I was a nine-year-old child living in Kyoto when I was hospitalized for nephritis. In my room for six
patients of the children’s ward, a girl named Ayumi also suffered from
nephritis and was next to my bed. She was so little, probably three or
four years old, that her mother was allowed to stay in the ward on the
makeshift couch beside her bed.
Ayumi’s mother studiously read thick
medical books everyday to study kidney disease for Ayumi’s recovery
while looking after Ayumi. She would ask millions of questions to an
intern nurse and learned from her by taking detailed notes. For Ayumi’s
medication, she went to get wafer papers and would divide a dose of
powdered medicine into a couple of small wrapped doses three times a day
so that Ayumi took it easily.
Next to her bed, I was struggling to
swallow powdered medicine though I was nine, and often coughed up and
blew powder all over my bed. My mother was hardly around. She visited me
barely a few minutes before the visiting time was over and left
immediately. She blamed her dash visit for her busy work as a farmer,
but I doubted she cared. Looking at what Ayumi’s mother was doing for
her, I was stunned by the difference between her mother and mine. Mine
had never been attentive like hers even when I was a small child as far
as I remembered.
The worst part of my hospitalized days was
loneliness and hospital meals. As a nephritis patient, I was banned from
taking in salt. My meals are salt-free and with minimum seasoning. I
felt like eating sponge three times a day. The volume wasn’t enough
either for me who was chubby. Because I persistently complained about
the meals to my mother during the short visit, she brought me potato
chips. Since potato chips were deemed as the biggest taboo for
nephritis, she told me to hide under the bed and move the contents from
its flashy package into a plastic bag. She continued to bring other
salty snacks and I made a bag of my best mix under my bed. I was
strolling about the hallway, carrying the plastic bag of snacks in one
hand, munching in my mouth. In case I passed someone, I stopped munching
and hid the bag behind my back. But one afternoon, Ayumi’s mother
caught me. She asked me to show her the plastic bag. As I did, she said
somewhat sadly, “It contains everything you can’t have.” I ignored her
caution and kept snacking on what my mother brought. My mother enticed
me to hide under my bed and let me eat a can of corned beef with a big
topping of mayonnaise there. As a result, I stayed chubby in the
hospital despite the controlled healthy meals.
One day, a younger
girl who had been annoying all the time next to my bed on the opposite
side of Ayumi enraged me. I was bashing her with a coloring book while
yelling the biggest taboo word in the hospital this time, “Die! Die!
Die!”, with full force. Impatient at my unprincipled behavior, Ayumi’s
mother raised her voice toward me, “That’s enough, Hidemi! Clean up your
act, already!” I thought she was a carping critic because I hadn’t
realized evilness of my mother yet back then and had been such a nasty
child who had totally accepted my mother’s bad influence.
Ayumi’s
father came to visit her on his day off. I was taking powdered medicine
on my bed that I had gotten used to swallowing without problems by then.
He said to me smiling, “You have gotten the knack of it and no longer
choked. Good for you!” I wondered how he had known that as I had rarely
seen him here.
A family of caring. Not that I was familiar with.
Saturday, July 17, 2021
The Insufficient Child
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