Any Old Port vs A Place for Everything

"Mom!" my youngest squeals, all frantic. "My gym kit! Have you seen it?"

I get questions like that all the time and they fill me with a mixture of despair and fury.

"(Mary / Mom)," says husband or kid, "have you seen my (gym shoes / headphones / glasses / socks / keys / bag / book / CD / library card / shoes / coat / MP-3 player)?"

The answer is usually "yes," but I've learned that lying is the only way out. Because if I say "yes," chances are very good that "Where did you see it?" will be the next question, and I'm damned if I'm going to get involved. So I generally try something sneaky first. "Where did you put it?" I'll ask. Sometimes when I'm really fed up I can't resist adding "Did you put it away where I told you to?"

"Oh, if you're just going to lecture me," the offender will huff, "I'll just keep looking for (it / them) on my own!" And continue looking they will, but it's not the last I hear of it. Oh, no.

I have a simple philosophy which, although it sounds obnoxiously smug and pat, works fine for me: "A place for everything and everything in its place." So obvious it's embarrassing, right? Yes, but only to me, apparently.

My library card goes back into my wallet after I've checked out my books. My keys go into my bag when I'm done with them. My coat goes on the coat hook (until my kids tear it off in search of their own), and my glasses go on the computer table or next to my bed. The other members of this household have their own way of doing things. Never mind that their way doesn't work a damn bit; I have nevertheless been powerless to change it.

Whereas I am a 'place-for-everything' person, their philosophy might best be summed up as 'Any old port in a storm.' My husband is inclined to put his keys down on the kitchen counter, mantelpiece, Welsh dresser, windowsill, or bedside table. Sometimes he'll just leave them in his coat or trouser pocket, and once in a while he'll get creative and hide them under wet towels on top of the washing machine. My kids leave their shoes wherever they happen to take them off, drape their coats over furniture -- the kitchen table being a favored spot -- and leave their backpacks where they are bound to be tripped over. Mobile phones and MP-3 players may be found behind the computer table, on the sink, in my bedroom, or in the bathroom. And don't get me started on socks.

So why won't I just tell them where the blessed thing is? Why won't I point them in the right direction when they're charging all over the house in a dither over missing documents, homework assignments, keys, mobile phone or shoes?

Say I'm cooking or doing the laundry. There, where it ought not to be, I see my husband's wallet or my kid's library card. I'm generally too busy doing what I'm doing to pick it up, which is a good thing, because on the rare occasion that I have done this, I'm also too busy to remember where I put it. I came across my youngest kid's library card in the kitchen once and left it in the garden shed on my way to do some pruning. I found it there weeks after a household search that lasted the better part of an afternoon, and I never heard the end of it. Never mind that I was just trying to help; never mind that I wouldn't have touched her library card if it had been put back in its Special Place. The same thing has happened with other Very Important Belongings, and now when I see them, I do my damndest to make a mental note where I saw them, but like as not I forget. Then comes the dreaded "Have you seen my ...?" question and I cringe.

I wasn't always what my family calls 'anal' and I call 'responsible' about my possesions. Up until I had a baby I was famous for misplacing my coat, my train pass, my house keys. Then one day when I was leaving for work, I had an epiphany. I had already rolled the boulder uphill by getting my eleven-month-old ready for nursery and myself ready for work. I had fed, dressed, and changed my infant. I had my own lunch and work materials ready, my hair was neatly fixed in a bun, the kid was strapped to me and her day bag was prepared. But I couldn't find my keys. It took me the better part of 45 minutes to locate them, and when I finally did, my mind was made up. On my way back from work that day, I bought a large glass bowl. I put it in the entrance to our house and from then on my keys went into that bowl as soon as I'd stepped through the door. In time, other family members began poaching from that bowl when they could not find their own.

And now, here I am a full-fledged member of the Place for Everything Society. Someday I hope to recruit other family members to my group; hope springs eternal.

If any of them bothered to read this, they'd probably tell you that I don't always put my glasses where I can find them. That sometimes I too walk around the house asking if anyone has seen my glasses, and stating repeatedly that I just put them down a moment ago and now they're gone. But the way I see it, I'm the one who's writing this blog...

