Memoir of my Mother : East-West Correspondence

The Taste of Sweet-potatoes Sweet-Potatoes, Sweet-Potatoes, Steamed Sweet-Potatoes. Everyday three meals in our childhood after the War ended. Rumi, my older sister and I walk on bare feet three miles to school. Steamed sweet-potatoes for lunch are swinging in our shoulder bags, The hand-sewn-made shoulder-bags that mother had made for Rumi and me. Warm sweet-potatoes swing in our bags as we walk to the school. Wearing the same flared-shoulder-skirts that mother made from fatigue army material. We wore it like twin-sisters. When I bake sweet-potatoes, I think back of the time so many long years ago. I hover the potatoes to warm up my memories in those childhoods with my dear sister. I love to walk by sweet-potato fields as I see their purple flowers nodding to the wind. On soft rainy days, my parent planted seedlings of sweet-potato vines. Rumi and I are assigned to cut sweet-potato leaves to feed pigs. We also cut any edible young shoots of grass for rabbits and goats. After coming back from school, Rumi helped mother and I a baby sitter. We did laundry, cleaning lamp shades, getting water and making hot bath. Our frontier life in our childhood like a merry-go-round going in circles. Riding on the wooden horses with music playing. Surrounded by mountains and fields and seas with the abundance of blessings from Mother Nature and with love of our parents, our childhood was so blessed. Of course, it was our mother who made it possible, for our father was rather often harsh with us. His temperament and lack of trust in his children and he threatened and scolded us, when we failed to please him. I was the worst case for him. I often got beaten and scolded and called by all sorts of names. I was no longer as cute as I was in my very early childhood. I was an ugly duckling to him. When the time came to be independent after graduating from high school, we hardly spoke to each other. Eventually, I developed feelings about him and had terrible nightmares about him even in my adult years. I swore to myself that I would never marry someone like him, even if he were handsome and very smart. Mother was my shield and shelter to protect me in my struggling times in my teenage years. Nonetheless, I am old enough now to forgive him, and I can thank him for what he had done for us during the war and after the war time. He had left some intellectual influence on us, and we have some traces of his DNA. Home-Coming in Summer Forgive, Forgive, and Forgiven; Given Life, given for the day to live, I have been living. So grateful, thankful for the Life given today. Scorching- burning heat, beating down rain falls, and howling wind and storms. Those mass of cotton-clouds so thick floating over my head hang so low to reachable. Wild flowers in the wilderness so intimate to my heart welcoming. Coming Home, coming home from far away being absent so long. Everything is surprising as if they are new things. Listening to the wild song birds; greeting smiling faces of the island people. The scorching heat and the sun so bright! All in all, how comfortable they feel! Cicada’s calls and crickets’ songs, songs of songs of home-coming in summer. Like a drunkard with wine, with the summer weather, my soul is lifted up. The sweet taste of everything at home-coming Day and Night are both alike we take at one’s home land.