A Stain to Remember April 19, 2026

Kanon
Of course, it feels better when things are clean.
Clothes are better without stains.

And yet, a small mark that would not come out
one day began to feel strangely special to me.

In the chill of a New Zealand autumn, I was introduced to a thin merino shirt.
It looked like a T-shirt, yet it was surprisingly warm, and I wore it almost every day.

I had the role of feeding an eight-month-old baby his meals.
I tried to roll up my sleeves and be careful not to get dirty.
But he was so lively that I often had no such luxury.

Bananas, apples, cucumbers, tiny pieces of meat.
He grabbed them with his hands, mashed them, and ate with great satisfaction.
He threw the spoon.
He leaned his whole body toward me, trying to grab my hand.

No matter how many times I wiped them, his hands quickly became sticky again.
The moment I wiped his face, his fingers touched everything around him.
If he spotted a crumb on the floor, he would try to put it into his mouth.

Inside, I kept thinking, “Please, don’t touch anything,”
and yet I continued to face that small body with all my attention.

One day, while doing the laundry, I noticed it.
There was a stain on the cuff of my merino sleeve that would not come out.

I had no idea what it was.
Oil, fruit, remnants of baby food — I could not tell.
I hand-washed it again and again, trying my best to remove it, but it would not fade.

After a while, I began to think.

This was not a shirt I wore to go somewhere special.
It was something I wore at home, almost like an undergarment.
Then perhaps it was all right for this stain to remain.

Maybe, when this child grows up,
I could show it and say, “These are your fingerprints from when you were eight months old.”
Of course, he will never remember.

When I thought that, the stain changed for me.
It was no longer “a mark that would not come out,”
but “a trace of time.”

Perhaps life holds moments like this.

Something that means nothing to a child
can become irreplaceable to a parent,
and even more precious to a grandparent.

I still keep an old photograph of my son from his student days.
He left it behind when he went abroad and never came back to live at home.
It is only an old photo, yet it clearly holds the air of those days within it.

Days that will never return.
And yet, days that certainly existed here.

Keeping things neat and spotless is important.
But perhaps there is also meaning in what remains
because it could not be made perfectly clean.

The small, stubborn stain on the cuff of my merino sleeve.
To me, it has become
a very large, commemorative stain.

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