Robertson: Here Come's The Rain

Another chaotic morning, and again, I'm just a few minutes late for school. However this Tuesday morning is like no other. Dark charcoal splotches decorate the dreary morning's threatening gray skies. It's not raining yet, but I'm certain the day promises violent storms. The heavy fog is settling so heavy onto the road that the sharp turns and hidden intersections are becoming progressively more dangerous. Considering my excuse for why I was late today, I hope that I gathered all of my belongings. Since school is about fifteen minutes away, I hastily left the house and don't remember my course of action before getting in the car.

Making it to school alive, it's twelve-thirty and not the afternoon I expected it to be. As the principal walked into our class I thought, "Great, another lecture about God knows what." Sure that I was going to survive the next half hour by doodling in my notebook, an unexpected tap on my shoulder ripped my thoughts astray.

I was terrified about why the school security guard is escorting me from class without an explanation. While walking down the deserted hallway, nearing the front office, anxiety is setting in. My palms are getting sweaty, my rapidly beating heart feels like it's in my throat, and my knee caps feel nonexistent. But for what, what is there to be so afraid of?

Turning the corner, I see my dad chatting with the receptionist in the office. He's uncharacteristically picking me up early from school. He said, "Hey sweetie, I'm parked out front." Nothing seems wrong; his smile lovingly looks at me as he puts is comforting monstrous hand on my back. We get into the car and he said, "Honey, something has happened."

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away," she would sing. Every night before we sat down to dinner, a music box sat on the kitchen table, and as she always let me wind it up, the beautifully simple melody would softly play. Our regular meal of calamari boiled in soy sauce, bok choy and seaweed, and the overwhelming tangy smell of pickled cabbage was always accompanied by a necessary bowl of steaming white rice.

The years of aromas of soy, steam, and ethnic ingredients formed a thick, musty smell that embedded itself into the entirety of her house. The smell even adopted her cream-colored Ford Taurus with hunter greet velvet interior. Embroidered handkerchiefs of Mickey and Minnnie Mouse accented the back seats and located in the tape player was a cassette of beautiful foreign words that I sang along to.

Before I knew who I was, everyone in the town knew me because the knew the kindness of her. From the time she thought it was safe for me to go outside, I wore Gucci tee-shirts and became the awe of the town. Strolling me around town every day, she bestowed the upbringing upon me to be the sweetest girl I could imagine being friends with. And while I listened and obeyed, I didn't communicate. So many times, I selfishly would come home from church and not tell her I was there. Memories of such selfish guilt, rushing through my brain, are the ones I wish I could dispose of.

It takes a certain kind of person to leave her home and immigrate to a foreign land. She was from Yokohama, Japan and a beautiful specimen of her heritage. Her petite frame, though strong and stocky, glided as if she constantly wore a kimono and slippers. She had porcelain skin, jet-black curly hair, and an endless smile of thick white teeth. She told me I had her "button nose." Her porcelain skin was decorated with sunspots. "You have a lot of freckles," I said once. She immediately sat my youthful body in front of her and lectured me for twenty minutes about how my beautifully taut bronzed skin would look like hers one day. "Cool," I said. Wrong answer.

She told me everything, taught me anything, and raised me to be the person I am today. My parents weren't available as much during the majority of my upbringing. The ran a restaurant and were in debt with a failing marriage, but I knew non of that. She selflessly blinded me from the bad in the world and instilled everlasting values of optimism. She taught me to speak Japanese and encouraged my wild imagination.

"Dad, what's wrong, what happened?"

"Honey, it's about Mommy-O," he said.

My insides start contracting so tightly that I can't breath as immediate flows of memories fall from my eyes. I don't know if I said bye to her that morning, or much less that I loved her. In such a hurry, not concerned with my grandmother, I just left her at home and expected her to be there when I got back. The pressure inside me is building up so greatly that I'm becoming dizzy. My lips are too swollen to purse together and the physical pain drenches me in water so much that my face looks like I've been rained on.

It seems like my world fell apart today, the day of no sunshine. Never did I think it would happen this way. Too naive to understand what I had, it was too great to be slowly taken away from me that it had to happen immediately. It's been years but the thought of her still wrenches my insides as I long to her her thick accent call me name. "Sahdah," she would say. But what I realized that morning, was that I 'd never hear it again. People told me everything happens for a reason. But what they didn't tell me is why, how, or what I was supposed to learn from it. This though was evident; I never had to tell her I was home again.