hitomi on the importance of family time

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Hitomi’s parents separated when she was in elementary school, and when her father left for a job away from home, she and her older brother decided to live together. She wanted to play every day, but she had a lot of things to do, such as cooking, washing and cleaning.  Now that she is a proud parent of four children, she said, “Time with family is more important than anything else”.

Chanto Web’s Nishio Eiko recently interviewed hitomi and asked her about her views on family.  Here is an excerpt from that interview:

In a previous blog, you said, “I grew up in a complicated environment”, when talking about your childhood. It was almost like living with you older brother.

hitomi: My parents separated when I entered elementary school, and I followed my mother. However, when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, my mother got injured and was hospitalized. Even after my mother recovered, I didn’t want to change schools and make new friends, so I continued to live with my father, and from there I started living with my father and older brother. When I was in the 6th grade of elementary school, my father was transferred to work away from home, so I only came back on weekends to live with just the two of my siblings. I was old enough to play, but I couldn’t. I was busy with daily cooking and laundry. Therefore, all household chores became my role. When I come back from elementary school, I put down my school bag and went to the supermarket to buy some food. When everyone finished eating, I had to wash the dishes, do laundry and clean. It was a pretty hard life.

Even though it’s only on weekdays, it’s still unthinkable to live with only children. Around the age when you want to play with your friends, take care of all household chores by yourself and support your family. Didn’t you feel lonely or that it was unreasonable?

hitomi: The truth is that I didn’t have time to think about such things. Rather than thinking, “What an unreasonable life, isn’t it?” More than that, I had a lot of things to do, such as cooking, doing the laundry, and washing the dishes as soon as I got home from school.

I don’t think you were able to do housework from the beginning, but how did you learn it?

hitomi: When I was living with my mother, we were a single-mother household, so it was relatively natural for us to “do things ourselves.” She helped with the laundry and did the dishes every day, and in the mornings she could not get up because my mother was working at night, so she cooked and ate her own meals before going to school. Since I was raised like that from the lower grades of elementary school, I was used to housework, but it was quite difficult to do it all by myself. However, the self-confidence that “I did it all by myself” has become a part of me now.

Nowadays, there is a tendency to call unreasonable hardships because of parents “parent gacha” or “poisonous parents”. As hitomi, who had a hard time at home, how do you perceive it?

hitomi: In today’s terms, maybe that’s how it’s called. At that time, I didn’t feel like I hated my parents, but there was one time when I felt angry. When I was about 18 years old, when I met my mother, she said to my brother, “Why did that child become like that?” What did you do?” I think that it is only when parents take good care of their children and spend time together that they feel gratitude. Parents felt unreasonable about it, even if they had their own reasons. There was a sense of, “Did you even water the flowers properly?”

Certainly, raising children and growing plants are similar, aren’t they? Plowing the fields, watering them, and sometimes even fertilizing them, they finally grow.

hitomi: That’s right. They grow splendidly on their own?

Is that thought reflected in your own upbringing?

hitomi: From my childhood experience, I have longed for a warm home where I can spend time eating and laughing with my parents. However, I myself have not had much experience of being dependent on my parents or consulting with them, so I often face the worries of “What should I do in such a situation?” . “Family ties” is the theme of my life. I think it would be nice if children could feel that they were happy to spend time together as a family.

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