The Snobbish Mommy

When my husband and I moved to Japan with our baby, we ended up in a dilapidated house in the suburbs of Tokyo. We told ourselves it was for the best: you don't want to raise a toddler in a place where the floors are all unscarred blonde wood and none of the paper-paneled shoji doors have holes in them yet. A house with cigarette burns on the tatami mats, kerosene smoke-stained crumbling plaster walls and a tin-roofed gravel shed for the washing machine, we told each other, was actually ideal for raising a kid.

Every day we could hear the people from the nearby apartment house passing on their way to and from the station. Almost all of them were like us, parents with young children, and in a few months we had gotten to know a number of them from our trips to the park, grocery store, and local pediatrician.

Most of us mothers, whether we worked or stayed at home, tended to dress alike. Although some of the working and stay-at-home moms did go to the trouble of putting on panty hose and skirts, they were exceptions in our part of the neighborhood. For most of us, our days of suits, heels, and sleek leather briefcases were over and we favored interlock, polyester and comfortable shoes. That was okay, though: we had no pretensions. After all, it was silly to go to all the trouble of dressing up every day when you were just going to get spat-up milk on your shoulders and oatmeal on the hems of your skirts. The Snobbish Mommy, however, was different.

At first I assumed she was unfriendly to me because our house was so shabby and she and her family lived in a fancier apartment building. Then I wondered if it might not be because I was foreign. Most of the other mothers had gotten over their initial reserve and gotten to know me, but some people tended to be a little cool to foreigners.

Although I called her the Snobbish Mommy, she wasn't so much snobbish as she was indifferent, rarely returning greetings or smiles. And she wasn't indifferent to everybody, to be perfectly honest -- she always returned my husband's greetings, for instance -- she was just mildly cool to all of us other mothers. The Snobbish Mommy was always impeccably turned out in tailored suits, heels, and perfectly straightened hair. She was pretty, and she used make-up to good effect. I am sorry to say that a few of us took a dislike to her.

Katayama-san frowned as the Snobbish Mommy waltzed past us one morning, dressed to the nines as usual. Katayama-san lived in a track suit and her hair was never out of a ponytail. "Jeesh! Did you see her latest suit? Bottle green, not a speck on it. And she's never worn those shoes before, either!"

Morie-san nodded. "She never says hello to me. I live just opposite her, and the only time she's ever greeted me was once when I made a big point of saying good morning to her. Now I just can't be bothered."

I had to put my own two cents' worth in, of course. "She always says hello to my husband, but never to me!"

"Some women are just like that. They have no time for other women. I feel sorry for her kids."

In fact, the Snobbish Mommy seemed to take very good care of her two children. Whenever they walked past our house I could hear them; her voice was always low and gentle and she obviously listened to what they had to say. But I felt so irritated with her that I didn't bother to mention this. "I feel sorry for them too," I said. In a way I did. All of us other mothers networked with each other. Even I, a foreigner, networked. The Snobbish Mommy was a loner. Her children were bound to lose out, given that.

Not long before we left Japan, I saw the Snobbish Mommy in the local pay phone half a dozen times and I wondered if she might be having an affair. Her husband was an exhausted-looking man some years older than her. He always looked very serious and unhappy; given her beauty and style and her husband's generally dour expression, it was easy to imagine that she might be having a fling.

One morning, as the Snobbish Mommy passed a little group of us, one of the other mothers nudged me. "Have you heard?" she asked as soon as the Snobbish Mommy was out of earshot.

"Have I heard what?"

"Her husband died. Cancer, they say it was. He's had it for years, apparently. Went into remission for a while, then it came back. Poor woman."

I will never know whether the Snobbish Mommy was so aloof because she knew that her husband was dying and didn't want others to know, or whether she was just the sort of woman who didn't make friends easily. But I do know that I never once saw her chatting with another woman. At school functions, she always sat by herself and walked home on her own. You never saw her in any of the coffee shops on the last day of school when most of the other mothers got together, and she tended to sit by herself at the park when she went to watch her children play.

