Frozen Teardrop by Lucinda Ruh

Since it was a hotel, I think that in my mind the long vacation had not ended. I didn’t really realize we were going to live in Japan rather than returning to my home in Paris.
    Coming from the influence of Paris where children seem to be more of a nuisance than a celebration, Tokyo was pleasantly the polar opposite. The staff at the hotel was incredibly courteous, gentle, and respectful. They treated me like a doll and treated the whole family like royalty, giving us gifts and showering us with compliments. (If they were just this way on the surface and it was not truly genuine is another matter, and if they were bickering behind our backs, at least we had no notion of that at the time.) All of the staff members became our family. Another difference from baguette to sushi was the cleanliness of the place. You could have eaten from the sparkling marble floor any time of the day.
    Every morning after awakening I would prance around the lobby in my smocked dresses and marvel at the flowers in the huge vases that were larger than life, with every single stem and petal facing exactly in an artistically correct direction, glistening in the morning light. They often changed the arrangement and it was such a nice surprise to see what was on display that day. The fragrance of the various flowers filled the lobby with wonderful perfumes and the pitter-patter of the Japanese women’s traditional getas on the floor gave the day a rhythm to follow and dance to. The hotel staff wore their traditional costume but once they were out on the street the normal and monotonous clothes of the West hung loosely on their thin-boned Japanese frames.
    It was a joyous, fairy-tale time as I lived the life of a princess. Not many foreigners were living in Japan in the 1980s and especially not little kids with blond, curly, long hair bouncing around. To them we were like aliens (they actually called foreigners living in Japan “aliens”) or Barbies landing from another planet. When they constantly wanted to touch my hair and look into my blue eyes it sometimes made me feel awkward, like something was wrong with me, or as if they wanted to have a little piece of me. Unfortunately I would always feel judged by them.
    I was always a child of nature, liking to tend to the bees and birds. I will never forget the wonderful stone and tree garden that engulfed the area outside of the hotel. Here, too, it seemed every stone, plant, and tree had been planted with thought and meditation in mind. I would feel guilty if something moved due to my existence. Yes, guilt was a huge emotion that would reinforce itself as I lived in Japan, feeling guilty perhaps of my own existence. The pond was filled with golden carp, a lucky fish in Japan signifying good fortune in all areas of life. I would bring the left over bread from our meals here and feed the carp every morning and evening and say a prayer or two. They were my friends and my mother and sister accompanied me many a times as we played hide and seek throughout the garden. We stayed there for three months and our stay there was the best playtime ever.
    During this time my dad went off every day to his new office and my mother, my sister, and I explored the hotel grounds. Slowly my mother ventured with us outside into the big and rumbling city of Tokyo. As our stay became longer and longer I started to realize that we were not leaving this place. I unfortunately became very sad. Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Tokyo has the Tokyo Tower, and for years every time we would pass by this Japanese tower I would cover my eyes and cry and scream, “I do not want to see this tower. I want to see the Eiffel Tower.” I was struggling inside and longed for Paris and my friends and life there but I had to get used to my new surroundings.
    On the other hand, this was in the mid-1980s, so it was the bubble time of the economy here and everything was flourishing. There was an abundance of anything you would