私が十八で母に会った時、姉は専門学校に通っていた。そこで一人の友だちに振り回されていると話していた。
母には八歳になる息子が居て、私のことを何のためらいもなさそうに「お姉ちゃん」と呼んだ。
彼には父は居らず、母子家庭として母に育てられていた。育ての父はかつては居たようだが、本当の父親ではなく、弟と私たちは、何だか似たような状況の中で育ってきたようであった。
祖父母が金銭面や生活面の面倒を見ており、母のアパート代から生活費、彼女が通う専門学校に至るまですべてお金を出していた。
弟にいたっては、小学一年生から、国語、算数、理科、社会、英語と五教科の塾とボーイスカウトを学校に通うのとは別にしていた。もちろんそれらすべて祖父母の援助によって成り立っていた。
母は、誰が何をしても他人事のように見ているだけで、何か話しかけられても「あー、うーん。」ぐらいしか言わず、息子がしてはいけないことをしていても特に何も言わず、かといって愛情表現をしているようでもなかった。
かなり年月が経ってから、夜九時頃に弟が塾に出かけようとしていたので、「行ってきますは？」と私が言うと、「え。そんなん言ったことないし、言えなんて言われたことないよ……いってきます。」と言った言葉に彼がどのように育てられて来たのかを垣間見た気がする。
彼は今でも私のことを「姉ちゃん」と呼んでくれていて、アメリカのどこかで頑張っている。
The time I finally met my mother when I was 18 years old, my sister had been at a vocational school. I heard from my sister that she was twisted around her friend’s little finger.
My mother had her son who was eight years old at that time. Her son called me, “One-chan (my sister)” with no hesitation. He hadn’t lived with his father. Though he used to live with his step father, he lived with my mother as a mother-and-child family then. I felt that my younger brother and I had grown up in the similar surroundings. Both didn’t have actual mom or dad, but had step mom or dad instead.
My grandparent assisted my mother financially like payment for her apartment, living, and the school my mother was at. My grandmother took care of my mother’s son who had studied five subjects which were language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and English at cram school after elementary school since he was in the first grade. He was also belonged to the Boy Scouts. My grandfather, of course, assisted them all financially too.
My mother looked like she saw everything like somebody elese’s matters. When somebody talked to her, she was like, “oh..yeah….” She didn’t scold at her son when he did bad things. She also didn’t show him how much she loved him. It’s because I was there though.
After several years, when my younger brother was about to go out for his cram school at nine pm while I had stayed at my mom’s apartment, I asked him, “Why don’t you say ittekimasu (meaning I’m going) to us?” He said, “What? I’ve never said it and forced saying it though…ittekimasu.”
It might shows how my mother and grandparents brought him up.
Still now, he calls me “ne-chan.”
He lives somewhere in America now.
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