On January 17, 1995, it was so cold that the pipes to our washing machine froze. There being no room for it inside the house, it was just outside the kitchen in what we called the washing shed, a gravel-floored lean-to cobbled together from corrugated aluminum siding and bits of leftover lumber shortly after the war when building materials were scarce. The door to the washing shed was fixed together with a piece of rusty wire, and wind whistled through it. Rain fell through the holes in the roof, and toads took up residence there, no doubt attracted by the abundance of mosquitos, cockroaches and slugs. All in all, doing the laundry was never very pleasant, and during the winter it was particularly nasty. On this occasion I hurt my hand attempting to thaw out the pipes -- unsuccessfully -- and I was in a grumpy mood, what with that and having spent much of the previous night trying to soothe a coughing baby. When I considered having to hand wash a dozen stinking cloth diapers and a tubful of half-frozen, sopping-wet laundry, I felt like going out and kicking down a fence.
On the plus side, my husband had dropped our four-year-old off at her nursery school on his way to work and my bronchial baby had finally gone down for a nap, so at least I could get a little work done. I found my briefcase, pulled out a handful of mock examinations and settled down to start proof-reading them when the telephone rang. It was my cousin in Los Angeles, and she sounded frantic.
"Are you guys all right?!" she practically screamed.
"We're fine," I said bemusedly. "Except I think I've sprained my wrist because the pipes to the washing machine have frozen and I've got a dozen dirty diapers and --"
She interrupted me.
"But there're buildings on their sides and whole neighborhoods on fire! And people stuck under their houses and highways that have collapsed and --"
For a minute I almost wondered if one of us was hallucinating. We'd had a similar conversation exactly a year earlier when she and her family had experienced the trauma of the Northridge Earthquake in L.A.
"Where did you say this was happening?" I asked.
"In Japan!"
"Well, it's not Tokyo, then. Believe me, we're fine here."
"Just turn on your television and you'll see!"
I did, and I could not believe my eyes. Kobe had been struck by an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale. The death toll was already estimated to be in the thousands.
All morning long, I moved through my chores as though in a dream. Our baby was barely six months old, and when I turned on the television and saw mothers with babies her age sitting on blankets on the ground in the freezing temperatures, their faces bruised and stunned, my heart went out to them. I couldn't get over the fact that I'd been so upset over our burst water pipes and non-functioning washing machine; I knew those women would happily trade places with me.
I taught a small group of women English in my house and we had a class scheduled that day. When the last member of the group, Tanizaki-san, showed up, the others immediately expressed their concern; I had not realized that Tanizaki-san's son had just begun college in Kobe. She smiled and reassured everybody that he was fine.
"But how do you know?" one of the women cried. "My sister-in-law lives there and all of the telephone lines are down! No one can get through!"
Tanizaki-san told us she'd had a strange phone call from her son early that morning. His voice sounded strained and a little distant, and she was groggy what with having been woken up, but she'd heard him say "Mom, I'm okay. We might be out of touch for a while, but I want you to know I'm fine" -- and then the connection went dead. She'd been trying to reach him ever since, but there was no dial tone.
"So I turned on the radio," she said, "and found out that the earthquake had struck at 5:46. I was upset, but I knew he was okay."
It took Tanizaki-san several days to get in touch with her son and find out what had happened. He had been woken up by the earthquake when his bed flew across the room and slammed into the wall along with his desk and chest-of-drawers. He had spotted the telephone in the midst of a pile of debris on the floor, picked it up, and phoned his mother. Miraculously, the lines were still functioning.
All of us women -- every one of us a mother -- were mightily impressed by the consideration and presence of mind of this boy. Thrown across his room in the wee small hours of the morning, he thought to call his mother and tell her that he was fine. Imagine what those days would have been like for her if it hadn't occurred to him to do this?
My children have grown up hearing this story, and they know that when it comes to thoughtfulness, Tanizaki-san's son set the gold standard. Whenever I tell this story -- and they can pretty much recite it word for word along with me, to give you a good idea -- they know what the moral is: If you are ever in a similar situation, for God's sake call your mother if you can. Save her nerves a little wear and tear.
There's another moral too: If you've got a baby with a cough, a load of half-washed laundry and a washing machine with frozen water pipes, remember that it could be a whole lot worse.