And to this day, I wish I'd seen past her aloofness and made at least one effort to get to know her.

Suffering with Montbretia

I am a Montbretia sufferer. If you've got this problem too, you'll know what I mean -- and that it's no fun at all.

Monbretia can either be self-inflicted or inherited; in my case, it's the latter. When we bought our flat, I knew little about gardening, so I didn't realize what I'd be getting into. The following spring, a more knowledgable friend looked at one of the clumps of foliage that seemed to be all around our yard, in every conceivable place. "That's Montbretia," she remarked, a funny look on her face. From her tone, I realized that it wasn't a good thing.

Montbretia produce long strings of flattened corms. Try and dig these up and some of them inevitably break off and begin to send out shoots. There may be up to 14 or more of these corms on each plant, and as they break off they form new plants with corms of their own and the clump quickly thickens and spreads. Leave the clumps alone and the corms still multiply, albeit more slowly, until they are virtually growing on top of each other. Each corm is so closely connected to the ones around it that after a while the entire bunch might as well be cement. You can barely get your spade or fork into the clump, and when you do you almost wish you hadn't. Montbretia are the bulbous answer to dandelions; you can never entirely get rid of them.

Like dandelions, they are beautiful. The leaves are spear-shaped and a beautifully fresh, lime green. The flowers are a little disappointing in size, but they too are beautiful, a fiery orange that lights up an autumn day. If only they were biddable and a little less enthusiastic, they'd be perfect plants: hardy, beautiful, and adaptable, as they will live in just about any soil, in shade or light, and in dry areas or boggy ones. Like dandelion roots, the corms have a half life to rival plutonium's.

The people who lived in our flat before us, or perhaps the people who were here before them, were definitely people who sought a labor-unintensive garden. I'll bet they were looking for something cheap and cheerful when they bought those first Montbretia clumps and planted them. I can imagine their delight at discovering that the gorgeous flowers they planted actually had doubled, then tripled. "Cool, we've got more of these -- let's plant them somewhere else!" And boy, did they ever.

We've got Montbretia in the borders, Montbretia under rose bushes, Montbretia at the bottom of the stairs and Montbretia coming up through the honeysuckle. The other day I noticed those telltale green spears peeking up through the turf and I felt like dropping to my knees and shaking my fist at the sky. Our soil tends to be heavy and full of clay, and what with all the Montbretia busily reproducing itself just as fast as I can dig it out, I'll probably still be thinning it out if I make it to my eighties. I have spent long, weary, back-breaking hours digging Montbretia out of all of its various haunts, and it still comes right back in. You can't put the corms in the compost as they don't rot away but live to grow again, so each time I dig them away, I end up throwing away a fair amount of the earth around them. I have visions of digging so many of the damn things up that eventually I have dug up every inch of the garden, leaving great, gaping holes. And from those gaping holes, Montbretia will emerge, triumphant.

The other day, while at a local nursery, I happened to notice that Montbretia was on sale. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched in horror as a middle-aged couple selected several plants and discussed where they should plant them. "Don't do it!" I was tempted to cry out -- then I remembered that I wasn't living in America any longer and held my tongue. Anyway, I tried to tell myself, maybe this couple wouldn't have my problems with Montbretia. Maybe their soil would take it. Maybe they even deserved Montbretia.

Logic vs the Creative Spirit

"Mom, lace your fingers together!" my eldest tells me early one morning, apropros of nothing. She's just appeared at my bedroom door and her voice is filled with excitement.

"Wh--?" I manage groggily.

"Come on, put your fingers together, like this." She holds her hands up and shows me, wiggling her fingers. For just a moment, I have a flashback: this is the church and this is the steeple, open the doors and see -- no people! I turn over onto my side and flail about for the clock. I can't find it.

"But -- what time is it?" I groan.

"It's not that early. Go on -- just do it!"

I do it. It's the only way I'm going to get any peace.

"Okay, now put one of your thumbs over the other one."

I take a deep breath and do this too. "Now can I go back to sleep? Please?"

