Canned Mandarin Oranges

The first house I lived in had the landlord living on the first floor,
and the second floor was the rental unit.
If you went up the stairs on the far right, there was a gate, a laundry
space, and an entrance in the back.
The apartment had two rooms and a small kitchen.
It had a pit toilet and no bath.
There was a laundry area that looked like a washroom, and the roof
was made of corrugated metal.
I liked the structure because if you opened it, you could get out to the path in front of the second floor, like warping.
The next house I lived in until I was in second grade was near the first
house, and whether by chance or not, this one also
had the landlord living on the first floor and the second floor was the rental unit.
There was an entrance in the back, and it had a bath.
My grandparents' house was closer than it was from the first house.

At that time, my grandparents lived in a nearby one-story rental house
that had a Goemon-buro (traditional iron tub), so our family would go there to bathe,
eat dinner together, and walk home along the night road.
I was scared because I drowned in the Goemon-buro a few times, but
Grandma's cooking was hearty and everything was delicious, so I looked forward to it.
I especially loved the sukiyaki Grandma made. The ohagi I liked was about the size of a kitten,
and one was enough to make me full.
The chirashi-zushi seemed to spring infinitely from the sushi tub no matter how much we ate.
Grandma's cooking was served grandly at relative gatherings, and I also looked forward to seeing my cousins.

In our daily life, while Grandma was making dinner in the kitchen,
I spent time watching Mito Komon and sumo wrestling with Grandpa.
Maybe my mother was busy with childcare because my younger brother had been born.
I remember the time I spent at my grandparents' house.
The obviously evil corrupt officials and the way the salt thrown by the sumo wrestlers blended into the ring and disappeared.
I watched from Grandpa's lap as he experienced joy and sorrow over the outcomes of the sumo matches.

At dinner, Grandpa would enjoy his evening drink, warmed in a teapot shaped like the Bunbuku Chagama tanuki,
and I think my father drank beer.
The shape of the teapot, its face, and its expression—everything about it was dear to me.
I looked for it later, but I haven't been able to reunite with it to this day. It's a pity.
I look for ones that look like it, but it's not that one.
I think it probably went missing during a move.
As a child, I didn't have the innocence or the courage to ask adults to handle such an endless task.
Thinking about it now, maybe that was just the era it was.

Grandma was still kind to me as I spent my days feeling threatened inside because my younger brother was born.
The mixed juice Grandma made for me was a perfect blend of canned mandarin oranges, canned peaches, bananas, milk,
and ice, and it was so delicious that my eyes would sparkle after drinking it.
I also liked the canned mandarin oranges, which were a starting member of the mixed juice, because the design was cute.
The same goes for the canned peaches.
She also made milkshakes and monaka ice cream.
The ice cream was also homemade and refreshing.
There were many monaka wafers in a large tin can.
How did she get them?
I can't ask her anymore. It was an era without the internet.

Rental house No. 1 and Rental house No. 2 were within a few minutes' walk from my grandparents' house.
A distance where the soup wouldn't get cold.
To me at the time, it was the neighborhood.
When we lived in Rental house No. 1, there was a mountain in the back, and I spent my time enjoying nature with my friends.

There were previous tenants in Rental house No. 1, and despite the fact that our family moved in later,
maybe it wasn't good that we didn't greet them properly.
Perhaps in everything, the beginning is essential.

The previous tenants had bodies like simmered pumpkin, many legs, and fangs on their faces.
When surprised, they would pinch the other party as a defensive reaction.
That is my impression if I were the previous tenant.
If you don't squeeze out the poison immediately, the affected area will swell, you'll get a fever, and you'll suffer.
Various insects and creatures coexisted, but the only ones that were poisonous and bit were the centipedes.
Since I was a child, I had no resistance to insects and creatures,
and I had actually spent my time being friendly with them.
Even if I saw centipedes, they would just pass by, and I was never attacked.
No one but my mother was ever bitten.

Time passed, and I never thought that I, as an adult, would be bitten myself and become a hunter.
That is for another time.
The relationship with the centipedes, which were friendly to me at the time, was a daily struggle for my mother,
who saw them as enemies threatening her family.
As a result, perhaps because she was recognized as a hunter, only my mother kept getting bitten, as if they were avenging their comrades.
One time, perhaps because she didn't even have time to fetch the insect tongs,
my mother bravely challenged a centipede with her bare hands.
According to her, she grabbed the head and tail by mistake and was bitten hard, and she looked frustrated.

There was a ritual that the centipede-hunter mother performed after a death battle,
and it was always carried out at the water area where the washing machine was.
The partner for the ritual was the canned mandarin oranges (we enjoyed the contents), which were very popular, highly active, and familiar for their delicious and cute design at Grandma's house, along with oil and matches.
The centipede caught by my mother was put into the canned mandarin orange can, poured with oil, lit with a match, and cremated.

