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Girl’s Day (Hina Matsuri) and my sister

hina matsuri

We used to celebrate the Japanese observation of Girl’s Day (Hina Matsuri) at home by putting up an old wooden doll display and eating special omanju (rice cakes).   My mother treated this day with such delicacy, and we were never to jump around the doll display or behave in our usual rambunctious manner that might cause the dolls to topple.  My sister and I were seasoned at house destruction, setting crayons to wall covering with ease or sliding down three long flights of stairs in our brownstone flat while riding a child’s bathtub, ending our trip by crashing into the front door.

My mother always had a difficult time taming my sister and I so that we might become proper young girls.  I always followed my sister’s lead, and she was a ball of never ending energy.  Lisa was smart as a whip, ate faster than I did, got blamed for everything and challenged her Catholic school teachers by tackling forbidden subjects such as Satanism.  This made the nuns uncomfortable, and my mother would be summoned to our school to sit through uncomfortable parent/teacher sessions that she could barely comprehend with her limited grasp of English.

I fondly recall Lisa’s First Communion at St. Francis Xavier, the companion church to the old Morning Star School in San Francisco.  Our Catholic grammar school was pre-dominantly Japanese American and non-Catholic, but the student body was invited to attend this ceremony.  Lisa’s short white communion dress and veil stood apart from her other non-Catholic classmates who were dressed in kimonos, and her class was summoned to take a photograph of the event.  As each six or seven-year-old student, male and female, calmly stood in a row on the church stairs put their hands together in prayer, the photographer took a short pause before shouting, “LITTLE GIRL…WOULD YOU PLEASE TAKE YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR NOSE?”

My sister’s version of the prayer pose was to raise her hands high enough so that two fingers would lodge up her nose.  The photographer was quick to zero in on my Lisa’s pose and my sister’s teacher, Sister Bridget, was quick to turn around and admonish my sister while my mother hung her head in embarrassment.  The final picture was a nice black and white studio quality photo, with my sister hiding behind her prayer pose and a precocious impish grin.

I doubt my mother’s attempts at Girls Day did much to turn us into proper girls.  Still, the rice cakes were certainly worth the effort.

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(My Sister and I)

(c)2014 Slow Suburban Death.  All rights reserved

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