Bowing to the old maple
There's an old bigleaf maple on my walk to the bus, trunk thick with moss and licorice ferns, easily two hundred years old. I've bowed to it every morning since we moved to Seattle. My neighbors think I'm very polite to trees. I am.
This morning there was low fog, and as I bowed, every leaf on the lowest branch let go at once. Not a gust. No wind at all. They just came down around me like someone emptying a basket.
Back home, a tree like that would have a shimenawa rope tied around it. Here it has a parking sign. I don't think the kami minds. I stood there in the leaves feeling very much greeted.
Drew kyō, bad luck, at the shrine today. Tied the slip to the rack and left it with the kami to sort out, as is proper. Bought a mochi on the way out to balance things.
The month without gods
In Japanese the tenth month is Kannazuki, the month without gods. The story goes that the kami from all over the country travel to Izumo to meet, so they're away from their local shrines. In Izumo itself they call it Kamiarizuki, the month with gods.
My grandmother said not everyone leaves. Ebisu stays behind to look after the house and the business. So every October she set an extra cup of sake on the kamidana for Ebisu, as thanks for staying home and minding things.
I live in Seattle now, in an apartment where nothing about the season matches Nagano. But the extra cup went up this morning. It felt like her hand on my shoulder.
Fresh sakaki on the fifteenth
The 1st and 15th are when I change the sakaki on my kamidana. In Nagano my grandmother cut it from the bush behind the house. In Seattle I drive to a grocery in the International District that gets it maybe half the time, and the rest of the time I ask the neighbour's camellia hedge to stand in, very politely.
This morning: rice, salt, water and a little sake in their white dishes. Two bows, two claps, one bow. Rain loud on the skylight, the cat sitting under the shelf like a small guardian.
It isn't a big ceremony. It's more like opening the window in a room you love.
Pebbles that become a boulder
Many shrines in Japan keep a sazare-ishi, a big lump of rock made of small pebbles cemented together over ages. It's named for an old poem about little pebbles slowly growing into a great boulder, with moss covering it.
I'd never take a stone from shrine grounds; those belong where they are. But on my last visit home, at the river below my grandmother's village, she pointed at the water and told me to choose one. I picked a small grey pebble and wrapped it in washi.
It sits below my kamidana now. Some days it reminds me of patience. Some days it just reminds me of her hand, pointing at the river.