October 2, 2001
  aah-men

I'm not really in the mood, but I'm going to write anyway.

Y'all are going to be sorry. 'cuz here's the thing.

My grandmother used to cut my hair.

Short.

It's the sort of thing that you remember when you're growing up, if you're the type that: A) remembers anything; and B) grows up. She was my paternal grandmother, which meant that not all her blood was paying its daily tithe to the brain.

My mother's side came from good, hearty peasant stock. Japanese peasants had an alternative view towards genetics, at least by comparison to peasants in any other society throughout history. Japanese peasants actually watched the bloodlines of their animals -- who knows what sorts of animals they had; samurai chickens, maybe -- and noticed that families that mated together, mutated together. Being essentially pragmatic, pragmatism being the official religion of the peon, they put this into practice with their children. This is why you never see Japanese peasants with extra nipples and a mullet, a particularly common American homo bardus type I see quite often out here in Redwood City, California.

This is beside the point, however. The object lesson here is that my mother's side of the family believed in having family trees that forked. My father's side of the family was blue-blooded, which meant that they liked the symmetry of the spoon shape. As a result, the leading characteristic in my father's family was a general inability to figure out how to put corks back into bottles. This led directly to heavy alcohol consumption, and a general cynicism regarding natural fabrics.

During the earlier part of my life, my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother used to trade off making visits to our humble home. At the time, we lived in Seattle off of Rainier Street, near the original Nikko's. My father's idea of babysitting was to take his children with him to Nikko's, where we were sure to get an enthusiastic welcome. He and the original owner/chef/founder of Nikko's were old friends, and they would take turns hurling food and beer at customers while I would jog around the tatami, playing with the owner's son -- Ryotaro, I think his name was -- and chewing on the curly ends of octopus legs. At the age of four, I knew all the words to several Japanese drinking songs and knew the taste of an overripe tentacle.

It was to prevent this sort of deleterious education that my grandmothers came in turn. My maternal grandmother was a gentle woman then, and hasn't changed significantly in all the years I've known her; on the other hand, my paternal grandmother was the type of woman that used to give large dogs and travelling salesmen nightmares. We referred to her as 'Amen-obaachama,' 'obaachama' being the Japanese word for 'grandmother. The 'Amen' was due to her habit of sitting down at my piano -- I had one even then; I was a pampered prodigy -- and pounding out Christian hymns by the hour. The ubiquitous 'IV-V' cadence at the ends of hymns became inextricably entangled with my memories of the woman.

As far as I'm aware, she was never Christian. It was a cosmic joke that she had the largest repertoire of hymns in Japan. She attended church with a fine air of disapproval and enjoyment, the one arising quite naturally from the other.

Her usual first step when arriving was to tell my father to put her suitcases on the floor. Her second, to stare at my head.

"Her hair is too long," she would say, with a steely smile.

My mother would hug my head protectively.

The next few days would be spent in an increasingly nerve-wracking fashion. My grandmother would stalk me through the house with scissors hidden behind her back. Every time she spoke, I could hear the snip-snip of shears through hair; at mealtimes, she would eye my head greedily. From time to time my guard would drop, and I would suddenly find myself alone in a room with her. This was the only time in my life that I would willingly dive for the piano, an unspoken safe zone: as long as I was practicing, I was allowed to keep my hair.

There was no reasoning with the woman. Long hair on a child, she was convinced, would stunt its growth and suck valuable resources from the formation of brains. In my own best interests, I needed to be bald. Every time she came we played this little cat-and-mouse, and every time she would win. A round-headed child with long hair is fearsome enough. Inflicting a round-headed child with hair that ends above the ears is the sort of thing that should only happen in third-world countries, to small dogs with lice that are destined for the pot.

Somewhere around my tenth birthday, both my grandmothers stopped coming to visit. My father, king of the family feud, abruptly decided he was no longer speaking to his mother or his younger sister, and that was that. The last time I saw her, I was thirteen years old, with an unfortunate perm and a tendency to eat pretty much anything. When my father died, my grandmother's mental health instantly started to deteriorate.

It's a terrible thing to outlive your children.

On Friday, my mother called to tell me that Amen-obaachama had died. "She was 94," she said. "Did you know she used to teach the imperial princesses dancing? She was a tennis champion before women were allowed to play tennis. She was there for the creation of the Suzuki Method. She was a remarkable woman, you know. It's too bad you didn't keep in touch with her."

My mother would have been a splendid Catholic priest; guilt is her plaything, and grovels at her feet.

"I should have," I agreed, and instantly started making excuses for myself. "I didn't have time to visit her when I was in Japan. I meant to write a letter...."

"She was always so cheerful, even during the hardest parts of her life," my mother sighed. "She went from old-folks home to old-folks home. Some of them were absolutely terrible."

"She used to cut my hair," I said, mutinously.

"Yes," she agreed.

What followed was one of those silences that they talk about in books, where you start getting introspective and examining the flaws in your personality, and entire conversations start and finish without a single word.

"She did it because she loved you. You were a terrible granddaughter."

"I didn't ask her to cut my hair. I liked it long."

"It's short now. You like it shorter now that you're older."

"Yeah, but not because I think it'll stunt my growth. And am I stupid? Am I?"

"...which could be because she cut your hair when you were younger. And you were never grateful, not once."

"She was evil."

"--But she loved you."

"Dammit."

My religious beliefs -- never mind where they come from -- hold that the spirits of the dead remain on earth for over a month, watching their loved ones, going sight-seeing, doing the things they weren't able to in life. I believe this implicitly.

I've started cleaning up my apartment.

"I meant to write you letters," I told my grandmother's ghost on Saturday, in case she was floating around. "You would have liked the letters. I write good letters."

It might be too late to make amends. Who knows? Maybe she'll give me another chance. If she's anything like my father's meddlesome ghost, she'll be appearing in the occasional dream, stalking me through long corridors with a pair of kitchen shears in hand.

In the great, cosmic balance of things, will that be punishment enough?