journal features

respect for the elderly day

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2009.09.18

Today we through my visiting mother into the deep end. The daycare was hosting a "respect for the elderly day" celebration, and Mari had arranged for my mum to participate. I took her to the daycare in the morning, and when I last glimpsed her she was sitting in a space surrounded by kids but none of them was within a metre and half of her—they were all standing well back and simply staring.

But she spent the morning at the daycare, and watched the different classes do their performances. She then sang two nursery rhymes, "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Inky-Dinky Spider". She had a good time, though I gather it was a bit bewildering when trying to puzzle out what the locals are doing without the benefit of translation.

But then, nearly everything in Tokyo is bewildering for that reason.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner