Chapter One: “The Clod of Earth Awaits the Snow” — Part Eleven

When I got home and was putting the shopping away in the kitchen, my daughter appeared to get some tea.
“Oh, Chinese cabbage!”
“Is there really that much to get excited about?”
“Sorry, I just can’t help myself when I see Chinese cabbage.”
I felt the strength of her father’s blood in her at the strangest moments. She opened the fridge and helped herself to a generous pour of barley tea.
“Hmm.”
She turned to leave, then suddenly spun around.
“Mum, you’ve eaten something.”
I had the sensation of a transparent drop of water passing over an eyelid about to tremble.
“Something sweet. I can smell it.”
“Our dog is out at the moment, funny enough.”
Another one with a sharp nose had appeared. She pushed her face close to my chest and sniffed.
“Maron the Second, settle down.”
“This is… what kind of thing. Not a biscuit. Hmm… pudding?”
Had this child been put through police dog training at school. I gave in and told her.
“A little pudding soft serve.”
“Oh, the one on the main road? Lucky.”
“I was passing by and felt like it, somehow.”
For some reason I hid the fact that I’d eaten it with her friend. Well, I told myself I was leaving it out because saying so would invite why, and dealing with that felt like a lot of effort, but it sat uncomfortably, like keeping a secret. If Kai mentioned it after the weekend… that would be a nuisance, I thought, and felt faintly weary at the prospect.
“Save that kind of mood for when I’m around.”
“Strangely, the timing never seems to work out… how about we go out for lunch instead? Make up for it.”
It felt odd to have treated my daughter’s friend and given my daughter nothing, and I made the suggestion partly to resolve that vague discomfort. My daughter took it at face value and brightened.
“What do you want? Decide by the time I’ve finished putting things away. Nothing too expensive.”
“Hmm, I’m in the mood for premium sirloin beef katsu today.”
“Udon.”
“I wanted you to still be deciding by the time you finished.”
I put the peeled prawns in the freezer and checked the clock, udon it was, but.
There was a well-known place not far away, but well-known in a tourist area was not a light thing to be. Queuing ten-odd minutes before opening was standard, and on a weekend more so. The clock already showed the opening time had passed.
“Let’s give up on udon.”
“I’d already started boiling it in my head.”
“Chinese food?”
“XO slay!”
Apparently that meant yes. Understanding my daughter’s more informal vocabulary always made me tilt my head at how I understood it. There was nothing in the dictionary I had built over my life that covered these expressions. If my daughter’s company had added pages to my dictionary of life, that was a happy thing.
And so we left the house together. Back out to the main road, heading toward the shopping street.
We went around behind the cake shop, past the greengrocer. I glanced at the shopfront sign half-hidden by plants and thought, I hope it’s all right today, as we went in. It was a small place, and at lunch the bookings often filled up entirely.
Today there were still seats, and we were shown to a table at the back. The lunch menu ran to three daily-changing sets. The price varied slightly by main, and I chose the salt-fried squid while my daughter chose the chilli prawns. The tea that came with the order smelled of jasmine. Piping hot, but the moment that scent reached me it cleared something in my chest.
While we waited, I looked across at my daughter and found my eyes softening on their own.
“Was it bad that I ordered the chilli prawns, the most expensive lunch?”
“It was.”
I let my shoulders shake at my daughter’s exaggeratedly dropped jaw, then.
“I was just thinking how much you’ve grown.”
On an ordinary day she still existed in my mind as she was at four or five, running to me across the floor, but looking properly now, fourteen was already nearly halfway to an adult. The child’s face was cracking, and something more mature was beginning to show through from inside. Holding that image alongside the small daughter who used to launch herself at me with her whole body, something that wasn’t quite a sigh spilled out and emptied my lungs.
“No wonder I’m getting older.”
It felt like gently patting my own shoulder, with forty just ahead of me. There was a faint resignation to it, a sigh, a deep and settled sense of reality. Not joy or anything that welled up, but the weight of the years I had walked pressing into my body. Closer to a sense of accomplishment, perhaps.
I wasn’t even at that age yet, and already I wanted to retire quietly into old age.
“Mum, my friend was saying you’re incredibly beautiful.”
“…How lovely.”
I let the phrase I’d heard somewhere before wash past without letting it make waves inside me.
“I always think you seem so young too.”
“Thank you. Do you want pudding soft serve on the way home?”
“So young I often think you must be in my year at school!”
“Oh, be quiet.”
The easy conversation with my daughter was pleasant in the drowsy afternoon light.
The main dishes arrived before long, along with soup and rice, their mingled smells rousing my appetite.
“Shall we swap a little, squid for prawn?”
“Go on then.”
We spooned a little of each onto each other’s plates, and as I watched that uncomplicated exchange, I found myself thinking that Kai would probably put vegetables on my plate with a straight face while claiming to be giving me prawn.