Hidemi’s Rambling No.410

Because my grandfather’s sister lived a few steps away from our home, I saw her frequently in our house in my childhood. She always spent time complaining and sighing. Actually, I had never seen her laughing or smiling. She pulled a long face all the time and wept often. In the daytime, the listener of her complaining was my grandmother. But her favorite was my mother who was only available in the evening after she came home from work. Although I had waited for my mother to come home and to have dinner together, my grandfather’s sister would come in when we were about to eat. We had to wait until she was done talking to my mother. To send her away as soon as possible, I used to count loudly standing beside my mother, which wouldn’t work. It was a wonder her sources for complaining never dried up. She whined about almost anything. Mainly she complained about her daughter-in-law. As an old Japanese custom, her son lived with her in her house after he got married. Since her husband had already passed away, her son, her daughter-in-law and she lived together under one roof while the two women didn’t get along well each other. They had constant quarrels that were her chief resources for complaining. She once bought a summer dress for her daughter-in-law as a present, which was bluntly rejected and thrown at her. She ran into our house crying and gave the dress to my mother. She was again crying and rushed into our house one morning when she found her son and her daughter-in-law had run away secretly during the night. She became all alone in her house. She lived by herself and soon passed away. All of us didn’t call her by her name and instead we called her ‘Aba’ as kind of a nickname. There’s no relation between her and a Swedish band Abba…