Paying Respects and Construction Bills

These days it seems like my posts are getting to be fewer and further between. I have to wonder whether it is due to a lack of inspiration, too much time spent reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, too many matters of everyday life on my mind, end of the school year blues, spring fever, or a combination of the above. My musical composition seems to be suffering a similar fate; the Telecaster my wife gave me for my birthday is still sitting on its stand, inert and forlorn. Actually, there is no lack of ideas; I have things running through my mind all the time. It’s just that most of them seem too trite or bland to bother with, and the rest are only slightly better, making it all seem hardly worth the effort.

Maybe I’m trying to set my standards too high. In the past I’ve often had my biggest musical or literary successes when I said “screw perfect” and just went with whatever came to mind. Perhaps the moral of this story is, “Don’t try so damned hard,” but I have yet to learn my lesson.

Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, called shunbun no hi (春分の日) in Japanese. It’s one of the occasions of the year when the family goes to the ancestors’ graves to clean them and leave flowers and incense. Actually, the number of graves we have to attend to is small. It used to be MUCH greater, but not long after I got married some of my mother-in-law’s relatives got together and, without telling anyone else, decided to remodel the gravesite into a very fancy one. Essentially, they constructed a high-class clan memorial…but only for the patriarchal line (i.e. the line of first-born sons and their families). Several small, solitary graves of ancestors with no heirs were simply covered over and forgotten. Room was made nearby to accommodate most of the other relatives, but alas, (or should I say “conveniently”) there was no space left for our branch. That meant the graves of my wife’s three deceased maternal grandparents (my mother-in-law’s birth father and both her adoptive parents, who were related…long story…) had to be relocated to a new site further down the hill. I shouldn’t complain too much; there are fewer graves to tend and fewer steps to climb to get to them. However, to this day I still seriously wonder whether I was the reason it happened, since it meant my mother-in-law’s line was more or less kicked out of the clan soon after I entered it.

Our family graves are unique for another reason. My mother-in-law’s birth father and adoptive mother were both cremated, as usual. There are only urns in the little vaults beneath their stones. However, my wife’s beloved grandfather, my mother-in-law’s adoptive father, was buried directly rather than cremated. Since the burial plots are really shallow, there is a very noticeable mound over the remains. That grandfather was apparently the old man I saw when we first brought our baby daughter home from the hospital (see "Chapter Five" in this post). Not only that, but when we neglected to tend the family graves on the Vernal Equinox two years later, our household suffered a rash of strange malfunctions (my computer, my studio equipment, the TV, the video player, the washing machine, and the refrigerator) which all suddenly corrected themselves when we made a quick visit to the graveyard. Needless to say, my wife and I always give that mound extra special attention!

Speaking of which, I hope our visit this time was sufficient to keep the grandparents happy till the Bon festival in August. Now we’re doing our best to keep certain living relatives happy, specifically the two uncles that are still working on our house. The construction is proceeding nicely (one might say TOO nicely…since Uncle Shigeru the carpenter and his high standards keep leading us to decide on ever more expensive additions to the list) though not quite as quickly as I’d hoped (which is probably a good thing, actually, though pretty damned inconvenient when you’re trying to live in a half-built house). When my wife and I aren’t at work we do our best to help out. For the most part that means my wife provides tea breaks and meals, and I carry and clean things. Anything to help keep it all running smoothly…and quickly.

Besides, I’m getting lots of exercise.