Apples Did Fall After All
There’s an image that descends on my mind every summer when the cicadas start singing and the heat haze starts ascending from the asphalt. An image of my mom walking next to my hunched grandmother, supporting her back and guiding her gently as they slowly climb a gentle slope. I remember walking behind them as a little girl, following them from a distance. To where, I don’t quite remember.
That vision enters my brain again as I reach my childhood home. The wooden structure of the old house comes into view and as the musty air of the slightly decaying wooden panels hit me, I hear a small pant from behind grounding me to the present.
“Mom, this bag is too heavy,” Akane whimpers as she drags her overnight bag stuffed with her clothes and toys.
“Did you bring only one stuffed animal? Because I warned you it was going to be heavy otherwise,” I say in my best I-told-you-so voice that I have trained myself to use in the past five years.
She pouts and marches straight into the house, announcing her arrival in ear-splitting volume.
Closing the door behind me, I look around at the spacious emptiness of the entryway; at how less cluttered everything is with fewer objects. Eerily peculiar. Gathering my daughter’s abandoned shoes and putting them next to mine, I follow the bubbly laughter of excitement to the living room, where I find my mom’s wrinkled hand patting my daughter’s shiny hair.
“How you’ve grown so much,” Mom says as she pats her granddaughter rhythmically.
“They grow up so fast,” I add, as I approach them from behind. Mom looks up with surprise and I can feel that the expression that registers on her face mirrors my own. Old.
“Grandma! I also brought you something!” Akane shouts excitedly as she jumps out from under her grandmother’s extensive patting and sprints away to the hallway where she dumped her bag.
Mom’s eyes are shining with pride, and it makes me wish we visited more often. “Sorry, she’s just excited.”
She nods and smiles knowingly.
Silence follows. My eyes travel around the house, looking for somewhere to land on, but I fail to find anything. “Have you been cleaning the house lately? I remember more, how do I put it, stuff in this house.”
“Oh, I figured I didn’t need all those things anymore, living by myself in this massive house and all, I thought I should start sorting things out.” She suddenly locks me with a serious look and continues, “I won’t be around for long, and I thought I should do you a favor by tidying up. You know, so that you don’t have to deal with all this crap.” She turns around and gathers the mail on the dining table.
“Mom, you’re not that old-”
“Oh I know I’m old, and these things should be done sooner than later. Besides, I’ve got nothing better to do, since I’m all retired and-”
“You what?”
“Huh? Oh did I not tell you? I retired from apple farming.”
“But…” A whirlwind of unfinished thoughts goes through my mind, but I somehow manage to ask. “When?”
“Last month.”
“But how-”
“Grandma look! I learned how to make these in preschool!” Akane comes rushing back, pressing origami hearts into her grandma’s arms.
Mom gasps and showers her with the usual this is impressive praises that most adults somehow learn to do, but I can only hear them in the distance. The word retired rings front and center in my brain, shaking me from the inside. I found it impossible to wrap my head around the idea that she was not out in the fields anymore; apples defined who she was. Tending to apples made her Mom.
But even more so, there’s the shock that she didn’t tell me, which is slowly fueling from somewhere deep within me. The piercing lightning of hurt that I could not quite register at the beginning is so much clearer now, and it’s pulsing in my systems, shaking me.
Akane is smiling brightly at Mom, and looking at that makes me feel sentimental. Mom gives her encouragement, making Akane’s face light up even more, which makes Mom’s smile brighter. The beauty of it hits me with regret.
“Akane, why don’t you go grab some origami papers so you can show your Grandma how it’s made?” I say, my voice coming out softer than anticipated. Akane doesn’t seem to mind, and goes fluttering out of the room again.
Mom looks at me quizzically, but I ignore it and take a seat at the dining table.
“Mom, I’m not that busy. You can tell me things anytime, you know that right? I’m aware I haven’t seemed so available recently, I mean, I haven’t come home in… I don’t even know how many years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have time to know what’s going on in your life. You could have-”
“Oh please,” Mom cuts me off. “ My retirement isn’t a big deal. Besides, I’m really proud of you for leaving Aomori to seek a fancy job in Tokyo, and I don’t want to burden your busy city life with some boring stuff from my countryside life.”
“Mom, it is a big deal! It changes your life completely and I need to know that! Although of course, I realize it was my fault for not reaching out often, and-” I catch Akane coming back in the corner of my eyes and I’m forced to stop.
She must sense something is off, because she doesn’t say a word and just sits quietly next to her grandmother. She starts folding.
“Well, it isn’t, because it doesn’t directly concern you.” Mom watches Akane for a while and adds, “I’ll tell you if something important comes up, okay?” Smiling, she watches her silently for a while but she looks up at me suddenly, as if something occurred to her. “Oh, actually there is something I need your approval on.”
My heart starts pounding, but I manage to blurt out, “what is it?”
“I’ve been talking to some service providers about it, but I’m thinking of closing the family grave, and they told me I should discuss this with my family members first to get their confirmation and-”
“Wait. Family grave?”
“Yeah, there’s no one to manage it anymore, right? I can’t really visit as often anymore, I almost fell the other day when I-”
“You almost fell?”
“I mean, I didn’t fall. I said almost. And-”
“Mom, you really need to tell me things! I didn’t know you almost hurt yourself! And what do you mean you want to close the family grave? What will happen to our ancestors?”
“Oh, we just need to move them, maybe to the central temple.”
“But our ancestors made the family grave believing it’ll be there forever!”
Mom shakes her head. “We have to be realistic. I can’t maintain it. You can’t maintain it. It’s the only choice we have. You’d know if you see the state our grave is in right now.”
“But-”
“Actually, do you even know where it is?”
I open my mouth but I fail to respond. The quiet sound of papers being folded echoes through the room. I look down at the table, but of course there is no answer there. I had not known it would come down to this; I was aware of my absence but I’ve never fully understood the consequences.
Her words bring me a wave of shame and guilt. I was clueless and useless. A strong urge to fix it, to do something bubbles up from deep within, giving me enough encouragement to look up at Mom squarely in the eye and speak. “I’m really sorry, Mom.” I take a deep breath, “you’re absolutely right, I know nothing and maybe I don’t even have a say in this.” I take another deep breath and continue, “but, I don’t want to just decide this on the spot. Can you show me first? I want to see it for myself.”
Mom stares at me for a while, but eventually she gives me a nod.
We make our way out the door, Akane following with her origami. We walk for a little while, and come across a gentle slope, where Mom’s steps stop. She makes a face, and I see her hand move to her hips. I silently sidle up next to her and support her, and we start walking slowly side by side. A nostalgic feeling fills me up and something tightens in my chest. There’s something familiar about it, yet something quite not right. I look back and find Akane walking a few steps behind us, watching us closely. In her hands, she is holding a red paper that is not yet a heart. The wind catches it and it falls to the ground. Like an apple.
Cover image by Tacosuke