“Japanese fashions are the prettiest for Japanese people,” I thought as I looked at Chiyo’s black hair, short in the back and cut square across the forehead. She had not been a pretty child in American dress. Japanese clothes were much more becoming, but oh, the opportunities for comfortable and healthful bodies the untrammelled children of America have! I sighed, yet I was so bound by outside influences that I could not regret having changed the children into Japanese dress before their grandmother saw them.
We had been very busy after the arrival of Mother’s letter saying that she was ready to come. The children and I moved in together, and I arranged a cosy little room for her, which I knew she would find more convenient and comfortable than any other in the house. I wanted everything to look homelike to her; so I had the swinging electric lights changed to three-foot-high floor lamps shaded by black lacquer frames with paper panels, like the candle-stands at the Nagaoka home. Our gas heaters were already in bronze braziers so ingeniously set up that they looked like charcoal burners. Mother would have accepted everything new with the smiling philosophy of a lifetime, but I did not want her to “accept” things; I wanted everything to look homelike so she could fit in happily without effort.
The empty shrine I had been using for books and the children’s hats. Even Taki had not objected to “high objects,” as she called them, being placed there; for Japanese people are taught to respect books as “intellectual results,” and hats as pertaining to the revered “crown of the body.” But, nevertheless, she was unreservedly pleased when I removed the things and began to prepare the carved wooden alcove for the small belongings that Mother would bring with her from the large shrine at home.
“Where shall we put the shrine that Honourable Grandmother will bring?” asked Hanano, thinking of the elaborate gilded and lacquered cabinet in Uncle Otani’s home.
“It’s as easy for Honourable Grandmother to wrap up all the really necessary things for her shrine as it would be for a Christian to carry a Bible and a prayer book,” I answered; “and we will have this little alcove all fresh and clean for them. Honourable Grandmother loves the things that have been sacred to her through all the sorrows and joys of her life.”
“Do Honourable Grandmother’s God and our God know each other up in heaven?” asked Chiyo.
I was leaning in the alcove to brush a bit of dust off the carving, and Hanano replied.
“Of course they do, Chiyo,” she said. “Jesus had just as hard a time as the August Buddha did to teach people that God wants them to be good and kind and splendid. Mamma always says that Honourable Grandmother and our dear American Grandma are good, just alike.”
While we were talking, there had been sounding a constant pata-pata-pata from the next room, where Sudzu, with her sleeves looped back and a blue-and-white towel folded over her freshly dressed hair, was vigorously cleaning the paper doors with a shoji duster—a bunch of cut papers tied on the end of a short stick. The sound stopped abruptly and Sudzu appeared in the doorway.
Quickly removing the towel and pulling off the cord that held back her sleeves, she bowed to the floor.
“Taki San thinks that the bath water heated by gas will be too harsh for the delicate body of Honourable Retired Mistress,” she said. “Shall I go for a carpenter?”
I had forgotten the belief of country people that only charred wood must be used for bath fuel when one is frail or old. I hurried Sudzu out on her errand, and within two hours the gas coil had been exchanged for a small charcoal furnace, and our arrangements were complete.
That evening was a memorable one for the children. We all went to the station to meet Mother, except Taki. She remained behind so that the welcoming red rice and the fish, baked head and all, would be in hot readiness; and after we reached home, even before the bustle of welcome was over, she had the shrine belongings in place and the candles lighted. Then, with the gilded doors wide open and the pungent odour of incense filling the air, she brought in the little shrine table laden with food. Our own tables came next, and once again I was sitting down to a meal with my mother beside me and the kindly spirits of the ancestors welcoming me and mine into cheerful companionship. Afterward we retired to the parlour and spent an hour in what Hanano called “getting-acquainted talk,” before Mother would confess to the weariness which her pale face already betrayed. Then we all gathered before the shrine, Taki and Sudzu sitting just within the doorway.
How familiar, and yet how strange! The chanting, the soft sound of the little bronze gong, Mother’s voice reading the sacred Buddhist scriptures that so often I had heard from the lips of the dear one who long ago had passed away—oh, how quiet and safe it all seemed! The anxious loneliness of months was gone, and there crept into my heart a peace that had not been mine since the protected days when my little family were all together in the dear, dear home of our kind, beloved American mother.
“How alike are the two sides of the world!” I thought. “Both have many gods of little worth, but with one wise, loving, understanding Power over all, the time must surely come when we shall all understand.”
The weeks following were filled with new and unexpected lessons. I had had no thought but that family loyalty and natural affection were the only requisites necessary to draw together my mother and my children. But I soon discovered that, though neither loyalty nor affection was lacking, mutual interests were only possibilities of the future.
My attempts to combine the old and the new frequently resulted in
