Sunflower 2 ~ Mom

This story continues from Sunflower.

Sunflower is my favourite flower, if not, favourite item.

When someone asks me 

"What is your favourite food?"  I would say, 

"Anything that is tasty. Ummm, probably sanma (horse mackerel)." 

When someone askes me 

"What is your favourite colour?" I would say, 

"Ummm, probably a rainbow colour, because my favourite colour changes depends on how I feel that time."

double rainbow in Chilliwack

When someone askes me 

"What is your favourite things to do?"  I would say 

"Anything that makes me happy." 

True happiness is the one you can find
in front of you now, even it is small.

Anything makes me happy is my favourite thing. 

But if I have to pick one thing that I can say it is my favourite, is Sunflower.

I'm not a collector of anything, so my house isn't filled with sunflower items,

but when I see a sunflower, it really lifts my heart .

Perhaps, I have been attracted to sunflower since my childhood. 

When I was younger, my family lived in a house up on a steep hill in Nagasaki, and there

was a small flower bed.  We used to have cucumbers and egg plants in summer time,

and I remember cucumber grew really well while egg plants didn't grow well.

 We called the ginormous cucumber that was forgotten to be picked because it was  hidden behind leaves as "monster cucumber" .

I asked my mother,

"Why don't you plant flower seeds instead of vegetable seeds?"

She answered,

"Because we can't eat flower, right?"

Well, that was a realistic answer from her as she was a cooking teacher.

One day, I found a beautiful rape blossoms on the steep cliff.

 I climbed up the super steep cliff to pick the blossoms so then my mom 

could enjoy the flowers in a vase.

When I gave a bumch of blossoms, she said,

"Oh !  They look yummy!"  instead of "They look beautiful !" and they were on

our dinner table that night.

Yes, that's my mom. 

Anyways, let's get back to the story of the sunflower.

Because I asked her why didn't she plant flower seeds, my mom decided to

plant sunflower seeds instead of the cucumber seeds before the next summer.

There were very tall sunflowers and short sunflowers grew side by side, and

I was so happy to see them growing together.

I remember one conversation I had with my mom clearly on one summer day when we came home from shopping and looked at the flower bed.

"You are like a sunflower, mama. They are always smiling, strong and looks like a sun. This big one is mama, this little one beside it is Mai-chan(me)."

（Everyone used to call me Mai-chan, so I did not know that I suppose to call myself as

"me", so I used to call myself "Mai-chan" .）

The Japanese language uses a broad array of honorific suffixes for addressing or referring 

to people, for example -san, as in Amano-san. These honorifics are gender-neutral 

(can be used for males and females), though some are more used for men or women 

(-kun is primarily used for males, while -chan is primarily used for women) and can be 

attached to first names as well as surnames, for example, Peter-san, Jessica-san, Smith-san. 

from Wikipedia

She did not express any joy from her daughter's comment, but simply said

「Oh,, I'm like a sunflower to you... okkay....」

If I look back, probably it was surprising to her that her little girl looked at her as a smiley sunshine while she had to hide her sadness after her husband passed away and had to

raise three girls by herself.

Anyway, that was the only summer that she planted sunflowers and the cucumbers came back the next summer. She liked foods from the garden instead of flowers.

As you can see, I was attracted to sunflower ever since I was a little girl, for some reason.

Without knowing that sunflower would be the one brought me this beautiful family. 

I will write one more story about the sunflower how it brought me this happiness now,

please look forward to reading the next story :)