The board that connects the ocean and me（By Mitsuji Chinen）

「海と僕を繋ぐ板」
日本語バージョン（Japanese version）→はこちら

 I am beginning to lose faith in my son.

　My son is eight years old, in the second grade. He is still at an age when parents need to protect him at all costs, but sometimes I cannot understand what my son is saying and doing, and I see him as a stranger. Of course, I still love my son. My son is my hope for life after I lost my wife to illness two years ago.

　It was about six months ago. He started saying that the desk I had bought for him before he entered elementary school was strange.

　It was summer vacation for his second grade, and every day when he came home after a long day of playing with the neighborhood kids, he would stay in his room until I prepared dinner, looking at illustrated books on plants and animals with great interest. He loves to observe living things, so he spends a lot of time looking at them by himself, which helps me as a male parent because I don't have to do much to entertain him.　I am not very good at cooking, so sometimes I try to cook something a little more elaborate and it takes me longer than I would like, but my son spends hours absorbed in the illustrated books, forgetting about dinner until I go to call him.

 One day, as I was struggling to make hamburgers from ground meat instead of ready-made patty, he came out of his room, flapping his arms and legs excitedly.

 "Dad, there's something wrong with my study desk. Come and take a look," he said.

　I thought he was complaining because he was hungry, so I said, "Sorry. Wait a little longer.  I'll make you a delicious hamburger.”

　I didn't respond properly to my son at that time, but he only said, "I wonder if I'm mistaken. I'll go check again."

After that, when dinner was ready, he didn't say anything about it that day.

 A week later on a Sunday, I was hanging out the laundry when I heard something banging in my son's room. I opened the door with the laundry basket in my hand and saw my son standing on a chair with my DIY hammer, banging on the bookshelf that is attached to the top of his study desk.

“What are you doing!”

　My son, who is a childishly naive man of joy and sorrow, froze me with this act.

“'Your mother picked out this desk for you. What are you doing?"

The sturdy desk was not shaken by the force of an eight-year-old's hammering, but it was still scratched up pretty badly. Holding the hammer with both hands and breathing on his shoulder, my son said.

“Dad, this board on the desk. This is the only place where something is wrong.  So I want you to take this bookcase and remove this one board.”

　I gently hugged my son from behind as he indicated the top board of the desk with tears in his eyes, and wrapped both hands holding the hammer around the top, and the hammer fell to the floor as the force of his fists disappeared.

"Is there something wrong with this tabletop? How is it strange? If Akira wants me to take it off, I'll take it off. In what way is it strange?"

“Dad, put your ear to this board. It's the only one that's weird.”

 The desktop board is three centimeters thick, sixty centimeters deep, and one meter wide, so it is not very large. I put my ear to the tabletop. I feel nothing. My son looked at me and put his ear to it too.

"It's stopped. It's stopped now. But father, sometimes I hear the sound of water flowing inside this board. Sometimes it's not just water, sometimes it's the sound of the wind blowing. And the sound of water is the sound of waves. And, you know, when that happens, the waves are always coming from both sides, and the wind is always blowing from both sides. It's hard to notice. But, you know, when I read with my illustrated book open and my arms on the desk, I get a shudder. You can hear the waves coming from the right and the waves coming from the left, crashing together in the middle. The wind also blows from the right and from the left, and they collide in the middle and disappear. You can feel it in your arms. It's true, Dad. There's something going on inside this board."

 Never before had my son appealed to me so strongly and so intensely. I was at a loss as to how to deal with it, because it was completely different from the crying he sometimes does when he wants a new picture book.

“What are you going to do with the board?"
I asked, trying to appear calm.

“I wanted to shake it when I heard the sound of the waves. I want to see if the waves make chap-chap-chap-chap when I shake it.”

　He explained that when he raised his right hand, he lowered his left hand, and when he raised his left hand, he lowered his right hand, making a motion like swinging a large board up and down. I was a little relieved to see that his eyes were no longer teary but had the twinkle of a man who has found something magical.

 “Akira, it's easy to remove. But you know, this board is three centimeters thick, right? I think it is quite heavy. You just did a motion like waving the board up and down, but I don't think you can hold it because it's too heavy. So let's do it this way. Let's make a one-centimeter hole in the middle of this three-centimeter thick board. Then, I'll cover the hole with a stick the same centimeter thick. If you hear the sound of waves or wind, you can remove the stick. What do you think?”

