When I was nine years old, I suffered from a kidney disease called
nephritis. I skipped school and stayed in bed at home for a week as I
felt sick and had a fever every day. It had gotten so worse that I
vomited blood one night and passed out. My mother found it next morning
and called in a neighbor who worked as a nurse. She urged my mother to
take me to the local clinic which doctor in turn urged her to get me
examined at the hospital. As a result, I was hospitalized for nephritis.
As
it was when I lived in a small village of Kyoto, Japan, no one in my
family knew what nephritis was. My mother rummaged out a supplement of a
homemaking magazine that featured medical issues. It had charts of
disease that showed a result according to symptoms by following the
arrows to correspond applicable symptoms. I chose the arrows of my
symptoms and ended up the result of ‘death’. No matter how many times
and how many different patterns I tried, the bottom of the chart
concluded with a word ‘death’. “Does it mean I’ll die of this disease in
any case?” My mother and I asked the same question to each other and
closed the booklet.
My hospitalized days in a shared room of six
patients at the children’s ward began. As a nephritis patient, I didn’t
have freedom of flushing the toilet. Urine had to be kept in a glass jar
each time to be examined. Its amount and color told a condition of a
patient. Other patients’ jars were put on the shelves along with mine.
Compared to others’, mine was less and darker. I was afraid if my
condition was so bad. Because I didn’t want to admit it and didn’t want
doctors and nurses to find it either, I tried to cheat. Into a one-time
jar, I urinated twice so that at least my amount seemed normal. It had
escalated gradually and I urinated the whole day into one jar.
Ironically, the abnormally large amount of urine drew an alarming
attention of a nurse who thought my illness had taken an inexplicable
turn for the worse. It worked directly opposite to what I had intended
and I confessed my cheating helter-skelter.
My six-patient room
wasn’t usually lonesome as we were kids and some of their parents were
allowed to stay with them on the couches next to their beds. But some
got permission to go home for the night provisionally, some got well and
left the hospital, some got worse and moved to a single room, all of
which coincided at the same time and the room was almost empty one
night. A girl whose bed was on the opposite side of mine and I were only
patients in the room. After the lights-out time, she asked in the
darkness if I was still awake. As I answered yes, she started telling me
a story that she made. I thought she felt lonely and couldn’t sleep
because the room was too quiet that night with just two of us. Her story
was about two rabbits. They seeded, watered and grew carrots at each
section in the field. The night before the harvest, one of the two
rabbits sneaked in the field and pulled out all the carrots from the
other rabbit’s section. He ate them all and put leaves back on each hole
to cover it. Next morning, two rabbits came up to the field and started
to harvest their carrots on their each section. The other rabbit, who
knew nothing about the night before, was excited to reap his carrots
since he had been looking forward to this day for long. But every time
he pulled out his carrot, there was nothing beyond the leaves. He was
puzzled and sang, “Nothing but leaves my carrot gives!” While his friend
rabbit was pulling out a ripe carrot one after another next to his
section, he pulled out only leaves out of a hole repeatedly and sang
each time, “Nothing but leaves my carrot gives!” I dozed off and woke up
by the girl’s voice of “Hidemi, are you listening?” a few times during
the story. Unfortunately, my patience didn’t last until the end. I had
been completely asleep at that part of the story and didn’t get the
ending. With hindsight, her story may not be her original but something
she read or heard since it ‘s too good for a story that a small child
makes. Either way, I still remember the story for some reason. When my
song didn’t sell at all although I had spent many years to complete it, I
heard “Nothing but leaves my carrot gives!” from somewhere.
One day,
we had a new comer in the six-patient room. Although she was a junior
high school student and wasn’t supposed to be in the children’s ward,
she was sent here because the women’s ward was full. She was unhappy to
be confined with kids and complained to her mother and the nurses. She
looked a grown-up to me and I liked her instantly. I went to her bed to
talk to her and tried to console her. I had been stuck to her bedside
every day since. She often told me not to make her laugh because her
wound from an appendix operation hurt. She laughed at my talks anyway.
When she left the hospital, she gave me a gift. It was a small porcelain
doll who was wearing a white bouffant skirt beneath which was a bell.
On the skirt, there was a printed inscription saying, “I wish for your
happiness.” I had put her on the shelves in my room long after I left
the hospital, until I grew up and left home.
I think those hospital
days have influenced me immensely. I had been constantly aware of death
in those days. I got well after all but I had never felt death so close
to me in my life. As it’s said that people don’t live life unless they
understand death, that experience has driven me to think things based on
the idea that I eventually die, and therefore to do what I want for my
life. Even if my carrot gives nothing but leaves.
Sunday, June 20, 2021
Nothing But Leaves My Carrot Gives hr643
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