👱♂️ "Make sure you say thank you!" I was scolded by my father. ~For Father's Day on June 21st~
My father, born in the fifth year of the Taisho era, was a man who survived turbulent times.
In his youth, he went to the battlefields of World War II,
and when he returned as a wounded veteran,
there were vivid gunshot scars on his elbows.
Because of those wounds,
his little finger and ring finger
remained slightly bent.
My daughter,
who is his granddaughter,
still speaks of it nostalgically even now.
"Grandpa in Sasebo,
do you remember how, when we visited from Kumamoto,
he would always show me
his gunshot scars?"
Perhaps for my father,
they were like medals
for surviving the brutal battlefield.
If those bullets had
hit him anywhere else,
I would not exist in this world.
My parents married during the war.
They met for the first time on their wedding day—that was the kind of era it was.
"Almost all the men had gone to war,
so there weren't any left," my mother would recall
with a laugh in her later years.
The two of them were blessed with children, having seven in total.
I was the youngest, and my father was 45 at the time.
However, ever since they lost their firstborn son
at just five years old,
all the children born after were girls.
Every time a new life was born,
my father would apparently blurt out, "Another girl?"—
a terrible thing to say that would be a huge problem today.
My mother held a grudge against those words
for her entire life.
He was that kind of old-fashioned, stubborn,
and slightly sharp-tongued father, but
I think he truly loved us
more than anything.
When my children were small,
my handmade children's clothes were featured
across two pages in a national magazine.
My father immediately went to a bookstore,
bought several copies of the magazine,
and apparently took them to give
not only to his acquaintances,
but even to my childhood friend, Rumi-chan.
Later, I received a message from Rumi-chan saying,
"Tsuyako's dad brought me a magazine too!
He was so incredibly happy!"
I couldn't help but laugh,
thinking, "Dad is so cute."
Also, there was one time my father
came to visit me in Kumamoto.
I took him to Kumamoto Castle as his guide,
but for some reason, my father knew
far more about the castle than I did,
and he passionately explained things like the structure of the "musha-gaeshi" stone walls.
Even though he was my own parent,
I was overwhelmed by his erudition.
He was that kind of father, but
I have one unforgettable memory of just the two of us,
which I cherish more than anything in the world.
One day when I was a junior college student,
on my way home from school,
I stopped by the restaurant (snack bar) my sister ran.
There was my father, as always, silently
cleaning up before opening time.
At the time, my parents had an important daily routine.
After cleaning my sister's shop,
they would take the used hand towels home
on their motorbike (a Cub),
wash them clean, and hang them out to dry.
In the room with the TV where everyone gathered,
ropes were strung from one end to the other,
over and over again.
The pure white towels hanging in rows
looked like "clouds" floating in the room,
or perhaps like "waves of towels"
crashing in layers.
And they would count the number of towels
meticulously.
On the back of a calendar,
in the white space,
my father would neatly draw lines for the whole year,
and every single day, he would write down the number.
This continued for years.
I realized later that
the number of towels
represented how well my sister's shop was doing.
Even without saying it out loud,
as they washed the towels together,
they were quietly watching over
their daughter's hard work.
"Business is slow in February and August."
It was my father who taught me that
through the number of towels.
Now, about that day on my way home from school.
I asked my father, who was taking a break from cleaning,
"Dad, what time is it?"
My father said, "I don't know."
It was an era before mobile phones.
I reached for the white push-button phone on the counter,
and pressed the familiar "117" buttons,
beep-boop-beep.
It was the time signal service.
"At the tone, the time will be X o'clock, X minutes, X seconds... beep, beep, beep, BEEP."
I listened to the mechanical female voice,
confirmed, "Oh, it's X:XX," and hung up the receiver.
At that moment,
my father, who had been cleaning a little way off,
turned around with a sharp voice.
"Make sure you say thank you!"
For a moment, I didn't understand what he meant,
and I just stared blankly.
Thank you? To whom?
…Ah, my father thought
that I had called some woman,
and that she had gone out of her way to tell me the time.
"Dad, this is a machine's voice.
It's not a person."
When I explained it,
I found it so funny that I couldn't help it,
and I sat down on the spot, holding my stomach and laughing.
Seeing me burst into laughter,
my father, who understood the truth of the matter,
smiled sheepishly,
but looked so happy,
with a gentle grin.
My beloved mother—the woman my father loved more deeply than anyone else, more than anything—
passed away before him.
At the memorial service for her first anniversary,
my father met all six of his children, twelve grandchildren,
and relatives who had gathered,
and spoke to each of them with affection.
It was just seven days later.
My father,
as always,
while sitting at the kotatsu,
quietly,
very quietly, breathed his last.
He didn't suffer,
and it was a peaceful, natural passing,
as if he were just taking a nap.
Exactly one year after my mother passed away.
Their death anniversaries
were only one day apart.
My father would have been 84 in nine more days.
That "117" time signal service,
I heard, finished its role with the changing times
and ended a few years ago.
In this day and age,
if you look at your smartphone,
you can know the exact time immediately.
It has become convenient, but
I miss the sound of those push-button phone buttons,
the handwritten lines on the back of the calendar,
and my father's warm scolding voice,
"Make sure you say thank you!"
My father, born in the Taisho era, was clumsy and sharp-tongued,
but he truly possessed an unfathomable love.
Even now, when I happen to
look up at the clock,
deep in my ears,
my father's scolding voice from that day and his gently smiling face
vividly come back to me.
In a world of ever-updating convenience,
only that clumsy kindness
never fades within me.
And when I think of their death anniversaries
lined up just one day apart,
my heart
is filled with an indescribably warm light.
Thank you, Dad.
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