"Ha! I knew it! You put your left thumb over your right thumb!"

"So what?"

"So that means that you're the emotional type. Artistic, creative, intuitive. That you use the side of your brain that deals with all those things." The way she says it, it doesn't really sound like a good thing to be.

"I put my right thumb over my left thumb," she announces with pride. "That means I'm the practical, logical type."

"No kidding? You, logical?" I say, but the irony is lost on her. Logical and practical she may be, but subtle she is not.

In fact, I actually think there is something to this right-thumb left-thumb test. When my husband was asked to do it, he immediately put his right thumb over his left. And he and the eldest are so much alike it just isn't true: both of them are masters at logic who could argue the hind legs off a donkey. My younger child, on the other hand, is an airy-fairy day dreamer who, like me, is easily bamboozled in debates. Even when we know in our hearts that we are right, we allow ourselves to be confounded by the more logical, eloquent types. Which is to say, the other two members of this family.

When she took the test, the younger kid strongly argued that she was logical too, that she had put her right thumb over her left. But I was watching carefully and I saw which thumb went over which first. I'm afraid she's on my team, poor kid.

"Mom," can I have thirty more minutes on the computer?" the eldest will ask me.

"No. You've been staying up far too late as it is."

"Please! I was really good about getting up this morning -- you said so yourself!"

I sigh. I want to encourage her to be better about getting up in the morning, so like an idiot, I go ahead and say yes. Two hours later, on my way to the toilet I happen to notice that the light is still on in the computer room. Sure enough, it's her, still sitting there at the computer, tapping away. "You're still up!" I cry. "You said all you needed was thirty more minutes!"

"But I had to have a shower and then I had to put the dishes away!"

"Well, that's not MY problem! You said only thirty more minutes!"

"I didn't say I'd be in bed in thirty minutes," she points out, "I just said I needed thirty more minutes on the computer and --" she sticks out her arm and shows me her watch --"I've only been here for twenty-eight minutes!"

"For God's sake, get to bed! Your thirty minutes are up!"

"No they're not. I've got two more minutes. In fact, THREE more minutes because this conversation has taken a whole minute!"

And so help me God, she stays on for another three minutes. I can't win and she knows it. I just don't have her logical skills: my left thumb went over my right.

Getting There -- Eventually

I have no sense of direction.

Now, when I say that, some might imagine that I simply have trouble finding my way places. That is certainly true: I have an awful time just getting from A to B. But my direction problem is so severe that you really have to see me in action to believe it. I'm not bragging and I'm not complaining; I'm just stating a fact. Even if I've been to a particular place over a dozen times, the odds are that I'd never be able to find my way there on my own. And even if by some miracle I did manage this, I'd never be able to find my way back.

I've been like this from the get-go, and the one thing I will say for this problem is that it does help you have interesting adventures. When I was just a toddler, I got lost after playing in my grandfather's front yard in Stockton. I couldn't remember which house his was, so I went to the neighbors' instead and walked in on a very lively party in full swing. The neighbors were quite taken with me and invited me in. One woman lifted me high over her head, then handed me to someone else. I got passed around the room and I still remember wondering what the hell was going on and what was so funny, as I sailed from smiling face to smiling face. Eventually one of the more sober revelers took me back to my grandfather's house next door, but it was an interesting two or three minutes.

I also got lost going home from school during my third week at kindergarten (we lived approximately one and a half blocks away from the school). I ended up at the house of a very nice family many blocks away from the school. They all spoke Spanish, which I found intriguing, and they had crucifixes on the walls; one of the little girls there was named Maria and she invited me to come over and play whenever I liked. Maria shared some chocolate gold coins with me, and Maria's mother had to get our telephone number from the directory and call my mother to come and get me; I blush to remember it. Sadly, I could not take Maria up on her offer to go and play with her: try as I might, I could not remember where she lived.

