Mom & Me Five Archive

    Although it's not unusual for her to be up this late, the reason was unusual. We received the movie Maborosi, yet another Kore-eda Hirokazu film, from our rental company. Despite her enjoyment of After Life, when Maborosi began I thought, Uh, oh. She's not going to like this one. Too dark, too quiet, too subtle. She'll head in for a nap before it's over. I was right about the nap, but wrong about her appreciation of the movie. Later this evening, after her usual before bed rituals, when she asked me what I'd be doing after she retired, I mentioned that I was planning to watch the rest of the movie we started this afternoon.
    "How much is left?" she asked.
    "About an hour."
    "What do we have planned for tomorrow?" I love it when she asks this. Typically our days are so fluid that nothing much is planned, from her perspective, anyway, before the "morning" of her day.
    "Nothing, so far," I said.
    "I think I'll watch it with you."
    "Do you want me to start it over?" I'd paused it at a point early in Yumiko's first day with her second husband.
    "No, but maybe you could rewind it a little."
    I was so surprised at how entranced she was by the film, this evening, that it was a struggle for me to keep up with the film while watching her. I noticed her gently smiling and nodding throughout the film. She was particularly taken with the scenes with children and the funeral procession toward the end of the film. At one point, when an Ancient fisherwoman heads out to catch crabs, she connected it with the opening scene of the movie when Yumiko's grandmother refuses to be dissuaded from walking to her home in order to die. "That's her grandmother," Mom exclaimed.
    "I guess you could say that," I said. I was pleased that she'd been paying such close attention that she noticed the connection.
    Late in the film I paused it and said, "She (Yumiko) reminds me of you. Something about her strength and silence."
    She grinned. "What about the family resemblance," she joked, primping her hair "did you notice that?"
    Actually, there is a strong resemblance in the way Yumiko holds herself when she observes and thinks. I mentioned this.
    "Hmmm..." Mom said. "I'll have to think about that."
    At one point in the film, when Yumiko returns to her previous home to attend her brother's wedding, she explains that her husband has not accompanied her because he is watching his elderly father, who lives with them.
    "I guess they do that, there," she said. "That's good."
    I nodded, realizing that what she was also saying was that she remains aware that people don't do this, as much, in this culture. Made me feel very good that I'm doing this.
    When the term "maborosi" was explained, she said, "I've heard of that." Having been a Navy woman, I'm sure she has.
    At the end, she knew it was the end, which was yet another surprise with this type of film. Generally, when I queue up such subtle films, she's surprised, sometimes unpleasantly so, at the placement of the end. She watched all the credits with me (I always watch all the credits, partially to make sure I don't miss occasional surprises placed into or at the end of the credits), even though they were in Japanese. She commented on the placement of the dots and made an interesting guess that the long lines were hyphens. We discussed the possible meaning of the placement of the short lines of script preceding the long lines.
    I've been wondering, since Mom retired, what it is about these slow, deep, dark, foreign, subtitled movies I insist on watching that has begun to attract her attention. It occurred to me that maybe she's finally decided to stick with them because she knows I love them and is attempting to view a little more of my soul, which is the same reason why I finally decided to focus on the types of movies she normally prefers.
    You wouldn't think a stubbornly sedentary 89 year old woman with Dementia-Lite and a variety of other Ancient ailments would make such an effort, would you? It seems that, no matter how old we become, no matter how our world seems to dwindle, no matter what the conditions of our age do to us, we remain capable of surprising ourselves and those we love if we remain open to our loved ones and they to us.
    More than anything, as this journal continues and develops, I guess it is this to which I hope it bears witness.