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By the May second, we finished cutting the path to our fields in the abandoned area and cultivating the field on the hill.
She has kept saying that she wanted to use the tractor in these fields, but I said "no" because it's dangerous with stumps like in the pic below and with the way narrow. But my mother never gives up on things. She kept saying it enough times for me to give up on convincing her any more.
Like I said, my mom never gives up on things she wants. Just like her bringing my father back to the world so many times, I have to admit that the reason I could earn for what I do now is totally because of this behavior of hers.
I heard it's totally not something unusual these days, but I didn't talk or walk even when I reached 2 years old. The home doctor in the town said to my mom "be prepared, because he will be retarded".
(Picture: We removed the stump by cutting it with an ax. It's difficult because it's on the ground.)
She completely denied to accept the old fashioned statistics which had somewhat majestic power like Shamanism back then.
(Picture: After removing just one stamp. It took us for good 30 minutes to remove just one. We still have 4 or 5 more, and I already regret that I made a promise to her.)
Since then, she laid me down facing up and pushed my feet one after another saying "this is how you walk" every night, and she also read books whenever she had spare time.
Thanks to her, I started to walk and talk, and I became able to somehow communicate with other kids until I realized my language was so fucked up enough to confuse others in the age of 10. I probably had a light speech impediment, so my growth was a little weird indeed.
(Picture: I got tired of chopping the stump in the ground, so we started to cut grasses on the footpaths. The number of the fields she opened up so far is 6, and the picture is of the first one. It's maybe difficult to tell where the footpath is, but we cut it anyways. By the way, we still have another field left untouched, and that is as large as the fields we got so far altogether.)
In addition to my developmental disabilities, my brother used to have atopic dermatitis, and I was allergic to eggs. My brother was healed gradually after he moved from Tokyo to Shimonoseki, but my allergy was so bad that I used to get hives all over my body even with a bit of egg. If we think about it, foods that have eggs in them are so many, so it is unbelievable how she managed avoiding such ingredients. And at this point as well, she never gave up.
(Picture: After cutting the first one, we started to cut the second one which is a little higher in its level. The latter fields other than the first one were not so rough probably because they were used until the end of the total abandonment. My mom recently had lung surgery, and she was forbidden to cut grasses with a cutting machine, so she just cleaned the grasses I cut and left all the other tasks to me.)
She fed me eggs little by little and examined all of my body after the meals, and she increased the amount gradually over ten years.
I remember when I was a student in the U.S. and took the first health examination, there was a query asking "do you have allergy to anything?". I asked the nurse "I was allergic to eggs but it's completely healed by now. Do I have to put it on the report?" and she looked so shocked. I don't know how difficult it is, but it's totally healed. I even eat an raw egg with Natto everyday and have no problem.
(Picture: The second field. The plants on the left are made up one which were combined broccoli and a Chinese plant. My mom thought it would be nice to have yellow flowers all over the place and planted them last winter. I heard the field was filled with bright yellow in the spring this year.)
My mom started to work at hospital as a nurse when I was ten. She graduated a nurses' school which was probably equivalent to a college now (the school changed its name several times, so it's difficult to tell what it was at the time) and she got the license, and then she met my father and quit the job when she bore my brother. But she decided to get a job again, thinking my brother and I would need some money in the future to go colleges.
Once I became able to eat eggs, she taught me how to cook from cooking rolled omelets, and I became capable of cooking descent foods. I used to feed my brother back then, which I think is weird because usually the elder feeds the younger.
(Picture: The second one is vertically long. When the flower flourished, I suppose it was like the Crescent Moon. She is thinking about planting more next year to surprise the island's people.)
When I was eleven, my brother and I got high scores on Intelligence quality test. That was when my teacher back then said to her "it's your responsibility if these kids become bums".
Yeah, indeed I became a bum, but thanks to her having worked since then, my brother could graduate a doctor course and I could take an MBA program. The rude expression the teacher said to her actually worked totally the opposite way, and it worked very well eventually. Oh, by the way, my score on the IQ test was way better than my brother's, I should add that point for my honor.
(Picture: It's the fifth field before cutting. The fifth one faces to the path, so she wants to take the tractor into this one, so that she could improve the efficiency of the farm. The tall grasses are thatch, and they are really hard in their roots and make the cutting difficult. In about half way to the end this time, my mom was thinking if I was going to give up. Yeah, I was almost there, mom.)
