I walk on light feet

The first time my father-in-law misplaced his hearing aid was a trivial event compared with some of the curious events afterward. However, that mishap prepared me for future events and helped me have yoyu. Rather than approaching difficult situations filtered through my own fears, I learned to tap into a different kind of help. I mean the kind of help like when we remember to ask the gods and our spirit guides to show us the way.

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Otosan returned from his morning walk to the convenience store to buy a newspaper without incident. I was pleased he learned how to navigate the front door, elevator, and crosswalks. I worried every time he went out alone and wondered if today would be the last time he could do it. 

The first time he went out by himself, I secretly followed him. When I heard him leave today, I stepped out onto our balcony in time to see him stop and look both ways before crossing the street in front of the building. I wished he would go down to the corner and cross with the light. At least he had hearing aids now and should be able to hear a car coming even if he didn’t see it. Still, with all the hybrid cars, I worried he would forget to look and wouldn’t hear the cars creep up behind him until it was too late.

I tried to encourage Otosan to go out for a walk every day because he was used to being more active. He was physically capable of the walk, but using the key to open the automatic door at the main entrance of our building and then operating the elevator was confusing. It sometimes took him just as long to get back up to the 11th floor as to walk to and from the Family Mart. Today was a good day. Yes! Otosan had mastered the elevator for today. Proof that people never stop learning.

As I sat down to work on my computer, Otosan hollered down the hall for me. I quickly learned that one of his new hearing aids was missing. Uh oh.

We guessed that the hearing aid had become tangled in his shirt when he changed clothes. No problem except that he had given me his shirt to wash, and I had already thrown it in with the first load of clothes. I searched through the wet clothes, but the machine was already on the last rinse cycle and still full of water. All we could do was wait for the water to drain.

In the meantime, Akira and I grabbed our coats and quietly slipped out the door to retrace Otosan’s walk to the Family Mart to see by chance if his hearing aid had fallen out somewhere along the way. 

No luck.

Back at home, carefully searching every piece of clothing from the now-finished load of wash resulted in good and bad news. Good in that the hearing aid was not in the wash. Bad in that we had no idea where to look next. 

Akira left for work with a heavy heart, while ugly thoughts of fear surrounding the cost of the hearing aid filtered through my head. Regret that we purchased the most expensive one. Feelings of guilt for questioning whether or not Otosan could or should bear the burden of responsibility for caring for such an expensive one. Then feelings of embarrassment for allowing such money fears to arise. It was only money, and the hearing aid was only a material thing, right? In the scheme of things, it didn’t really matter.

It didn’t matter, but for our day-to-day life, the hearing aid sure was useful. Please send me a sign! We really need to find his hearing aid!

After a quick prayer to the gods and my spirit guides, I returned to Otosan’s room to search through his bedding. Surely the hearing aid had simply flown through the air and was hiding in a corner somewhere or tangled up in the sheets, right? Wrong. 

I started remaking his stripped bed and thought about where someone would take a lost hearing aid if they found it on the street. The police? A pawn shop? I bent over to readjust the area rug in front of his bed and felt a rush of sweet relief! There it was tucked between the baseboard of his bed and the little area rug in front.

I quickly sent my husband a text message and then took the hearing aid into the living room, where Otosan was quietly reading the newspaper. He was so relieved. He told me how worried he had been about telling his son. I’m glad he didn’t realize that I had already told Akira. He didn’t know we had been out to look for it either. A small bit of dignity preserved. 

Otosan and I talked about how we could both be more careful in the future. Otosan would be mindful when he changed his clothes. I promised to keep an eye out when I did the laundry. I was pretty sure Otosan had been more upset than he appeared about the hearing aid, but he was very good at hiding his feelings. 

Since I still had some work to do, and he had been enjoying the newspaper, I suggested we wait until after lunch to take our walk to the hospital to visit Okasan. He planned to accompany me and said today he could enjoy our walk on “light feet.” That’s when I knew just how much he had been bothered by the missing hearing aid. Finding the hearing aid had removed a heavy burden.

In Japanese, the term “light feet” doesn’t exist as an idiom; however, “heavy feet” or “ashi ga omoi” does. It’s similar to heavy-hearted. If you have “heavy feet,” it means you sort of dread going out or doing something so much that your legs are too heavy to move. Otosan was being silly, of course, using the opposite and saying how he now had “light feet.” I know Otosan meant lightweight feet, but the word “light” can have two meanings in English. I smiled, imagining walking down the street on feet of light. How lovely to be reminded that we are beings of light or energy.

It would be difficult to have a heavy heart for very long if you had light feet. We would both walk on light feet that day.

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Otosan lost his hearing aid many times after that, and I decided to trust that I would always find it. And I always did. I learned to think like Otosan and listen to the intuitive hits that always led me to the sometimes unlikely location where the hearing aid was hidden.

Did the gods really show me the way to the hearing aids every time? Who knows. I believe so, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I could approach the search with trust and much more patience.

I hope I never forget that day because we ARE beings of light. We can choose to recognize our light or feel burdened. We can walk with light feet or trudge through our experience with heavy thoughts.

I hope you are walking on light feet today, too.