In Japan, I got lost on a regular basis and quickly learned how to ask for directions in about two dozen ways. I also learned that I could not trust anyone who couldn't immediately tell me the way. The minute someone frowned and started wondering if the the place I was looking for really was the second turning after the acupuncture clinic, past the temple and down the side road towards the second graveyard, I knew that I needed to find another person to tell me the way. I lived in Japan for seventeen years, and I'll bet that I spent a good six months of that time trying to find my way somewhere. But it did wonders for my Japanese, and besides, walking is great exercise.

Of course, I can laugh about it now and make light of the fact that I have this particular handicap, and yet there have been times that I have wept from frustration. Why oh why oh why, I have silently cried, was I given this particular defective brain with this vast, yawning desert where normal people have neat little grids -- built-in direction finders like those devices you can now get in cars that show you exactly where you are and where you ought to go?

I'm not sure when I stopped shaking my fists at the sky and learned acceptance, but I am now at peace with myself. The problem is not going to go away; like my eye color or height, it is an inherent part of me, and like it or hate it, it's here to stay. I now make a virtue of a necessity and tell myself that the quest is more important than the goal, the journey more important than the eventual destination. In fact, I want that on my tombstone:

SHE COULDN'T FIND HER WAY HALF THE TIME, BUT SHE HAD A LOT OF FUN TRYING TO GET THERE

Place Names

"Say that again, Mary!"

"What?"

"What you just said. Go on -- say it."

"What do you mean?"

"Go on -- where does the ferry leave from again?"

"The name of the port?" I said, being deliberately obtuse. I knew what he was after, the bastard.

"Just say it!"

"Won't."

"Come on!"

"Very well. Hair-itch."

"Ha! 'Harr-idge' -- that's how it's pronounced! Not 'Hair-itch.'"

"Well, at least I didn't say 'Har-witch' this time!"

My husband grinned in smug satisfaction. He never tired of getting me to say 'Harwich.' Two weeks earlier, he'd had to correct me when I mispronounced 'Marylebone.' This looks for all the world as though it ought to be Mary-le-bone, but no. 'Marlabone' -- that's how it's pronounced. 'Leicestershire,' which to my Yank eyes looks as though it ought to be pronounced 'Lay-cest-er-shyer,'is in fact pronounced 'Lestershirr.' For the first few months I was in the U.K., I dreaded every place name I came across. My husband thought it was wildly funny.

Styvechal, Gloucestershire, Edinburgh, Pontypridd -- I floundered miserably and consequently provided him with hours of merriment.

Then we went to America.

"I think we want the next exit," my husband said one afternoon, on the way to my cousin's house in the Bay Area. 'Ju-nih-per-oh Sair-ah."

I sat up straighter and licked my lips. "Excuse me?"

He looked furtively at the map. "Joo-nih-per-oh --"

"Ha! 'Woo-NIH-per-oh!'" I cried. "The J is pronounced like a W 'cause it's Spanish!"

He was silent for a few moments. "Very well. Woonypairo."

"Oh, that's brilliant! Woonypairo!"

He stared sullenly straight ahead. "How do you say it, then?"

"Woo-NIH-per-oh" I said again. He tried gamely, but failed spectacularly. I laughed my head off.

I had a wonderful time in America with my husband. We travelled all over the country and encountered place names which were a breeze for me, but really gave him pause: Yosemite, La Jolla, San Clemente, Michigan, Albuquerque, Pensacola, Poughkeepsie -- it just got better and better. But all good things have to come to an end, and finally our American holiday was over and we were back in the U.K., in Scotland, this time -- a first for both of us.

"Sorry? Where did you want to go again?" the petrol attendant smiled.

"Um...Kirk-cud-brite," ventured my husband.

"Cuh-coo-bree?"

"No, it's Kirk -- here," I said, flustered, handing the man the map and pointing.

He looked at the map and smiled broadly. "Ach, aye. 'Cuh-coo-bree,' that's how it's pronounced. It's one of the harder ones, ken."

My husband and I stared at each other, then looked back up at the petrol attendant. "Cuh-coo-bree? is that really how it's pronounced?"

He grinned and nodded. "Aye, a lot of people have trouble with that one," he said happily.

