By Anna Kunnecke

    It will be Girl's Day soon, or The Festival of Princesses.  Koto music plinks through every department store, and sandwiched between holidays requiring the purchase of sugary goods we get one that involves a set of traditional ohimesama dolls that ring in at four figures.  (And still plenty of sugar: diamond-shaped rice cakes, arare puffed rice, and sugar stars in pink, green, yellow, and white.)  But it's a sweet day, when girls are honored and made much of, and there is merriment and a great excess of pink. 
    Now in general, I'm not a fan of the pink.  I resent that myself and my girlchild are habitually "hosed down in pepto-bismol," to quote from Steel Magnolias, and the branding aspect is crass and, more urgently, ugly.  I resent the mind-meld that the prettified Princesses exert over our girls.  (How about these perky woodland creatures?  No, she wants the sparkly lady in the pink dress.)  I don't mind the ball-gowns.  I mind the vacant eyes and the fluttering eyelashes.  I definitely mind that in their own movies they sit prettily, pouting, passive and helpless, until some strong savior arrives.  I mind that there is instant love, and a quick marriage, and I mind how the story always shamelessly ends there, because it's hard to write a good second installment about a teenager who runs off with the first beefcake to make her heart go pitter-pat.  The makers of the pink rot have recently made some attempts to make the stories slightly less patronizing, but as the mother of a smart and feisty girl, this stuff sticks in my craw.  
    So I am watching Girl's Day here with great interest.  Maybe it will be a subversive symbol of the power of women; after all, that's how they do it here.  No out-and-out revolt, just a firm and gentle chokehold.  But here is the thing.  Every display of Princess dolls comes as a matched set.  You don't get a Princess without a Prince.  No matter how many tiers you add (the full set sits on a small staircase) of noblemen and ladies-in-waiting and musicians and whatnot, you always come out even on the top.  Now this could be lovely, see, a nice balance, yin and yang.  There is only one problem.  That princess perched there, swathed in her hundred layers of kimono, couldn't vote.  She couldn't hold property, or choose her husband, or pass anything on to her children.  Recent fictional imaginings of what it might be like to be an actual Princess have included depression, melancholia, catatonia, and suicidal longings.  They're fiction, but they're pulled straight from the tabloids.  This is what we're glorifying for our daughters?  No thank you. 
    When I was in a fit of fury about the pink passive princesses, a wise and seasoned mother told me not to worry.  She predicted: "The princesses will pass through your house like dysentery."  I trust that she is correct.  And in the meantime, we're countering the pink with plenty of red, purple, green and gold--regal colors all.

by Anna Kunnecke

As a mother, my shoe collection has dwindled, both in number and in style points.  I am down to four pairs of heels now, and two of them are just incarnations of the same walkable pump--one pair in red suede, one in passable alligator.  I used to have stacks of shoes, in all the really beautiful colors: emerald green, peacock blue, gold, purple, pink, scarlet.  I rarely bothered with black or brown; instead, my shoes were my finery, my plumage.  They made me tall and graceful, and when people raised their eyebrows at the towering spires of the heels, I used to reply tartly that they were actually quite practical: they paid for themselves, see, in champagne and taxi rides.  But the truth was, I rarely accepted a free ride anywhere, and only a few thousand free drinks, tops, and my feet usually hurt by the end of the day. 

Then suddenly I had a baby to carry around, first in my belly and then, less gracefully, in a stroller.  I see shiny mamas soaring their enormous Swedish strollers through the wide Omotesando boulevards or jogging through Arisugawa park with bicycle strollers, but that was never a possibility for me.  Our train station has neither elevator nor escalator, so I was the only available engine available to hoist the perambulator up the stairs with its precious cargo.  My shoes reflected this sad change of affairs.  My heels sat neglected for a while, then were swept out in a feng shui attempt to peace with this new stage of life.  I bought some flats, but my heart wasn't in it.  I got some awesome sneakers, but the truth is that I don't like sneakers. 

The strange thing about the gigantic life-changing events in your life is that they sneak up on you and then smack you in the face.  For American women it might be the moment they sign for the dreaded 'mom van,' but for me it was the moment I stared into my genkan shoe cabinet and said in horror, 'Oh my god.  I've got mom shoes in there.' 

