So today I spent the day with my cousin from Tokyo. The plan: pick up cousin at LAX, lunch in Beverly Hills, dinner in Orange County, wave goodbye as he stays with an old friend in Irvine. Now, I hate driving, but it seemed only fair to show someone Los Angeles before showing him Orange County. Kind of like showing Amsterdam before Auschwitz. So my driving map for the day was Los Angeles to Burbank to LAX to Beverly Hills to Orange County to Los Angeles. Time period: 15 hours.
I need a nap just replaying that.
Anyway, lunch was fun. His English is great, but his accent sometimes baffles me. My Japanese is horrible, but I try using a Japanese accent as I speak English in the hopes it serves as a great median maker -my accent meeting his vocabulary and grammar skills. At some point in the journey, I whine in broken English that traffic is awful. “You see mother?” he asks. Uh, in a few hours, I guess.
“No, mutha, muuuutha.”
I’m shrugging as I ape his words, “Mud?”
“La. Mud. La.”
“Mothra?”
We stare at each other. The construction worker holding a stop sign is having a similar breakdown in communication with some guy in a bulldozer.
“Muuuh-arl-da.”
I gasp. “Ah! I see murder! Road rage!”
“Load Ledge?”
After lunch, we spend the rest of the day with my mother and his friends. They try to speak English for me and my dad, but really, why? Mom can talk to Dad and me anytime and she rarely wants to. Now she can talk to someone she seldom sees in a language she seldom uses. The joy of using her native tongue is creating this audible squeal of delight, which exudes out of my mother’s every pore.
What’s interesting is that I don’t care. My cousin and I share a sense of humor that seems to find language superfluous. He can say something in Japanese and all I need is to gather two words and his body language to see a joke. And we laugh. My mom is fascinated by this. And she sees it in more than my interaction with my cousin. In Japan, I would watch sketch comedy shows and laugh my ass off. Out of a five minute sketch, I likely knew three words. But the costumes and the gender of the characters, the location and the reactions were enough for me to see the American version. Many women I know say the same thing about soap operas in other countries. I’m sure it’s true. I remember one night in Tokyo, I was watching SMAP Bistro and laughing at the banter between two chef/pop star/comedian hunks (Japan so beats us on the “/” careers). Mom was getting out of the bathroom and drying her hair with a stiff hotel towel. She watched for a minute, found the show completely inane, saw me laughing. And I mean knee-slapping laughing. And she just shook her head and walked back into the bathroom. She didn’t get it and she had language on her side.
So anyway, back to my cousin. We went to Korean BBQ. He was joking with us and Mom would keep up as best she could, the “cool” aunt who chuckled at all the stories and smiled politely through the gossip about her so-called wild youth. Whenever my cousin would mention a time my mother openly disobeyed her parents (so big and blatant, it’s family lore), Mom would try to distract me with offers of kimchee and crisply barbequed pork.
I looked around at this group. Family, friends, with a language I know only remedially. My cousin was trying to learn how to say “thank you” in Korean from the waitress. I got even more befuddled. This language is in my DNA. The grammar. The slang. The mannerisms that go with this particular compilation of phonetics. My mother was in her element and thus so pure and so perfect. After 35 years of seeing her always a little off, a little uncomfortable, always second guessing or going against nature. Even what side of the street to drive on or how to think and dream is a quandary of some sort. She says she dreams in Japanese. But sometimes counts in English. This is interesting. I sometimes count in Japanese. But only to ten (as far as I can go). Really, it just happens. Ichi, ni, san, shi, go.
My cousin says America has a smell. As soon as you step off the plane, you smell it. It is not the smell of a thing. It’s the smell of a country. I understand this. Japan has a smell and my cousin brought it with him so that when we hugged, I got a nostalgic whiff of what doesn’t smell like, but makes me think of bamboo flooring. This smell. This aura. This subtle presence. It’s so amazing. It is in our pores. I am Asian. It’s in my pores. I am American and that is in my pores. How fun to know there are two distinct flavors in one’s DNA and in one’s smell, taste, touch, sound.