"Yes, let's do it, Dad.”

　He agreed to my suggestion and immediately ran to the front door where I kept my tool box. I followed him and came back to the room with a drill and newspaper. I put newspaper under the desk to catch the shavings from the board and drilled a hole.
　When I drilled a hole about four centimeters deep, a good amount of shavings came out. It is just an ordinary board.　My son looked intently at the hole, took out a pencil, poked at the hole to feel it.

“All there is a board," he muttered to himself, but then quickly added, "I'll go get a plastic bottle," and went to the kitchen. I cut a one-centimeter-diameter round stick into seven centimeters long and inserted it into the hole.

 Then nothing happened for a while.

“I wondered if it was because we drilled a hole in it. I wonder if something leaked out," my son said regretfully, but I was relieved.

 About two months later, I was taking a bath.

“Dad, the wind is coming out. Hurry! Hurry!”

At my son’s voice, I wrapped a towel around my waist and rushed out, but nothing had changed.

　“I am sorry," he said. It's been a while since that happened last time, and it lasted only a second. But it was a warm breeze.”

　I patted him on the head and returned to the bath. This happened several times after that, when I was cooking or watering the garden, but the phenomenon always ended when I got there.

 In the spring of my son's fourth grade, I received a text message.

'Dad, I finally, finally did it. The water came out. I filled a plastic bottle full of it. It's ocean water. It's salty.’

Although I had almost forgotten about it, I felt his excitement and I also came home excitedly.

　When I arrived home, my son greeted me at the door and held out a plastic bottle filled to the brim in front of me, smiling.

“I heard the sound of waves crashing and vibrating and immediately opened the bottle and removed the stick. At first I couldn't get it in right and it spilled all over the floor, but when I got this full it stopped coming out."

　I opened the cap, dripped it into my palm, licked it off, and immediately made a sour face.  Looking at me, Akira said laughing,

"See? As I told you!”

“It's true. I guess strange things do happen.  To be honest, I didn't really believe it, but now I believe it.”

　My son, with a yup, walked backward and jumped up and down.

 After changing my clothes, I went to the kitchen to cook dinner and found a salt shaker and a glass of water next to the sink.
I took a quick sip and found that it was salty. I went into my son's room with the glass in my hand and asked him,

"What is this? What's this all about?"

My face must have looked rather horrifying.

“I made that it," he said. “I wanted to see how different it tasted from the sea water that came off the board. But I realized that the amount of salt would change the taste, so I stopped. But the water in the bottle really came from here. It's really true. Dad, you have to believe me.”

 I had lost faith in my son.

Still, I knew there was no point in lying to me, but I no longer understood.

　My face, a mixture of anger and sadness, must have been felt by my son. As I left the room, I heard him crying from behind the door, but I did not return to the room.

 From then on, my relationship with my son became awkward. We both knew that even though we laughed at the TV at dinner or sang hit songs together on our holiday drives, in our hearts we were taking a step back.

 One Sunday, while we were having lunch, I noticed that my son was somewhat restless.

I said,

"Akira, what's up? Is something wrong?”

He seemed to be relieved by my question.

"Dad, I want you to buy me something.”

“What is it? Tell me. It's unusual for Akira to ask me to buy something other than a picture book, so I'm interested. What do you want?”

 His face lit up.

“I want a machine that can record music. It doesn't have to be big, just a small one for me to hold.”

　His answer was surprising.

“What do you want to record?”

"Well, I want to record the sounds of birdsong and insects, you know. You can't know their voices even if you look at illustrated books. So I want to record them and listen to them myself.”

“If you want to hear the sound of a bird or an insect, you can probably find it by searching for it on my computer. You can search by the names in the illustrated book, I guess.”

 My son looked at me with strong, powerful eyes.

"No, no. I want to record them for myself. I want to record the birds in the fields and parks nearby, and in the mountains beyond the school, a little farther away, and I want to know what kind of birds they are.”

