Love Knots

By Emma Cattell

28th July 2020
The incense burning in the small hallway that adjoins my room to the main living area wafts gently. Smokey whispers of Japanese cedar, cypress, and white sandalwood (杉 ・sugi, 檜・hinoki, and 白檀・byakudan respectively) envelop me as I lay in my massive bed alone. Needing to pee, I swivel my legs over to my right, my bare feet tapping the cool wooden floors. Usually I would wear slippers, but the moment my feet land on the floor as I roll out, slightly too hot in my bed, the incense plays tricks on my mind and I think of mornings in Obaachan’s house. The summers in New York are slightly more bearable than those in Tokyo and my hometown. In my Grandma’s traditional house only one room has air conditioning, which they only use if we are round. Yet this morning I miss the oppressive heat and the massive jug of ice cold Barley tea that always seems to be full despite two children gulping through it everyday. 

My body and my heart yearn for tatami mats, dark wooden floorboards, Obaachan’s morning prayers. The tatami mats that I have spent almost every summer rolling around on during the terrible midday heat, were a place of cool sanctuary for me and slight annoyance for Ojiichan who just wanted to watch baseball on the TV in peace. Every morning there, my body was prepared for my brother and I’s thundering down the deep mahogany floors, being led by our noses to wonderful scents coming from the heart of the home. Glass panes rattled in the sliding door into the kitchen, which still had the ‘Keep Out We’re Cooking’ sign taped on to it from when my Grandma, brother, and I were in charge of making a birthday feast for my Aunt. Obaachan was always the first to rise, but often when we opened the kitchen door there would only be gentle steam rising from the kettle or rice cooker to greet us. Listening for either the sound of her in the garden, or the recitation of the 般若心経 (Heart Sutra) the search would continue. If she was at the 仏壇 (Buddhist family altar) then I would sit patiently behind her, offering my prayers to my ancestors while also hoping she would finish soon so she could feed me. My first snack of the morning frequently was dried rice that we had given to the house gods the night before, the

blessed morsel almost cracking my baby teeth. The two of us, one a devout Buddhist, and the other a devout grandchild, would collect the rice offerings from the 神棚 (shinto house altar) around the house. One at the entrance to the home to ensure no evil and protect the inhabitants of the home, one in the kitchen to ensure safety, and one in the main living room at the top of a cupboard. Some I would have to go onto my tiptoes to collect, imprinting the pattern of the tatami into my feet as I gathered the old rice and then offered up the first grains of fluffy rice and first brewed tea of the day. Yet as I step away from the bedroom my feet fail to sink into the tiny ridges of the woven mats and instead lie flat on American wood floors, she is not at the family altar praying, and the kitchen that is devoid of any smell or steam stares back at me in silence. 

I pause for a minute before heading to the bathroom—my new family home is very modern and very ‘New York’. The kitchen is not designed to be used by an actual cook; the cupboards make no logical sense in placement or size but look beautiful. Our massive American sized fridge (which we had to get used to the weight of to even open the doors when we first moved) sits proudly at the end of the shiny (but also slightly too short) marble countertop. Everything looks seamless. In reality is quite impractical for someone who actually uses the kitchen. But I suppose that is the point as the open plan kitchen/dining area overlooks a view that is quite exquisite—the Statue of Liberty is visible as a small blue beacon toward the left, and Williamsburg Bridge and the Empire State building sit proudly in the front. You can watch the whole lifecycles of summer thunderstorms gather in the sky from my apartment. 

During the pandemic it means that you can see empty streets, except for where testing centres and supermarkets were. It also means that watching the hospital a couple blocks away from us became a regular activity—the bodies that would get carted away under white sheets to the refrigerated trucks that grew in number by the end of May, the daily 7pm cheer for the first responders, while it was all so evident that New York was falling apart, all I wanted to do was to press my back onto a cool tatami mat and listen to the cicadas in my mother country. 

No matter how high up you may live, it is still almost impossible to truly escape the sounds of the city. Yet ignoring the blaring sirens, the sobering white trucks outside the hospital and the mass of New Yorkers in line for COVID testing, I attempt to distract myself once more. I inhale deeply, trying to intoxicate my nose with smells of nostalgia and comfort that will take me away from the carnage outside as I walk away from my window to the bathroom. I catch my reflection in the mirror briefly as I was my hands, trying to take my mind away from the ’20 second rule’ posters that have appeared everywhere. Instead, I think of that muted beige sink; of the different toothpaste my grandma bought just for us, the specific toothbrushes—a pink princess one for me, a Pokémon one for Henry. I spot in the memory the mysterious and alluring blue box that we weren’t allowed to touch (although I discovered it was the bedroom for Ojiichan’s dentures eventually after a brave look inside one summer).

My heart aches as I think of my Obaachan’s voice, scolding me for trying to sleep with wet hair. Even last year at the mature and capable age of 20, my 80-year-old angel of a grandmother refused to let me dry my own hair. Her beautiful wizened hands untangled the  wet jet-black mess, and then when she was done drying, softly brushed through it. Those loving hands gently tugged at the knots of my yearning for the raven hair that other Japanese girls have, the hair she used to have, and untangled the muddy brown strands that I inherited instead from my English father.

 my Grandma and my mother’s cousin (date unknown)

The constant question of whether I look or am ‘Japanese-enough’ was something that always played in the back of my mind, yet my Obaachan just saw me and doted on me as her grandchild. She smoothed and weaved her hands through the self-doubt, the months of ache of being away from her while softly reminding me softly to keep drying my hair when I go back. The colour of my hair, my eyes, my height, my weight, my inability to read all the Chinese characters, and the years spent away from her somehow did not matter. Her love knows no bounds. I was enough regardless of how much ‘pure Japanese blood’ flowed through my veins. I could even dare say that I am the favourite granddaughter, more so than my fully Japanese cousin. My hair is never as silky even when I come back from the hairdressers. Pleased with her work she would always smile to herself, her perfect apple cheeks raised towards her eyes, and say 「エマちゃんの髪の⽑は栗⾊でいつも綺麗」/‘Emma’s chestnut-coloured hair is always beautiful’. The only person in the world that makes me feel so very loved, so much so that each strand of hair feels it.

In a time of loss of life and of loved ones, all I can think of is how lucky I am to have her, yet anguished and resentful of the great distance and obstacles that lie between us because of this pandemic. The small 15-minute exchanges in that bathroom that I have known since the very beginning of my life, the sliding wooden doors that I used to struggle with as a child because it was too heavy for my arms and still struggle with now as the door has gotten a little stiff. My hands reach for the traditional style door and prepare to flex their muscles to pull, but in its place I find the cold, metal, and very American door handle. Faced with the knowledge that I was in fact 10,830km (6729miles) away from her, her smile, her voice, her hands, her house, a single tear rolls down my cheek and I open the bathroom door to be inundated with the sounds of New York City in a global pandemic once more.

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