The Thing About Luck

In Paris, I started to read a book to Aveen and Amrita – The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata.  The book is about a 12 year old Asian American girl named Summer who comes from a harvesting family.  Every summer, the family goes to work at wheat fields to harvest the crop.  Summer’s job is to assist her grandmother cook meals for the harvesters.  

 

The book is set during one particular summer when Summer’s family just isn’t having any “Kouun” (good luck in Japanese).  Her parents have gone to Japan to take caring of ailing relatives, her grandmother has unexplained and excrutiating back pain, Summer had contracted (but has recovered from) a fluke case of malaria from being bitten by a rogue mosquito in Florida, and her brother’s best friend moved away, leaving him alone and, furthermore, somehow “invisible” (even his cousins seemed to just not see him).     

 

When I started to read the book to them, Aveen and Amrita found it hilarious.  They roared with laughter with each sentence.  

 

“We got seven flat tires in six weeks.”  Gales of laughter.

 

“I got malaria, one of 1500 cases in the United Sates that year.” Gales of laughter.

 

“Random bad smells emanated from we knew not where.”  Gales of laughter.

 

“And my brother Jaz became cursed with invisibility.  No one noticed him but us.”  Gales of laughter.

 

Aveen said, “I don’t think the book is supposed to actually be so funny.  I think we are just tired and need to laugh.”  It was true.  It was our first bedtime in Paris and we hadn’t slept on the overnight plane.  The kids were drunk with fatigue.  But we were so cozy and I was so content to be in bed reading a book that both my children were enjoying and we didn’t have to worry about anything just then.

 

The next night when I read, Aveen and Amrita did not find the book as hilarious and Amrita was finding the harvesting details a bit boring, but I had fallen in love with the book.  I felt I could relate to Summer and Jaz on so many levels.  They were second generation kids in an immigrant family.  That was me growing up.  And the grandparents in the story (Jichan and Obachaan) were just like my own parents, even though they were Japanese rather than Indian.  Obachann talked in short practical sentences, leaving out articles and prepositions.  Jichaan told stories of his childhood that seemed unrelated to anything.

 

I could also relate to just not having any Kouun for a long time.  I could write a my own narrative. 

 

“My bad luck started a few days before Christmas in 2012. Before I had time to finish my shopping and Christmas preparations, I got the flu and had to spend the days leading up to Christmas in bed.  Just as I was recovering, I started feeling this terrible pain in my abdomen which I ignored for a few days, thinking it was related to the flu. After I could ignore it no longer, I went to the Emergency Room and they told me not to freak out but I had a very large fibroid.  A week later, I had any ultrasound, and they told me not to freak out but it could be cancer....Went to a yoga retreat to learn how to meditate but fell off my bed and hurt my back...."  

 

What I really related to in the book was the effect that having had malaria and almost dying had had on Summer.  It had left her obsessed with mosquitoes.  She studied them and drew the various kinds in her spare time.  She had a special notebook for them.  She found summers especially terrifying with mosquitoes coming out at night.  She applied DEET continuously, like a tick (no pun intended), even though she realized that so much DEET was bad for her health.  She felt terror rush through her if a mosquito landed on her. One evening while on harvest, she realizes that she had forgotten to apply DEET.  It made her feel like she would throw up.  

 

The book wasn’t about this.  It was about the summer on harvest and the people that her family worked for and the challenges faced with having to do the work and a boy that she had a crush on and how he kisses her and then moves on to another girl.  But the after-effects of the malaria were interspersed throughout the book and made Summer who she was.  

 

I saw myself in Summer.  I had contracted and recovered from a fluke cancer.  I am generally high functioning.  I go to work every day.  I take care of my family.  I help out my neighbours.  I feel happy when someone is nice to me and hurt when someone is not nice. Just like everyone else.  I feel and want the same kinds of things that most people do.  But I feel the way Summer feels when she sees a mosquito when I feel I have some sort of “symptom”.  I feel a terror go through me lie a lightning bolt but longer lasting.  Sometimes, I feel like I will throw up too.      

 

I was so grateful to meet Summer, someone who felt the same way I did and whose mind I could enter.  I felt that she understood me and I took comfort in that.  Even though she is a 12 year old fictional character.

 

Jichan told Summer that the malaria had made her body sick and though her body had recovered, her mind had not.  I think that is the same way with me.  It sometimes takes longer for the mind to heal.  Jichan told her that the only way to make her mind recover was through yoga and meditation.  That resonates with me too.  And I too will heal my mind through yoga and meditation.

 

Oouch, by back….