“I see. It’s about creatures that live around here, not in the illustrated books that you want to know. That’s why you want to record it yourself. Good, I'll buy you one. Lately, the one called an IC recorder, and even though it's small, it can record high quality sound. Some of them are small enough for Akira to hold in his hand and run around the park or mountains without getting tired. I don't think they are very expensive. I saw one at the electronics store. Shall we go buy it after dinner?”

"Yes!  Thanks, Dad.  Yo-ho!”

“When you laugh, I'm happy too. But, please let me use it once in a while. Sometimes a lecturer comes to the company. When he does, I want to record it, so please lend it to me.”

“Sure! No problem!”

 My son, who had been restless and fidgety, suddenly began to eat his meal with gusto, which was pleasant to watch. After finishing his meal, he helped me clean up, which was unusual for him, and we went to an electronics store together, asked the clerk about it, and ran to the recorder section.

　When we decided on the product recommended by the clerk, my son said,

"Oh yes, Dad. I have one more favor to ask you. I want to put a microphone on it. A microphone like a stethoscope, like the ones doctors have. I saw on TV that you can hear the sound of a tree sucking up water. Please, Dad.”

"Oh, that sounds interesting. I think we watched that TV together a while ago. I remember it too.”

　The clerk came with a microphone as he looked at my excited son. While I was paying, the clerk said, "I’ll explain it for you because the manual is full of difficult kanjis,” and my son was listening intently to the clerk's explanation in detail. To prove he understood, recorded the clerk's voice, and played it back.

"It's perfect. Thank you, Mister. It's pretty easy. I'll teach you how to use it later, Dad, so that you can use it at work.”

 In the car on the way home, my son looked really happy. He sang a song, recorded it, played it back, asked me to sing along, and played it back again, clapping his hands and laughing. It had been a long time since I had seen my son smile so carefree, and I laughed from the bottom of my heart.

 A few months later, after dinner, I was washing dishes when my son came out of his room.

He said, "Dad, have you ever heard this sound?"

　He put his IC recorder on the counter of the cupboard behind the sink and pressed the play button. The unfamiliar sound went, "Gee, gee, gee," and it was not a beautiful at all, not like a birdsong.

“I've never heard that before. Where did you record it?"

“In the mountains behind the school. We took the bus to the mountains today for an extracurricular nature observation. That's when I recorded it. It's a strange voice, isn't it?”

"Yeah, maybe it's not a bird. Maybe it's an insect.”

“I see. It might be a bug. Well, I'm going to take a bath first.”

　He must have deciphered that it would take a long time because he saw that the ingredients for the next day's meal were placed next to the dishes to be cleaned. As I continued washing the dishes, I noticed a red light on the IC recorder. I dried my index finger on my pants and pressed the switch. It was a beautiful birdsong. After that bird, I heard another bird's singing, and I thought to myself, "This is some good background music," and kept listening to it. I laughed out loud when I heard the homeroom teacher scolding my son's friend. I was smiling and thinking that I had bought a good thing when suddenly the sound of waves crashing violently came out. It seemed to be recorded at such close range that I couldn't help but turn to face the recorder. The sound lasted only a minute or two, but after a while I heard the sound of the wind crashing violently. I was surprised at the sound, which made me think that he had gone outside to record during a typhoon, but I was relieved to realize that no typhoon had come since I bought this recorder. The sound soon disappeared, and the birdsong came on again.

 My son came out of the bath.

He said, "That bird has a nice voice, doesn't it? This is that mountain, too.”

"Yes, it's a nice voice. But, Akira. There's the sound of the waves crashing against each other. And the sound of the winds. It sounded so realistic that for a moment I wondered if you had gone up close and recorded it, but there were no typhoons like that, you know. I was relieved when I realized. Did you record the sound from the TV?"

　At that moment, I noticed that my son's body got tense for a moment. I thought there was something there, but I didn't dare ask. Maybe I was afraid to ask.

"Yes, that's right. I recorded the sound of the TV. It was so abrupt, it was over so fast, wasn't it?"

“Yeah, it was very short.”

“Well, I'm going to bed.”

　I knew he was not a person who goes to bed at this time of night. Perhaps, the day is still haunting us.

After graduating from elementary school, we went to a nearby shopping center to buy school uniforms for junior high school, and noticed a section for study desks. I looked at my son, who had suddenly grown taller in the past year or two.

