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iv.

chapter four.

Back in third grade, there was a little Japanese girl in my class. Her name was Noriko Nakagawa, but we called her Nori for short. She never really spoke much, but it was elementary school, and nobody cared much about the social aspect of things; we all came together as pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle, and that was that. So it wasn’t a big deal that Nori and I often had playdates together, although we didn’t exactly talk much during school. I mean, I had playdates with tons of other kids from my grade. We all did. But those with Nori were always special.

Her dad, born and raised in Mito, Ibaraki, was a lawyer stationed in the States – pretty well-known; he handled international law – and her mom passed her time baking. To be honest, I always liked her mom, from the moment I saw her rush into our classroom on the second day of third grade with Nori’s forgotten bento in her hand. She wasn’t a socialite, wasn’t a soccer mom, wasn’t a tiger mom, for that matter. She was cryptic but nice, and I never got bored at Nori’s. The apartment always smelt of green tea, red beans, chocolate, and strawberries, probably a by-product of the endless supply of snacks Mrs Nakagawa seemed to perpetually have at her disposal. I was always stuffed plump with baumkuchen and monaka during playdates, the former of which is a kind of layered cake, sodden sweet, while the latter of which is a type of wagashi (it was my favorite: picture a thick paste or jam filling sandwiched between two delicately thin crisp wafers made of sweetened sticky-rice).

One time, Nori and I got tired of our usual round of origami-folding during a playdate, so Mrs Nakagawa swooped right in and announced we were going to make downscaled versions of bunraku puppets. We mixed salt, flour, potassium bitartrate (also known as cream of tartar; I just fancied sounding intellectual) and cold water into a pot, heated it up a little, and kept on stirring till it looked like appropriately pliable dough.

“Japanese stick puppets,” she told us, her diction hinged with a heavy accent. “You can make a fox, a cat, a rabbit, a dragon, anything you want.”

“Can I make a person?” I asked.

“Anything you want.”

I remember rolling a blob of dough into a round ball and making indentations and peaks where I thought a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth and ears ought to be.

“Bunraku puppets usually have crazy features,” Nori told me. She was molding her portion of dough into something that resembled a mouse. “Big noses and huge smiles. That sorta thing.”

But I didn’t want my puppet to have exaggerated features. And so when we’d blown them dry extra quick, instead of painting extravagant lips or dramatic eyes, I pencilled in careful expressions, and meticulously finished my creation off with acrylic paint. There were no bulging purple eyes or slanted moustaches or nonsensical, comical grins. My handiwork was simple and easy on the eyes, just the way I wanted. Nevermind that my creation was culturally or traditionally inapt. Nevermind that it didn’t follow the status quo of bunraku puppet-making. I was the creator, and in my eyes, my puppet was perfect.

I wonder if that's what all of us are like, to God.

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There is a lapse between the time you wake up and the time you actually register anything. It’s an impalpable gap in which you lose yourself briefly, before recovering again. When you wake up, your heart rate, circulation and blood flow increase. Your breaths become more rapid and you suck in greater quantities of air. Your brain was never actually ‘resting’ during the night, especially not if you entered REM, so your brain activity doesn’t exactly ‘start up’ again (since it never shut down in the first place), but as your eyes open, you do become more aware of external stimuli – which, of course, is when reality tumbles forward and slaps you right where it matters. Suddenly you remember everything, both good and bad, and depending on your circumstance, you may or may not count your blessings and thank your lucky stars that you’re awake now.