GreenTea Generation

8 Flash Fiction

Many people have asked my sousobo the secret to longevity. But I don’t think she’s ever answered. Last month, a blogger from Portland came over to interview her as the oldest woman in the state. Living for over one hundred years generates quite a bit of publicity, I guess. In our town, she is the closest thing we have to a celebrity. There are rumors of erecting a statue of her next year on her 115 th birthday. My sousobo has lived with my family since before I was born. In 1975, she flew from Kyoto to Seattle to live with her orphaned granddaughter—my mother and her closest living relative—who was studying computer science at the University of Washington. My sousobo disapproved of the gaijin—the American—who got my mother pregnant. Once I was born, she didn’t mind him so much.

As a child, I spent hours with her in the garden where she clipped her bonsai and watered the lilies and windflowers. We drank green tea on the front porch, and she rambled in words I only pretended to understand. Now, we can converse with ease; six semesters in Tokyo taught me katakana, hiragana, and verb conjugations. Still, I only half understand.

People often guess the answer to her secret. Perhaps it is her daily walks. These walks were once vigorous, and sometimes I could barely keep up as she dragged me along to the grocery store for fresh vegetables. Now I help her carry one paper bag with a half-pound of rice. Some say that her secret is her full-leaf green tea. She still performs the ceremony once a week for a handful of people who come to visit. My ritual is a daily stop at the coffee shop downtown on my way to the office. Others suppose it must be her good genes, or the amount of raw seafood she consumes, or her optimism. I have my dad’s gray eyes and asthma, prefer black bean burgers to sashimi, and take Zoloft religiously.

The Portland blogger questioned her—using my mom as translator—on what it was like growing up in Kyoto before the war. Japan was at war long before Pearl Harbor. My great-grandfather was a soldier during the invasion of China in 1931. But the reporter didn’t know that. He only pointed to sousobo’s wedding photo and said, “What a handsome man your husband was!” As my mom translated, sousobo looked me straight in the eye and mumbled, “Yakudoshi!” A reminder of the so-called bad luck it means for me to be single at thirty-four. I didn’t stay for the rest of the interview.

This morning, I got an email from the Portland blogger with a link to his article on my sousobo. I scanned the page-and-a-half history lesson and a recipe for nabe. In closing, the reporter shared his final question for my greatgrandmother:

“What is the secret to your longevity?” And without waiting for her granddaughter to translate, she replied: “Kazoku—family.”