"Well, we should buy not only school clothes but also a desk, shouldn’t we? The current one was bought before you started elementary school, so it must be very cramped. Sorry. I haven't been in your room lately, so I didn't notice. You are going to get bigger and bigger from now on, so shall we get you a bigger size desk?"

 I saw my son's profile stiffen instantly, and I remembered that day vividly. Even if I tried to forget it, I could not, but I kept it in the back of my memory and tried not to recall it. Two years have passed since that day, and we still see each other with somewhat cool eyes in our hearts. It was after that day that I started to avoid entering my son's room as much as possible.

 He said, "It's okay, Dad. I've put some comic books under the legs of the desk to make it higher. Besides, my mother picked out that desk for me, didn't she? I’m fine with that desk.”

　He probably thought he was speaking calmly as best he could. However, his face was drawn and he looked frightened. For both of us, the desk was still a topic that we could not touch. I wondered if this rift would ever disappear. I tried to act calm as my son looked at me without making eye contact and looked at the other sales floor with his whole body.

"I see. If Akira says so, it's okay. I didn’t know you used the comic books to make it higher. But a comic book would be in the way because of its width. Shall I buy some bricks? If we pile a couple of bricks on the side, I think it will be stable and won't get in the way."

　I could see from his back that he was relieved. He turned around to face me.

“Yes, let's do that. Let's buy some bricks, school clothes, and some snacks and go home, Dad.”

　It was hard for me to see my son's maturity in the way he dared to appear childish. He had just graduated from elementary school, but I had made him watches my mood. If only I had gone to my son who was crying in his room that day and hugged him, none of this would have happened.

 When we left the shopping center, I suggested we would go a little farther and go to the beach, instead of returning home right away, which made him very happy. I was happy to see him so happy, without any acting at all. It was a little chilly at the beach in March, but both my son and I had a great time at the beach for the first time in a long time, and the ramen noodles on the way home were so delicious that we forgot about the past few hours.

　When we arrived home, I took the bricks into my son's room, I lifted the desk up one side and he put the bricks in.

'Looks good.'

　My son laughed, but sooner or later this desk was going to be too tight, and it was depressing to think about how I was going to talk to him when it was time to replace it.

 “I'm going to take a bath, Dad. Do you want to join me?"

I said, "Yes. You go ahead. I'll be right there.”

　While heading for the bathroom, I saw out of the corner of my eye that there were five 500㎖ plastic bottles and two 2 liter plastic bottles on the bookshelf next to my son's bed, and I thought about the fact that all of them contained clear liquid. And on each plastic bottle stuck a piece of white paper. I couldn't see it clearly from a distance, but the writing on it looked like it was the date.

 When my son started junior high school, he said to me, "Dad, I want you to buy me a study desk. I can't fit my legs in that desk anymore.”

　It was out of blue. I was shocked when he said this without hesitation while eating his breakfast and pouring himself another bowl of rice. It was true that my son was one of the tallest in his class, so it would be hard for him to sit at that desk. I had been wondering when I should tell him, but I had been unable to do so, so I was puzzled by his unexpected cheerfulness.

“That's right. You've been using it since you were in the first grade. That must be hard. I'll buy it. I'll buy it.”

“Thank you. I already found one at a shopping center. The price is 12,000 yen. It's not that expensive at Home Depot. I know it won't fit in your car but they're letting us use their mini truck for free. Can you come over this Saturday?”

“Sure. You’ve well researched.”

　I said to my son, who was sitting at the table eating his meal,

 "Well, I'll have the Home Depot get rid of the desk you’re using now then. It may not be for free, but if you buy a new desk, they should be able to dispose of the old one at a discount. Let’s take it out of the room before we put the new desk in the room. It'll be easier that way. "

　I felt my son's chopsticks stop for a moment.

“Dad, I want that desk to stay where it is," he said. “I need that desk. I'm in the science club now, right? I guess I'm going to have a lot of different tools for experiments. I need that desk to hold them. I don't mind if it makes the room smaller. I have to put my tools somewhere anyway. That desk is just fine for it.”