After a bit later, she started working at a bigger hospital, and she became the head of nurses in the end there. Although, she really hated the work environment there however she maybe had liked her job itself.
(Picture: The fifth field. Once the grasses are gone, you can finally tell it was a flat field. After opening up these fields, she periodically cut grasses around the fields. A tip to continue cleaning is to work on it little by little.)
Then my mother kept adjusting how and where to work after we found the cancer in our father, and she pretty much concentrated on my father's recovery.
When my father passed away, she was totally exhausted and lost, but we started to upload cooking videos I once used to do because just by calling on the phone we would have had less to talk about with each other.
I made her pay for the PC parts and assembled, then I told her how to take videos on her mobile, we have been keeping to upload videos every week with weekly meetings.
This was the first time for her to use a PC intensively, but for her, it's not tiring to challenge new things like this.
(Picture: She gathered watercress and dropwort after the job. She looks pretty content with the success of planting new seeds in the field.)
She happened to go back to my father's home where she had nobody to talk to, but she was worried that the number of people has been decreasing drastically and nobody took any action for it.
Having heard of her story about that so many times, when I went back home to gather sea urchins in 2017(ish?), I told her "if nobody works on it, you yourself have to do it. People would not try if the outcome is so uncertain" and I succeeded to ignite her motivation who once had nothing but a lot of free time.
My mom started to break through the once abandoned path since the August 2017(ish), and with her friend, she made the path alive by connecting to the other side of the road. She actually cut grasses with the height taller than her which laid for 400 meters.
(Picture: After going back to the house, I ate and took a nap, then I started to make fire with the grasses I cut right after I came home. Gathering grasses on the ground around our house.)
After breaking through the path and the field we have, she started investigating what kind of plants would be good for selling and what sort of them would fit to the soil and its condition now.
She made her mind to plant Soba, which may be the original of the island, and pumpkins and red beans for her experiment.
(Picture: There are lilies naturally grown on the way from our barn to the main road in front of our house. When we burn them, weird smell comes out and they usually are just smoky for so long. On the right bottom corner on the pic, it's the furnace I made from a rice can. It's the second one I made.)
In the winter of 2017, she gathered camellia seeds because it was too cold to do anything else, and she made camellia oil by herself. We tried to sell the oil, but we then found out that we need a license to make and sell cosmetics, so we are thinking how to handle the situation.
(Picture: The first furnace on the main road. I relocated it because my mom wanted to make fire after taking for a walk with her friends to get warm. This time I used this to burn grasses in front of the house.)
Recently, my mom got a dealership at the famous shop around the town. She would be selling stuff like citrus which are naturally grown around the house and other things which require less effort.
For now, I could not go back home right away (2022 addition: I made my decision to come home in 2019), so there's no time to let her live on just her pension. If I go back, I need her to expand the market and to make at least 20 thousand dollar an year. With that much money, we could at least live with the low cost around the region and the house we have. If we can add some other earnings to it, we would be well off in my calculation.
(Picture: On this day right before the so-called Golden week (in Japan, there are so many National holidays thanks to Americans who complained about the hard work of Japanese back in 80's, and we have three days off in a row in May, which can be added up to 5 days off including Saturday and Sunday), my brother wanted to come back home after my niece's stupid ballet lesson, and we had to stay awake until 23:00 on which they would be back. I was thinking not to drink that night because of it, but the best friend of my father gave us a yellowtail, so I waited until 21:00 and made a supper for myself. Usually my mom finishes her supper at around 19:00. I ate watercress just as is in a salad bowl, and my mom made sesame salad with dropwort. The fish tasted far better than I usually eat probably because they know how to kill fish.)
She cut vegetables for me to cook later and fell asleep. I sautéed beef, onion and garlic sprouts with Soba sauce. When I finished half of it, my brother finally made back and ate the rest.
Why the fuck you keep eating my dishes, damn useless bro ! ( ﾟДﾟ)
The mother of his wife also came along without notice, so futons were not enough for all of us. So, I had to sleep aside of my mom.
Her cats kept scouting around her all night, while I was trying not to bother her sleep. The two small feline would save her well while I'm gone. It's relieving.
