"You can be a mummy's girl, or a daddy's girl. But you can't be both."
My mother told me that when I was four.
It is my strong belief that children should not have to choose between parents. But choose I was asked to, and choose I did.
So I chose to be a mummy's girl. I cannot explain why. The person who brought me up through my childhood years, sewed my dolls together, taught me how to eat, taught me how to sleep, bathed me and fed me, was my father. My mother was colder and more reserved. She would nod curtly, and her eyes would flash with stern approval, while my father would smile and chuckle that deep chuckle of his, laughter twinkling in his eyes. She would arrive home and find me nestled next to my father, asleep in his bed, and I would watch through a squinted gaze as she moved silently around us, and I would silently admire her until sleep took me. When I woke the next day, she would be gone.
Perhaps it is the way of children that they gravitate towards the affection of the parent that gives less. Maybe it is what causes them to strive for it.
So I strived for my mother's affection. I copied the way she walked - briskly, curt steps clicking across the ground. I copied the way she sat, straight-backed, as if she was made of iron. When guests came, I knelt next to her for hours as she exchanged pleasantries with people I didn't know, even though the pain in my knees made me want to scream. I admired her will of iron, her willingness to brook no disagreement. I admired her strength. I saw in herself an idealised me, or maybe that is simply the way of all children.
My father was quieter. Maybe it was because he had married into the household at a young age, but he would almost always defer to my mother with an easy smile. He had this way of nodding his head when he spoke that made it nearly impossible to see him as hostile. I have never recalled him raising his voice. He would always walk behind my mother, padding softly like a friendly bear behind the sharp clicks of her heels on the floor, and even though he was taller than her by a head, he seemed smaller in my eyes.
I didn't want my mother to think I was a daddy's girl, because then I wouldn't be a mummy's girl any more. So I endeavoured to be the opposite of him. Where he was quiet, I was brash. Where he retreated, I advanced. Where he gave way, I learned to stand my ground.
I learned to scowl at anything I didn't like, silently glaring at the source of my annoyance. I learned to straighten my back and square my shoulders, walking as if I was always barreling through something, forging forward.
But it wasn't enough. On the few days she was not at work, she would take me to a wide patch of land on the outskirts of Kumamoto, along with my father. There we would watch the local sensha-do team drill in their tanks, driving, halting, moving in formation, firing. Sometimes she, too, would be in a tank of her own - a Tiger. It still stands in the residence today. I would look at her, standing straight in the commander's hatch, admiring how effortlessly she moved that huge machine as if it was a limb of her own, and I would yearn with all my heart that I could learn how to do that too.
When I was six, I got my wish.
