storytelling: my mother, my two sisters and only now I’m realizing that my dad, too. I’ve never felt closer to him than in these moments and I thank God for giving me the privilege of being part of such a wonderful family. I find it uncanny that although you don’t get to choose your country, your family, nor your name, you almost always end up deeply loving and being proud of them. I feel for those who don’t love their homeland, their dear parents, or don’t respect their brothers and sisters… and I’ve always tried to help and bring them together. I’ve been successful at this quite a few times and I remember feeling inside such a meaningful sense of accomplishment. I hope I’ll be able to continue doing so.

  After a few hours I started feeling like a new person, even though I
was pale and my skin looked like a dandelion. I don’t remember who came to pick us up from the hospital, but I know for sure that for the rest of that day I stayed in bed trying to eat. The next day I felt great and was anxiously awaiting the big moment. Everyone was agitated, excited and happy. On one hand Ken and I were really looking forward to it, but on the other hand, we couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over because we’ve already been through two ceremonies before. This was the last one to go through and we would finally be “extremely” married. Otoosan was happy beyond belief as he received the sake bowls engraved with gold dust representing the family’s crest. Each wedding guest received two of these precious bowls, plus several other gifts. I was surprised to learn that in Japan the bride and the groom, along with the groom’s family, were offering gifts to the ones attending the wedding.

  The long expected day finally came. It started very early for me. I knew how intense everything would be and I was prepared for it. I was taken to a beauty salon where a few make-up artists specially trained for the traditional kimono started working on me. The makeup was the only thing chosen by me, as it always is in Japan, but the hair styling and the array of the kimono adhered to authentic Nipponese rituals, thoroughly artistic.