From a Town on the Hudson by Yuko Koyano

Author:Yuko Koyano
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0116-6
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Until the language problem of the foreign children could be solved, many of their families must have struggled. I, too, was always anxious about our two sons and the stress they felt in their schools, so from the bottom of my heart I hoped and waited for the day they would be able to understand English. I am not a Christian, but what came readily to my mind then was a phrase from the Bible, "In the beginning was the Word."* For our family, The Day came first to our younger son, a fourth-grader then. One evening after he had spent a year and a half in School #3, he was hanging around me in the kitchen and suddenly loudly said, "I wondered why I was feeling happy all day today and I realized the reason now. Mother, I could understand everything that was said in English at school!" A few months later, our older son, a high school student then, said coolly, "It took a long time." Then they were finished with the E.S.L. and bilingual classes and could join the regular curriculum.

Since our sons had become familiar with English, they began to relax. In their schools they sometimes helped newcomers from Japan as they had been helped in the beginning. They also invited American friends to our home. They enjoyed summer camps and acquired the habit of listening to American music. Our older son started to watch MTV before supper and bought records by Bon Jovi and Don Johnson. Our younger son enjoyed attending his classmates many birthday parties which were held at their homes, a roller-skating rink, or movie theaters. He also had great fun having water-fights with his classmates. Both sons once attended the opening ceremony for Fort Lee's Constitution Park wearing the same "Just Say NO" T-shirt as all the other schoolchildren.

Around the time when our family had spent four years in the United States, I noticed that our sons came to insist on their own opinions. To express themselves, they used gestures that American boys used, as well. In 1989, the fifth summer of our sojourn in Fort Lee, our younger son, who was enjoying summer camp, said, "Mother, if our family stays in the United States forever, it will be all right with me." They seemed to have forgotten that they had struggled with English in the beginning.

In 1990, when we returned home to Japan, I saw the Stars and Stripes on the wall over the desk of our older son who had gotten back home a year earlier. I was keenly aware that our sons had been a part of American society and learned more than the English language in the United States.

Our family resumed our lives in Japan after five years and four months of American life. I think of the phrase from the Bible, "In the beginning was the Word" again. Our younger son now is faced with a new problem: the Japanese language.

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