A Family’s First Day in the Field

When my mother fractured a bone due to osteoporosis, something unexpected happened:
for the first time in our lives, our family stood side by side in the fields.

Half a century has passed, and I never imagined a day like this would come.
This is a small record of our family’s “first.”

🍘 The Usual Souvenir

Two days ago, I went back to my parents’ home.
As always, I stopped by Nakanoya on the way.
Their kurumi-yubeshi and kintsuba are my mother’s and aunt’s favorites.

Chilled kintsuba is the perfect sweetness for a summer afternoon.

🌱 Working in the Family Field

My mother can no longer manage the field work because of her fracture.
So I brought a hat, gloves, and shoes—just in case I could help.

In the afternoon, my younger brother and I ended up planting daikon seeds together.
It turned out to be the perfect timing.

Neither of us is used to farm work, so we simply followed our mother’s instructions.
My brother was surprised to see me working in the field—something I never did when I lived at home.

To keep pigeons from eating the seeds, my father stretched strings across the ridges.
Apparently, that’s enough to keep them away.

My brother had already prepared the ridges the day before, so all we had to do was sow the seeds.
Even so, under the hot sun, it felt like real hard labor.

🐾 A Hakubishin and the Watermelons

Then a hakubishin—a masked palm civet—darted across the road beside the field.
It was small and quick, and I couldn’t see its face.
Maybe it came for the watermelons, or maybe it was startled by the unusual bustle in the field.

Since my mother can’t set up elevated supports for watermelon vines anymore,
most of the watermelons end up as food for wild animals.

Still, she plants them every year.

My brother joked,
“Maybe we should change our strategy—what if we plant so many that the animals can’t possibly eat them all?”
We couldn’t help laughing.

And that’s when I realized something:
this was the first time in our lives that the four of us—parents and siblings—worked together in the field.

A day like this may never come again.