New Year's, as my family observed it, was a mixture of pleasure and agony. I enjoyed New Year's eve which we spent together, waiting for midnight. On New Year's eve, no one argued when Mother marched us into the bathtub, one by one. We understood that something as important as a new year required a special sacrifice on our part. Mother said the bath was a symbolic act, that we must scrub off the old year and greet the new year clean and refreshed in body and spirit.
The rest of the evening we spent crowded around the table in the living room playing Karuta, an ancient Japanese game. It consisted of one hundred old classic poems beautifully brushed upon one hundred cards, about the size of a deck of cards. There was one set of cards on which were written the shimo no ku, the second half of the poems. These were laid out on the table before the players. A reader presided over a master set of one hundred cards which contained the kami no ku, the first half of the poem as well as the shimo no ku. As the reader read from the key cards, the players were to try to pick up the card on the table before anyone else could claim it. The player or the team who picked up the greatest number of cards was the winner. An expert player knew the entire one hundred poems by heart so that when the reader had uttered the first few words, he knew instantly which card was being called out. When several experts competed the game was exciting and stimulating. But in our family only Mother and Father knew the poems, and they slowed their paces to match ours.
Mother was always the reader, chanting out the poems melodically. Sumiko, being the baby of the family, was allowed to stand on a chair at Mother's elbow and get a preview of the card being read. Sumiko would look, jump off the chair, and scurry around the table to find the card while we waited impatiently for Mother to get to the second half of the poem. I howled with indignation, "Mama, make Sumiko stop cheating! It's not fair...I'll never find a card as long as she peeks at the kami no ku!"
Mother laughed indulgently, "Now, don't get so excited. Sumichan's just a little girl. She has to have some fun, too."
The evening progressed noisily as we fluttered about like anxious little months, eye reveted on the table. Anyone who found a card would triumphantly shout "Hai!" and slam down on it with a force that would have flattened an opponent's fingers. Promptly at midnight we stopped. Out in the harbor, hundreds of boats sounded their foghorns to herald the New Year. Automobiles raced by under our windows, their horns blowing raucously. Guns exploded, cowbells clanged, the factory whistle shrilled. Henry swept the cards off the table, leaped into the air in his billowing nightshirt and shouted "Happy New Year, everybody! Happy New Year!" We turned on the radio full blast so we could hear the rest of the city cheer and sing "Auld Lang Syne." Horrified, Father implored us, "Oh the guests, the guests. Lower that radio. We'll wake our guests."
Then Father and Mother slipped quietly down the hallway to the kitchen to prepare refreshments. Although the black-painted steam-pipe, running alongside one wall in the room, made energetic knocking noises which meant that it was piping hot, the parlor was chilly. I turned the tiny gas heater higher and Sumiko and I sat in front of it, pulling our voluminous flannel gowns over our knees and cold toes. We sat with our chins
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