My parents always tell me Tsunami is a bad word. It takes many lives away. We can never predict when it will come. When it comes, we know it is going to kill. I never thought they meant it for real. They weren’t kidding. They mean it. Tsunami is not the scariest thing on Earth. People are scarier. Especially when they are having tsunami.
So, I did not have to think a lot when I was a kid because my parents always distinguished what is good and what is bad. They tell me about some positive words like happy, family; exciting, study. Negative words like scary, drugs; bad, kill… The list goes on and on and on.
This is how they first introduced me to the word Tsunami.
I was born in 2000 in Japan. 2000 is a very lucky number. It means a lot of things. To my parents, it means that I am the new hope of Japan. Before I turned 10, they told me a lot about what happens. People go to work and earn a lot of money. They make a fortune. They sustain their own family lives. If my parents were still here, probably they would be talking about my career path, how I should be a businessman or earn a lot of money. They adopted the homeschoolingmethod because they do not want any bad influences from society. Like drugs, bullying, gambling……They are the elite in Japan, they believe, and no one teaches better than they do.
The first time I heard the term Tsunami was when I turned 9. I was having my dinner. The radio was broadcasting the news of the Samoa earthquake and tsunami. My parents told me about earthquakes and tsunamis. They said, earthquakes and tsunamis are natural disasters. That meant no one will ever take a tsunami. Since it is horrid. That was the first time they introduced me to the word horrid. They said it was nasty. They told me not to say the word easily because it was really bad and it will bring some bad luck to us as well.
I wasn’t sure, by that time, the word they were referring to tsunami or the word nasty. It did not matter anyway.
My little brother was born after I turned 10. We share the same birthday. My parents said it was a coincidence. My dad said, “I am sorry that this little baby is going to steal your day afterward.”
I replied, “It is fine, dad. I do not have to worry about sharing. Because he is our family. And family is supposed to share. He does not need to steal. I am willing to share my birthday with him. I am his big brother.”
Mom and dad looked at me in a way that they were mumbling something to me.
When my little brother turned 1, we made a huge deal of it. My brother was a lucky baby. They always said when you messed up with the first child, the second one can always make up for the mess you created. My little baby now has drawn all the attentiveness from my parents. I didn’t care about this a lot. I was less stressed. I didn’t need to handle my parents’ expectations that much anymore. They shifted their attention to him now. I once thought like this, until the Tsunami hit us hard.
It was the day things got weird. The weather did not look good. It was cloudy and moody as if they were asking for a nap. Which I did. I took a nap 1 hour before my homeschooling session started. When I woke up, my parents were packing stuff. I asked them what was going on. My mom did answer. She walked past me and grabbed the suitcase under my bed. I did not know there was a giant suitcase there.
All this time, I thought my parents would not react much. When the earthquake was happening, they packed intensely. It finally came, the earthquake. We went to the glass-made table. My parents nagged; My little brother called out. Concrete falling off the ceiling hit the ground.
I cried a lot. But I stopped. There was big debris from the wall detached. It landed right on my right leg. I stopped crying when the earthquake stopped, I restored crying.
My parents checked my little brother to see if he was injured or not. Good lord that he was okay. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if anything happened to him. My parents would definitely be living in despair for a long time. They realized something then stared at my legs. They couldn’t see my right leg buried by the heavy concrete block. I couldn’t feel anything from my left leg. To be specific, I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t hear anything. My parents started crying in front of me. I never saw them cry. Not in front of me. Not a chance. Turns out, my parents felt sad and sympathetic about this.
But the good thing didn’t last long. They couldn’t get my leg out of the thing. That’s why my parents decided to go out and see if there was any tool to lift that monstrosity up. Holding my brother for around 5 minutes, I could feel him calming down. I was so intrigued how this little thing could be sleeping.
I know this was so. Because my parents loved him more than me. I held him just a bit tighter. His breathing slowed and he started crying again. Then asleep, content.
Maybe a few minutes later, my parents, rushed back. They did not say anything. They took him over. They did not leave a word for me. “Don’t leave me behind,” I said. My lungs held the air on my words a long time.
My dad did not respond to me. He was holding my mom’s hand and my brother's. My mom screamed sorry many times dashing down the hall. I could hear her echoes a minute straight. The siren blowed “rrrr”. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I knew it must mean something.
I was stuck in the room, “waah”, “lup-dup”, “rrrr”. The ocean waves. Building caving in. People screaming. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”.’ I did not get hugged by my parents, before I got hugged by the ocean. I was stuck. I was cold. I couldn’t shout. This was Tsunami. This is my fate. I close my eyes under it.
“lup-dup”. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”.
“lup-dup”. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”. “lup-dup”.
“lup-dup”.
“lup”52Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VenB8DOxY
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