"Cuh-coo bree. Jeez. Well, okay, thank you."

In another five years or so we're thinking of moving to China.

Changing Japan

Japan is changing. International marriages used to be rather rare in Japan, and the only people who spoke Japanese were those who looked Japanese. But the peoples of the world are gradually coming together, and although the Japanese have traditionally been a little behind when it comes to mixing, they've been doing some catching up in the past few decades.

Back in 1980, I still remember doing a double take as I watched a traditionally dressed young couple get on a bus in Tokyo one evening. The husband was wearing a grey suit and looked every inch the conventional Japanese businessman he probably was. His wife, a few inches shorter than her husband, was wearing a gold and yellow kimono with a bright scarlet and green obi. What made me take another look was the fact that she was African.

Years later, I met another interesting international couple, of sorts.

The young woman in the baby changing area couldn't have been older than fifteen. She was Caucasian, so I assumed that she must speak English, even though the baby she was changing was obviously Asian. "How old is he?" I said in English, indicating her baby. She flushed and looked down in embarrassment. "Sumimasen, eigo ga dekinakute..." she said softly, explaining that she spoke no English. Her Japanese sounded absolutely perfect.

I stared at her. This girl looked 115% Caucasian. She had straight brown hair and brown eyes, and if I'd introduced her as my much-younger sister, no one would have batted an eye.

"I'm sorry," I said in Japanese, very embarrassed, "it's just that you look so --"

"I know," she put in. "My father was American." The term 'American' is almost exclusively used to mean 'Caucasian' in Japan. This mistaken assumption used to drive me wild, but I did not take this girl to task for it.

That one of her parents was foreign was a foregone conclusion, but I nodded. "I see. You must have a lot of people wondering why your Japanese is so good."

The girl nodded rather miserably. "I do."

"And you obviously grew up here, given how perfect your Japanese is."

She nodded again. "And foreigners are always approaching me and talking to me in English too -- asking directions, I suppose. And I feel awful because I don't know any English at all. Most of them don't know Japanese, and sometimes they won't believe me when I tell them that I don't speak English."

I nodded again, thinking to myself that I had barely believed her myself at first. "So your father didn't teach you any English?" I asked.

Again, she looked embarrassed. "I've never met my father."

Now it was my turn to look embarrassed. In fact, I felt like kicking myself for my nosiness.

"I am so sorry," I began, but the girl shook her head. "Not at all, really." She smiled and held up the freshly changed baby. "This is Tatsuya, my little brother.

I nodded and smiled, profoundly relieved to know that this girl, whose life must be hard enough given her situation, wasn't the mother of a nine-month old baby too.

Later I thought about this girl. She was one of a small group to be sure, but over the time I lived in Japan I met at least a dozen people whose native language was Japanese, but who didn't look the slightest bit Asian. My own kids had a tough enough time in Japan as it was, even though they were bilingual; I can't imagine what life was like for this girl. Like my kids, she was probably fine in her own neighborhood, where everyone knew who she was and that she could speak and understand Japanese. But when this girl left the area where she was known, she'd get cat-called and openly discussed. And that must have been unpleasant for her, understanding every single word that was said, as she did.

My Japanese-American friends living in Japan had the opposite problem.

"It's so annoying!" said my friend Karen. "I ask for directions in my best Japanese and they motor-mouth their reply. Or they write the directions out in Japanese, which is no use to me at all." I wanted to sympathize, but since it always took me a good five minutes to convince Japanese people that I could read instructions written in Japanese, I felt a little envious of her. Another Japanese-American friend of mine used to go out with her Japanese-speaking Caucasian husband and claimed that she felt like a ventriloquist's dummy. "They look at me while he's talking! They ask me questions and he answers, but they never seem to figure it out. I just stand there while they talk over my head. I have to wait for him to translate what they say. It's just so weird."

It really is pretty weird, I suppose, when someone who looks like an Iowa farm girl speaks perfect Japanese and a girl who looks like she ought to be able to speak Japanese, can't. But the world is becoming so international that stories like this are becoming commonplace. And slowly but surely, even Japan is changing.