Mother – babies
My sister was a honeymoon baby, my mother said. She was born in 1973 as one of the second baby boomers. My father wished for a son to inherit the family legacy, but my mother was in bliss as she held my sister. She wanted her daughter to appreciate the music, so she created a name with kanji that meant “play music beautifully.” Two years later, she had a miscarriage before the baby’s shape was even formed. She’d talk about the loss to us, but I was too small to imagine the pain and trauma she went through at the time. I didn’t get to know how she had blamed herself for the loss until 40+ years later. I came into the world two years after the miscarriage. I was planned and longed for, she told me. My father was again disappointed to find I was a girl and would say to me so later, but my mother only wished I’d grow up to be healthy and intelligent. She got help from my grandmother for naming and decided to use only hiragana in my name. Without kanji, names don’t carry meanings, but from the sound, people interpreted that I was “little sweetfish,” and people would later ask me if my father liked fishing.