Apocalypse Parenting
Apocalypse Parenting
We [kind of did] start the fire…
Image by Joanne Francis @nipawinnews via UnSplash
A dear friend from home called recently—our first significant check-in since the move six months ago—and she asked me what the best part of Japan has been so far. Honestly, it's been witnessing my daughter’s education, both in the general sense, and in school specifically.
Motto and Mottainai
We knew the move would be beneficial for her: an early lesson that the world is much bigger than her home in Seattle; that there are many ways to speak, eat, and live—and no one way is better than the rest. Plus, I always wanted a language immersion experience for her. I always assumed that language would be Spanish, though I had no clear plan how to achieve that. I'd read her books in Spanish sometimes, and we'd watch some shows in the language. Her first ever "joke" involved pointing to grass and calling it "gracias," then exuberantly giggling: "It's a joke!" But still, she was never really going to learn it only from me, a nonnative speaker who has never quite managed to roll her R's. But the chance to immerse her in a second language in its country of origin was an opportunity that excited me.
Six months in, she's not chattering away in Japanese, but it's clear she understands a lot of what she hears. To her, going to school on Japanese day is the same to her as going on English day. She can always relay what happened each class—if she feels like it, and doesn't brush me off with an "I don't remember."
S— doesn't translate the way we adults think of it. Sometimes N— will ask her what "X" means in Japanese, and she'll say, "I don't know." She might actually know, but she doesn't think of language that way. Once, pretty early on, she was watching a child and mother playing in the sandbox, and the child said, "Motto!" and S— relayed, accurately, "He's saying he needs more." She'll also bring home Japanese words and phrases. In her class they’ve been learning all about the environment and natural resources, and she’s learned the word and symbol for plastic. Yesterday she took me all over the apartment on a scavenger hunt to look for it.
Another favorite expression is “mottainai” which means: "What a waste!" Mottainai is a popular term for environmentalists, and the inspiration for Mottainai Granny, a cartoon that can be found on YouTube. It pretty much combines all of my favorite things into one: conservationism, silly animation, and my kid attempting choreography. (S— knows the dance at the end of each video.)
Apocalypse Parenting
It's fun to write about these moments of learning after this year of Apocalypse Parenting. I know that term that sounds hyperbolic—and potentially unoriginal. Prior generations must have felt they were raising their children in end times too: amidst famines or trench warfare or blitzkriegs; one Kate Atkinson novel memorably opens (though my memory is not good enough to recall which book) with a Cold War-era mother transferring her extreme anxiety about nuclear warfare to her unborn child.
I stand by the sentiment that raising a child in this world felt particularly grim this past summer. S— had been out of school for months, and we were only beginning to figure out what was okay to do and not do. For a while, playgrounds were roped off with caution tape, and we were still testing out outdoor play dates. Amidst that backdrop, the nation was rocked by George Floyd's murder, and protests sprang up across the country, Seattle included.
Now, I wasn't clutching my metaphorical pearls in fear of protestors (I’ve often been a protestor), even if it was shocking seeing cars set ablaze in the streets during the evening broadcast. No, the fear was much deeper: that we were living in a completely unjust, upside-down world, that the present and future looked bleak for my daughter, but exponentially more so for her black and brown peers.
The city imposed a curfew on and off for those first few nights of protests. We hadn't been going many places anyway, but a government-mandated curfew was another dubious first to add to the list of extraordinary events of the year—the type of thing I had read about in history but never experienced firsthand. (And by "read about" I obviously mean WWII-era novels which detailed curfews and blackout curtains—and I will never forget how the Spanish flu ravaged the families of Downton Abbey!) The unrest simmered all summer long, and then the wildfires hit.
Where There’s Smoke…
Unfortunately, wildfires on the West Coast are not a new phenomena. They were new to me the summer of 2018, when I had a one-year-old to worry about, and the daycare she attended—which insisted on outside time twice per day, rain or shine—had to keep the children inside for weeks because the air quality was so dangerous. Seared into my memory is the image of the kids in the toddler room, riding tricycles in a circle while the clearly exhausted caregivers tried to safely release the children’s pent-up energy.
It was terrible then, considering what environmental degradation was already wreaking on the youngest generation, not to mention what it portended for their future. But wildfire smoke during COVID truly felt like end times. Going outside for fresh air had been the one, sanity-saving activity for us during the pandemic. But all of a sudden, stepping outdoors was equivalent to smoking a few packs of cigarettes. An eerie, yellowish-gray sky hung around for days, and I fretted each night about the world into which I had brought my kid.
Birthdays, Best Days, Bad Days
To put it mildly, it had been a tough year in which to raise a child in America. Moving to Japan and away from potential gun violence (and coup attempts) felt immediately gratifying, definitely. Tokyo’s air quality is surprisingly good for a major city, and though there are earthquakes here, we’re waiting for the Big One in Seattle too, and Japan is much better prepared. Plus, the COVID outbreak had been much more controlled in Japan than the US. (Though it does feel that the balance is beginning to shift. As of May 16, 46.7% of Americans have had at least one vaccine dose, while 3.5% of Japanese have—well below the world average of 9 percent.)
S— turned four recently, which means half of her birthdays have been pandemic birthdays. Last year, we made a cake and took it out to the front porch, and our neighbors stood in the street and sidewalk and sang to her. It was very sweet, but obviously not ideal. This year, we invited all of S—’s classmates and friends to the park after school, where we had balloons, cupcakes, bubbles, and art supplies spread across a few picnic mats. It felt like a real party—I not only came away from it “real” exhausted, but also amazed by how many friends she’s (we’ve!) made in such a short time. She declared it the “best day ever,” though she does say that any time she gets to eat ice cream, or she gets a small toy from a vending machine.
I could probably benefit from her kind of enthusiasm. The pandemic may feel over in the US, but it’s far from it in most of the world, Japan included. I’m tired of having to factor it into nearly every decision. And even when C19 does fade away, I’m not hopeful about the state of the world. If people found wearing a face covering objectionable—a simple ask that saved lives—how will we ever do the much harder work of saving the planet? Wearing a small, soft mask will seem like the good old days when we’ll all have to wear these to go outside:
Image by Pablo Stanic @stanicph via UnSplash
Sorry to be a downer. It’s been raining here a lot and I just got back on those selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and they take at least a few weeks to work. (I let that Rx lapse on a wave of late-2020 optimism! Too soon!) Until next time, be good to yourselves, each other, and the planet, or I’ll send Mottainai Granny after you!