From a little distance away, I felt the smell of the centipede being cremated and saw the back of my mother, who was faintly illuminated.
It had a unique smell.

My mother wanted to protect her family, and the same went for the centipedes.
The battle continued until we moved to the second rental house.
If the centipedes cremated in the canned mandarin orange ritual were to flow in the end credits of a movie,
it would be such a long end credit that it might exceed the main story.

I would realize something along the way.
My mother was repeating death battles as a centipede hunter protecting her family, and I am sure of that.
However, at the same time, she would also reflexively crush creatures that were not supposed to cause any harm with her hands.
In this case, always with her hands.
As if she were reflexively catching a ball thrown at her suddenly.
As an aside, my mother was not athletic, and she would even fall off a tricycle, so it seems her siblings gave up on her,
and she was aware of it herself.

To think that if you flew fluttering near my mother, your life would end in an instant, dominated by darkness.
What was crushed by my mother were moths, winged insects, mosquitoes, flies, etc., that had no faults, no fangs, and no poison.
It seems that wings and size were not the criteria.
As proof, butterflies, dragonflies, and praying mantises were not killed.

If my mother had a past life, was she a creature that reflexively attacked anything that moved in front of it?
I once asked my mother why she crushed a moth in front of me and held it in her palm.
My mother replied that she didn't know herself, but she would catch them when she saw them flying nearby.

I have lived my life trying not to commit useless killing, including what my mother has killed so far.
They won't come back to life, and I am not a good person either.
However, I understand the importance of life.

Thinking about it now, my mother's eyes were sometimes like marbles.
It might have been a side of my mother I didn't know, or a different side.
My mother grew up struggling after her father died of illness when she was young.
She left her mother and siblings, worked while attending night school, and lived in a dormitory during high school.
She was a person who lived a life where patience was daily, and she never seemed to have said anything selfish.

My mother was gentle, kind, not good at cooking or sewing, and she never argued with my father, who was a chauvinist, never said anything selfish, and kept following him.
As an aside, my father at that time loved wearing a loincloth, and I have a memory of watching the loincloth fluttering on the laundry pole from my room.

Perhaps the ideal my mother wanted and reality were too different.
My clumsy mother, who lived by enduring hardships, might have been living by suppressing her feelings.
I remember my maternal grandmother often visiting when my father was not around when I was young.
I think now that maybe they were making up for the time they were apart.
I was happy that Grandma came to visit.

After that, in the spring of my second year of elementary school, my father built the house he had longed for and left the land we were used to.
At the same time, we started living with my grandparents.
My father and grandparents became awkward due to living together.
As a child, both my younger brother and I felt that.
My mother, who was a full-time housewife and stayed at home, also had a worsening relationship with her mother-in-law, and my mother, caught in between, became ill.
My father tried to send my mother back to her brother's house, which was her parents' home, several times.
Of course, he was refused. That's obvious.
Something is wrong.

Now, as her memories gradually fade, my mother sometimes curses my father, whom she could never stand up to.
Listening to my father complain half-jokingly, I can't help but think that after all the things she was told over the years, my mother hasn't said enough.
If my mother forgets the unpleasant memories and acts selfishly toward my father, I don't think she will ever be punished for it.
It wouldn't be a sin for her to forget the bad memories and be demanding of my father.

My mother left home to work, lived in a dormitory, and attended night school before returning.
My older brother ran an auto shop, and when my mother was helping out at the shop with my aunt, who is my younger sister, she caught the eye of my father, who was a regular customer.
My mother apparently thought he was interested in her younger sister, not her.
Fate is a strange thing; although the kanji are different, both sisters ended up marrying men with the same name.
My aunt married a gentle man.

My father and mother married, and my younger brother and I were born.
When I grew up and looked at my parents' wedding photos for the first time in a while, my mother's face in the pictures looked downcast.
She didn't look very happy at all.
Was she forced into it?
Did she actually want to refuse?
I asked my mother that several times.
Each time, she would look at me with her marble-like eyes and give the same answer: 'I was just nervous.'

Now, even that kind of conversation has become difficult.
However, my father calls me saying my mother asked him to, and asks with concern, 'Are you okay, big sister?'
It seems she is worried about me, as I am exhausted from commuting by bicycle in the sweltering heat.
I am worn out both mentally and physically, but I tell her I am fine.
Is it selfish of me to want to remain in my mother's memory until the very end?
My mother was friendly, kind, clumsy, loved flowers, loved music, and loved to eat.
I think about this while looking at the profile of my mother with her marble-like eyes, as we are swayed in the car driven by my father.

I want to live my life without regrets, for my mother's sake as well.
There are many difficult things, but I want to live true to myself.