It's been hard to learn to walk flat-footed through the world.  Stilettos lend themselves to graceful flourishes and bold strides.  They call them fuck-me-shoes for a reason, but they're also called, appropriately, shit-kickers.  I never felt more feminine or more powerful than I did in heels.  I might not be able to run, but I could do all sorts of damage.  I miss the leverage, the height, the attitude. 

Now my baby is bigger, and though heavier to carry, she can move though the world on her own steam most of the time.  It's thrilling.  I can sense my old loftiness drifting back; I can feel myself going tippy-toed in anticipation.  I love the earthiness of motherhood as it manifests in my daughter, the way our bodies were entwined, the way the umbilical cord stretches further and further.  But feet firmly planted on the ground, grounded, down-to-earth--none of this appeals to me.  For a little longer I will clomp steadily, I will step carefully, pad meekly along.  I will chase, dance, throw my girl in the air and twirl her around.  But I can't wait to be a little closer to the sky myself, to walk a few inches off the ground again, to travel by air, by red carpet and, let's face it, by taxi. 

 

by Anna Kunnecke

This is how they separate the sheep from the goats, the good mothers from the wanton wenches: school supplies. 

For preschool my daughter needs bags: a bevy of bags, so very many bags, a whole flock of bags.  Drawstring bags, cup bags, laundry bags, shoe bags.  I must acknowledge that it's not as bad as the old days, when my mother had to make ALL of my school things to spec--from handwritten Japanese instructions, naturally--bookbag, fork and chopstick case, lunchbox wrap with complicated ties and Velcro... it was awful.  No, I am very lucky because now, see, I can buy that all ready-made. 

However.

You pay for that, and not just in money.  You have to broadcast your inferior status as a mother, because the ready-made bags only come in two colors: electric blue or barmaid fuschia.  Needless to say they are all festooned with manic crawling characters so loathsomely cute that they make me want to brush my teeth with gravel.  Also needless to say, my daughter adores them.  She wants the bunny-kitty with pink hearts for eyes and little purple stars for brains, the ones with bouncy purple pigtails and fluffy salmon clouds.  They make my eyes hurt.  They make my teeth hurt.  Oh gravel, purge me of the loathsome sweetness. 

If, however, I were the kind of mother who were willing to make bags with my own two hands, in other words if I were someone who really loved my child as a mother should, my fabric choices would widen.  Now they would include sweet tintype trains, twining strawberries, and crisp blue gingham dotted with ladybugs.  So lovely were these fabrics that I had a brief identity crisis right there in the fabric aisle. 

I am bad at sewing, I hate it, and it has proven to be a sucking vortex of time, money, and dignity.  This is because the finished product usually requires much weeping and many extra trips for new materials to replace the ruined ones.  But there on the precipice, torn between the tasteful bolts of respectability and the public declaration of garish shortcoming, I waffled. 

Not for long.  Fate saved me: I asked the child's opinion on the ladybugs.  "Not blue, pink," she announced, pulling out of the rack of lovely fabrics the only sour note, a bright fluorescent pink.  Thank heavens.  That snapped me out of my sewing insanity immediately.  She gets a blue bag, the only plain one in the store, because I am mean beyond words.  The absence of cartoon characters leads me to believe that it is not actually intended for children, but for a specific mysterious purpose, perhaps storing one's dentures and hearing aid, or toting cans to recycling.  I don't know what that purpose is, but her teachers will, and they will read its coded message and look at me with pity and understanding, silently acknowledging my acceptance of my second-rate mother-status. 

Oh well.  If my daughter doesn't like it, she can sew her own damn bag.  I may be a charlatan wench, but I'm excellent at childproofing.  Good luck finding the needles, kid. 

