My favorite language mistake so far is thinking the word "takidashi" meant “cookout/BBQ/party”. Turns out the correct translation is more like “soup kitchen”. Oops! As you know, last month I got
to join a small team playing concerts in evacuation shelters in Kumamoto after
the big quakes. It was a quick and busy trip that’s still hard to put into words. I wrote this journal entry right after with no intentions to share it with the world, but, as it's the best I have to try to communicate the experience, here it goes:
“I'm still picking white paper fragments off my shirt.
I pulled the load of clothes out of the wash, no longer smelling
of smoke from outdoor grills, no more stains of mud from unloading supplies at
the evacuation center on that rainy morning. Clean. New. Fresh. And covered in
tiny bits of clean white paper. Not a smudge of ink. Not a trace of the hastily
written note "なりた... (Narita)" and a phone number. I wrack my brain for a
memory of those 10 digits, but they're gone. My mind is as bright a white slate
as the paper bits that fall off my jeans and float to the ground like Sakura
petals. A reminder of our fleeting moment of friendship and
connection.
Our team of 5 walked into the hallway of the elementary
school-turned-evacuation-center, arms loaded with thin insulated mats. They
would at least be more comfortable then the single layer of cardboard or tarp
currently serving as beds on hard floors of 2nd grade classrooms. She was right at the top of the
stairs, almost as if she had been waiting just for us. She sighed in grateful
relief when she saw what we carried. Actually she had been about to leave, but
quickly guided me through the maze of staircases and hallways to point out the
areas of greatest need.
She told me her house is OK, so she's not staying here- just
volunteering as she can. Her neighbor's house is marked with a bright red
"don't enter- dangerous" sign, and she wears a hard hat if
she goes outside, afraid one of the aftershocks will send debris or chunks of
wall raining down. Her family is all fine. She tells me her daughter lives in Tokyo,
and her grandson has started university. Out of the worry and hurry comes a
smile, unique to proud grandparents everywhere.
We stop to chat with 2 young girls, sitting on a table with legs
swinging, and I hope that in their memory this will be a fun camp-out, where
school was cancelled and they got to have sleepovers with friends for 2 whole
weeks. They eagerly chime in as Narita tells me what a wonderful music teacher
this school has, who serenades the students with music during lunch time.
"Music is wonderful, isn't it?" Actually, it so happens our team is musicians, and under the mats our van is packed with a violin, keyboard, and
portable pipe organ (that's right!). Maybe we could play a concert during lunch
time here?
She arranged it with the shelter leader, and an hour later the
gym was a concert hall, the pop-tents prime box seats, and I silently prayed
over the room as rhythms and melodies of Bach and Vivaldi gushed to fill the
empty hall, fill in the unspoken fears of "where will we go next",
fill in the cracks of stress on worried faces.
After talking with our precious audience for an hour I looked
for another glimpse of Narita-san, who herself put into words my feeling that
we were somehow instantly old friends. We exchanged phone numbers, and I told
her to call me if she ever came up to Tokyo.
I wonder if she will. I wonder if my phone number is still there
in her folder. I pray that even if our relationship is as over and gone as
Sakura season, maybe it made as much an impact on her as it had on me. Maybe
like the cherry blossoms our encounter will be all the more precious for its
brevity. Maybe she'll think back and remember those Christians who floated by
with a glimmer of Christ's light and love flowing from black and white keys and
vibrating bow strings.”
