[2009.03.14] // A Drabble About My Family
Posted @ 17:50 by Airi

This August 20th is my parents' 20th wedding anniversary. Though it's only March now, Kaasan could not wait to plan out how they're going to celebrate their 20th anniversary. As for me, the best way for Kaasan and Tousan to spend their 20 years of happy marriage is that if the entire family were present on that particular celebration day. We've been apart for too long. Seven years is just way too long for a somewhat young family to be separated because of work and uncontrollable circumstances.

I have been living here in Koike for seven years now. I'm fifteen-going-on-sixteen with my birthday coming up in June, but the best thing about it is that Kaasan, Ken-nii, Kap, and me will be back home to our original hometown of Jiyuzora. Recently Kaasan received another transfer request to another location, but only this time, it's back home at Jiyuzora. Koike had been clean and peaceful for almost two years now, with very limited crime and any form of misdemeanor occurring ever since we first moved here. It felt as if it was just yesterday when Koike was a completely ghetto almost run-down town with the streets filled with various notorious street gangs from the yankii juvenile delinquents, bosozoku bike gangs, notorious speed racers, reject yakuza gangstas and drug dealers, and those hip-hoppers being ghetto gangsta wanna-bes like you see in general rap/hip-hop music videos and PVs (promo videos).

Though Kaasan was a detective specializing in homicide-related cases, her influence and her small-town values somehow influenced the entire Koike Police to get inspired in doing their assigned tasks and clean up the failing streets of Koike and protect the innocent from brutal harm from society's rejects. The prosecuting and ousting of the corrupted police chief was probably the most classic moment the entire Koike Police Department had ever done. That lazy police chief was the reason why Koike was sinking low in terms of its reputation. As long as he got paid huge lump sum, he let all these wrongdoers do whatever they want during their stay at Koike. Luckily with new leadership and a new mayor, Koike is back to its own peaceful, small-town state again. Local residents can finally come out of their homes any time they want without being held up, being mugged and robbed, being raped, and most especially getting shot at random.

I love my mother very much. I always look up to her whenever I'm down and need advice on how to do things right and how to make things right. At times I get worried about her because of her line of work. Being a police officer, a police investigator, or anything that deals with the police is a very dangerous job. Everyday and every night they always put their life on the line to save the innocent and to restore peace and justice among the people. That is why I do all I can to spend whatever free time I've got with Kaasan because that free time may probably be the final time, if you think about it.

I try... always try... all the time... to be the best daughter I can be for Kaasan. It's bad enough that I'm the only girl in my entire family, but at the same time Kaasan tried to raise me as a proper, normal girl, without being influenced by the masculinity brought to me by my father and my three brothers. Kaasan is the same with me with her immediate family--- the only female, with four brothers instead of three. Her family's ancestry was that of disciplined and brave somewhat mid-class samurai--- a family line of warriors. Her father is the current grandmaster of one of Jiyuzora's pride and treasure, the Shimabukuro Dojo, where students of all agents have a chance to learn a particular martial art and use what they learn for self-defense or for recreational purposes, like getting in to competitions and compete. My grandmother, who passed away not too long ago to cancer, was a secretary to one of the department directors in the PSIA (Public Service Intelligence Agency). Kaasan's brothers--- my uncles--- two of them are notable sensei at the dojo, one of them is an investigative officer at Tokyo Metropolitan Police, and the other currently is an American citizen and is in the U.S. Military, currently stationed at Okinawa right now.

Just by writing about Kaasan's family, it also got me to thinking as to what I want to do in my future profession. I want to be a writer, for one thing--- a writer of cozy mysteries and crime stories. I've been reading these types of books since I was a kid starting with the sleuth book series like Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown and even the Detective Conan manga series. I sometimes sneak around the library and the bookstore to read and skim through those serialized mystery and crime story magazines. I get fascinated with the way detectives do their work and how the police handle serious cases such as murder cases and kidnapping cases. I get fascinated with forensics and different types of methods criminals use to kill their victims. I'm fascinated by it all, just like how Kaasan is always fascinated with her career.

Also, now that I reflected about this, it also made me wonder if I was really the odd one out among my siblings. My eldest, Ken-nii, will be starting university at Todai to take on criminal law. He wants to be a lawyer, maybe a prosecutor or something, but that was his dream goal. My second eldest, Kei-nii, already has a career since he was eight-years-old, as a child star. Now he's a teen idol pop star with the pseudonym that every fan girl and fan boy out there are familiar with (since this is a public blog entry, I'm not even going to mention the name he goes by, but if you're really in to all these mainstream pop stuff, you can make some guesses). I'm a lot closer to Ken-nii than with Kei-nii obviously because Kei-nii's budding career kept him apart from the rest of his siblings, and because of Tousan's and Kaasan's line of work (Tousan is a traveling "entrepreneur", so to speak), Ken-nii had been doing a lot of the domestic help around our house back in Koike. He was our father, our mother, and our older brother all at once.

In just a few weeks my family and I are moving back to Jiyuzora, back at the old "manor." But once we settled back there, Ken-nii will be leaving us for Tokyo. Kap and I will be living alone in our house again and even if we're old enough to be alone, it's kind of difficult to get used to being alone, especially in a huge house with no domestic help (not that we want domestic help anyway).

That's why I think that the best way to celebrate my parents' 20th anniversary is to have the entire family celebrating it together. I don't really care what we do--- a fancy party at some fancy restaurant, a fancy party at home, a vacation to Hawaii, Europe, Hokkaido, or Okinawa, or just stay home and watch TV and eat junk food--- as long as we're together, I would be very happy--- and everyone else would be happy too.

Okay, that's too long for a drabble. I'm gonna end it here. 'Til next time!