by Anna Kunnecke

     I have been reading about the devastation in Haiti, and it's so huge that I can't even wrap my mind around it.  I tend to enter into understanding through the chink of my own experience, so my mind has been turning again and again to 1995, when I was a senior in high school and a massive earthquake hit Kobe, Japan.
     While Haiti feels impossibly far away, Kobe was maddeningly close to Tokyo, and yet we were similarly helpless.  TV reports were filled with stories of relief workers stymied by crumpled roads.  We could see footage of people lined up for food, but there was no way of getting it there.  One salaryman took the day off work to make hundreds of onigiri, the flavored rice balls that are a nourishing, transportable meal.  I don't know if he ever got them to the people who were really hungry.
      Months after the earthquake, the city was still in crisis, and it came about that my high school class traveled by bus to help with ongoing relief efforts.  30 seventeen-year-old foreigners are nobody's dream team, but we were eager to help...if also eager for an adventure.  We sobered up pretty quickly as we saw collapsed highways and buildings with an entire wall sheared off.  We passed intimate spaces pried open to the world: tables set with dishes, beds that people were still sleeping in, a bookshelf stuffed with comics now stained by rain and soot.  We performed the most menial of tasks--shoveled ditches, trundled around relief packets, chopped endless pounds of potatoes and carrots for the cauldrons of stew that were cooked and served every day.  Such meager help.  What I still feel today is the shame of the old dignified ladies who sidled up to me and asked for packets of tissues and clean underwear.  
     That trip surely helped us students more than it did the people we went to serve.  This is the irony of going to a place to 'help'--it would have been most effective, in terms of efficiency, to take the money it took to transport and feed all thirty of us and our chaperones and simply donate it to the city of Kobe.  But because we went there young and open, we were entangled in the reality of the ruined city in a way that was irreplaceable.  'Earthquake' will forever mean to me something more visceral, more human, and more sad than any story I've ever seen on a screen.  So a part of me is awake as I think about Haiti.  I'll send money to relief organizations, because I don't know how else to help.  But I will also send up prayers, though I am not a religious person.  I mourn with them.  I don't believe this is self-indulgent.  I am not the only person who feels a personal chord vibrate to the tragedy of Haiti, and it's that vibration, that empathy, that moves us to step outside our comfort zone and try to be useful wherever we are.  

by Anna Kunnecke

    We have a tradition in my family that on Christmas morning, each stocking-hung-with-care will contain a new ornament.  So over the years we've accumulated quite a collection.  Mine are all angels, my brother's are toys, and my sister's are animals.  I've continued the tradition with my daughter: she is now the proud owner of three snowmen ornaments, and she's stuck with the snowmen motif whether she likes it or not.  We're the tiniest bit sentimental about our ornaments.  Each one has a story: That's the one you chewed the wings off of!--or, Oh look, this is the rocking horse I always tried to steal from you!  It's very touching. 
    This year when three generations of the Kunnecke household gathered together to trim the tree, there was the usual gushing and reminiscing.  But an actual reverence came over us as I pulled out a pathetic, battered little plastic boot.  It was blue, with dirty netting that had once bulged with candy.  It's a relic from the first Christmas my family ever spent in Japan, lo these (achoo!) years ago. 
    My mother told us how she searched Yokohama high and low for Christmas-y things to fill our stockings and adorn our tree.  It's hard to believe now that Japan decks its halls, streets, and stores with such Yuletide abandon, but back then there was no Christmas here.  It was still a foreign tradition, and not celebrated by most Japanese people.  Sure, a chain of chicken stores dressed its mascot in a Santa Claus outfit, and a few people bought whipped-cream-and-strawberry Christmas Cakes on Christmas Eve, but that was it.  So my mother, my candy-hating, raw-honey-advocating, red-and-green-are-the-only-Christmas-colors purist mother, was faced with a dilemma.  She could discontinue the ornament tradition, or she could purchase for us little plastic boots in garish colors filled with teeth-rot.  You already know how the story ends; we have the blue plastic boot dangling on the family tree to prove it. 
    If you know my tribe, it's no surprise that tradition trumped nutrition.  Traditions are taken very seriously in our crowd.  You do something once, and boom! it's a tradition.  My theory is that we appointed ourselves impromptu-tradition-creators-extraordinaire because of all those years we celebrated holidays in a vacuum.  There were no decorations on the streets, no Christmas trees, no carols playing in department stores, no candy canes, no turkeys or hams in the supermarkets.  No one exchanged presents; all our friends got envelopes of money (otoshidama) at New Year's, while we got piles of wrapped packages under the tree.  It was lonely, but it pushed us to be creative.  We ended up with such beauties as "The Traditional Trimming-Of-The-Tree Chocolate," and "The Traditional Sleeping By The Tree The First Night It's Up," and the mortifying "Singing Carols At The Train Station" that my parents insisted on and we miserably complied with. 
    This year Tokyo was glittering, blinking, merry with frost and holly.  It was festive, to be sure.  It made shopping and decorating simpler.  But nothing trumped the Christmas cachet of a little battered boot full to the brim with a mother's tenacity.