Chapter 9 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
JULIA
Questions swirled in Julia’s mind as she sat at the exit of the parking garage and stared at her phone’s screen, deciding which way to go.
Is our life driven by the choices we make or the circumstances surrounding us?
Are we really in control, or driven by our past, or even our genetics, as Doctor Sato suggested?
Or by some divine hand, as my roommate believes?
She should probably go back to her apartment and study with her roommate. When Julia left for her therapy appointment, her roommate was talking to her advisor about setting up a research project in the Sports Medicine department.
Such a brown noser,” Julia thought. It probably annoyed her that Julia scored better grades, even though she studied less.
The girl was a fine roommate, but as with all the other students, there ran a thread of covert competition, even though they all outwardly acted like they supported each other.
There were only so many spots in the competitive match for residencies and they all knew it.
Besides, she was one of those people who talked a little too much about her faith and probably assumed Julia had grown up Buddhist or one of the other Asian beliefs.
In reality, Julia, like her mother and father, gave little thought to religion.
Julia leaned forward to see out the top of her windshield.
The rain poured down, and probably the reason why Interstate 5 stood at a standstill.
Instead of slowing down for inclement weather, Seattle drivers sped up.
The two factors had an inverse relationship, and undoubtedly, several accidents clogged the interstate.
Maps said that it would take over an hour to get home to the apartment but less than fifteen minutes to reach her parents’ house.
No time like the present to go talk with Grandmama. Maybe it was simply the weather that directed our lives.
She turned left out of the parking garage, luckily hit all green lights down to First Avenue and turned right. First took her past the Pike Place Market, which would eventually become Aurora Avenue. That would take her to the Green Lake area and to her parents’ house, where she’d grown up.
Julia considered herself an American through and through.
She was aware of being a fifth-generation Japanese immigrant, but whether by choice or habit, she rarely thought about it.
As a multi-ethnic culture, Julia and her family blended comfortably into Seattle.
No one cared about your ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious bent.
Maybe the rain washed all that away. In fact, there were more medical students who looked like her than any other ethnic group.
But heading to talk with her grandmother, she wondered why she had taken little interest in her heritage.
It didn’t matter, I guess. Her parent’s friends came from all different backgrounds.
Her father’s business imported items from all over the world.
In fact, her father had just said, faking an exaggerated Texan accent: “Reckon rugs from Afghanistan are sellin’ like hotcakes, little lady.
” She always laughed at his silliness and told him he could have been a comedian.
Yep, just good old American citizens of the world.
She thought in her dad’s ridiculous Texan accent.
Inherently, she understood her genetics defined her, and maybe that was a good enough reason to open the ancestral secret box of family history that her parents never discussed.
Her parents were born in the late sixties, so Julia doubted they had experienced much racism, but she thought earlier generations must have, and perhaps why they never talked about their past.
She laughed, remembering one recent episode that proved just how un-Japanese she truly felt.
A university friend, talking about his grandmother, had called her Sobo.
Finding it adorable and not realizing she might embarrass herself, Julia asked, “You nicknamed your grandmother Sobo?” Her friend had sighed and patiently explained that Sobo was the formal Japanese term when talking about your own grandmother with someone else.
From the moment Julia could speak, her grandmother insisted on being called Obāchan.
Her mother told her that it represented a more informal and affectionate salutation, but because of all the Japanese language nuances, Julia had resisted learning the spoken word of her grandmother.
Julia still preferred calling her Grandmama.
Julia’s tires rumbled over a grate at the entrance to the Aurora Bridge.
As she crossed the expanse, she passed over a large sailboat headed toward the Ballard Locks.
For a moment she fantasized about being part of the crew and sailing off to the San Juan Islands and ports beyond, leaving medical school, her doctor, and her ancestral past behind.
Many of her friends at UW took advantage of the free sailing club with its dock bordering the Huskie Stadium on one side and Union Bay on the other.
Students could become certified by taking only one class, after which they could take the small Hobie sailboats out at no charge.
Julia loved the water. She wondered why she hadn’t taken that qualifying class.
Then she frowned at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Why I never learned to sail probably comes down to time constraints, I guess—always working hard to get to the next steppingstone. “Great,” she said to herself. “And loving every minute.”
Julia shook the depressing thought away and wondered what questions she should ask her grandmama.
As her mom’s mother, Julia suspected that her dad wasn’t thrilled when they brought Obāchan to live with them.
For sure, Julia wasn’t happy. She had just turned eleven when her grandfather died, and since her room was the only other bedroom on the main floor besides the master, Julia got moved down to the scary basement.
She and her mother fought over that for days.
When college started, Julia couldn’t get out of the house fast enough to move into the dorm.
She hadn’t moved back home since, even though she could have saved a ton of money living in the basement again.
After invading their home, as Julia considered her occupancy, her grandmother sat quietly through meals and normally retired early to her room.
This behavior might have been a mixture of not wanting to rock the family dynamics, Julia’s undisguised contempt, her lack of good English, or some mild dementia.
Julia frowned at her reflection again. She understood she had been wrong, and she vowed to change her attitude.
Julia hadn’t known her grandfather much at all but understood that he had started the import business that her dad now owned.
A few years ago, and in a rare mood of vulnerability, her mother had shared that Grandmother had tried to arrange her marriage to an eligible doctor she knew.
Julia’s mother immediately rejected the idea, pointing out that in America, arranged marriages weren’t practiced, especially not with a widower twenty years her senior.
Maybe that created the tension between Grandmama and Dad?
“And maybe why Dad pushed so hard for me to become a doctor,” she said to her reflection as the revelation hit her—her career choice had soothed the wrath of Obāchan.
Julia turned on Green Lake Way and followed it around to Fifty-Second and turned right toward her parents’ house nestled in the Wallingford neighborhood. She figured her father would be at work, and since her mother rarely left Grandmama alone, Julia could park in the driveway.
She reached for her umbrella and with the skill of a veteran Seattleite, opened her door, unfurled the umbrella, and stepped out into the drizzle in one quick movement without a drop of rain touching her.
Her parents had recently repainted the house.
She stood, trying to decide if she liked the yellowish-tan they had chosen.
The house she had grown up in was a cross between a one-story shingle and Seattle box style—pretty much the prevailing design of the entire area, but when the neighbors across the street painted their house a purplish blue, her mother complained for a year that the light blue of their home clashed terribly. So they had finally repainted it.
Her mother had confided to her that when Obāchan died, they planned on downsizing to a smaller house.
Not that Julia really cared, as the basement still scared her.
The builders had used most of the basement space for the mechanical systems and storage.
When her parents had moved her down there, they’d tried to make it inhabitable with colorful foldable screens and cheerful sheets and blankets, but Julia always feared she’d asphyxiate on carbon monoxide.
As she walked up the front steps, Julia decided the one thing she would miss about the house was the spacious front porch where she’d spent hours entertaining her neighborhood friends.
A twinge of guilt hit her as she inserted her key to let herself in through the front door; she hadn’t been home since Christmas.
“Mom,” she yelled.
The house seemed awfully quiet.
“Hey, Mom, I’m home,” Julia yelled again and walked into the kitchen.
The house smelled and looked like the cleaning crew had just left.
“Anyone home?”
She set her car keys and phone on the kitchen table and followed the faint whimper coming from her parents’ room.
“Mom?”
She opened her parents’ bedroom door. “Grandmama, what are you doing in here? Are you okay?” She rushed to the woman crumpled on the floor next to an empty wheelchair and bent down to support her head.
“Grandmama, what happened? Are you hurt?” Julia checked for any fractures or injuries by gently squeezing her legs and hips.