　He spoke as if he didn't want me to say anything. I didn't want to get rid of it so strongly. If my son says he needs it, that's fine. However, I felt a little creepy because of his insistence.

  On Saturday of that weekend, I bought the desk my son had decided on at Home Depot and brought it in with a mini truck. It wasn't as big as I had imagined, so I figured it wouldn't make the room that much smaller with the previous desk in place, and my son seemed to have calculated that as well. He seemed to have the size of the desk top in mind, and he explained to me that if he moved his current desk closer to the entrance and switched places with the new desk, it would be out of the way of his bed and he would be able to easily pass by his friends even if they came over, with the passenger window fully open and holding his hair moving busily in the wind with his hand.

　When we arrived home, we put the desk in according to the procedure my son had explained to me in the car. First, I put the current desk out in the hallway, then put the new desk in the room. Then he moved the old desk near the entrance and set three bricks under the legs of the desk instead of two.

“I’ll go return the mini truck.”

With that I left the room, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

　The curtains had been drawn over the bookshelves, but as I was leaving the room, a breeze blew through the open window, and for a moment I could see inside the bookshelves. There were more plastic bottles there than before, more than 50 small 500㎖ and more than 30 large  ones. What in the world was that? When in the world will I be able to hear about it? Will there ever come a day when we, a parent and a child, will be able to open our hearts to each other? My heart was aching.

  A few years passed and my son, now in his second year of high school, became the head of the science club. He started coming home late, but on Sundays he would help cook dinner.

"Let's make curry today. I'll cut the onions.”

　He volunteered and cut them, tears streaming down his face.

“I think that if I can make the onion and the knife emit the opposite substances, they will cancel each other out and tears won't come out. Dad, do you know the word topology?"

　As I was peeling the potatoes, I asked,

"Topology? I've never heard of it. What language is it?”

　Wiping his eyes with a hand towel hanging from the sink door, he said,

"I don't know what language it is, but it's a mathematical term, and in Japanese it's called 位相幾何学 (Iso-kikagaku)”.

“Iso-kikagaku? I don't know it even in Japanese. What does it mean? Well, I don't think I would understand it even if you explained.”

“I thought the word Topology sounds funny, and I just happened to pick it up at the library, so I don't know much about it myself. I read in a book that topology is 'a particular phase of a cycle that repeats itself periodically.’ I didn't know what it meant, but I found it interesting that there is a reverse phase to the phase, and that reverse phase is used in our daily life.”

“In our daily life? You mean that topology thing?”

My son knows very well that I am not very good at mathematics.

“That’s right, Dad. You once said, 'Factorization is of no use to us after we go out in the real world,' but I think it is useful in some way that we just don't know about. The inverse phase I just mentioned is used on highways where there is a lot of noise.”

"What? For noise control?"
　
I put the potatoes in the sink and turned to my son.

“Yes," he said. “By sending frequencies opposite to the noise on the highway, they muffle each other's sound and save their neighbors from the noise.”

“Akira, do you want to be a mathematician? You are very different from your father. Akira, you are shining in my eyes. I think your mother would be surprised in heaven.”

“No, I don't want to be a mathematician, I want to be a scientist. That's why I joined the science club. I want to use science to make something useful for people.”

“I see. I'll do whatever I can do for you. But I can only work hard and save money for your college expenses.”

 “Thank you, Dad. I will become a scientist. I’ll be a scientist and I will always take good care of you.”

It was the first time my son had ever said such a thing to me, so I was touched and speechless.

“Dad, I really will.”

I was so happy to hear my son's small murmur.

 One day, my son asked me to take him to a shop to buy a piece of research equipment that he wanted to buy. It was not expensive, but it was big, so he asked me to take him by car. I waited for him in the living room, but he didn’t come out of his room, so I knocked on the door and entered, and there was an amazing sight.

　Water was gushing out from the desktop board. The room was flooded, and about ten two-liter plastic bottles were all full.

“The water just wouldn't stop," he said. “The empty bottles have run out and the whole room is flooded, Sorry!  But this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this. Usually it stops right away, but for some reason it just won't stop today. What should I do, Dad?”

“Wait for me!”

　I couldn't stop the tears from flowing down my face as I ran to the bathroom next to his room.

　“It was true. He was telling the truth. I had broken his heart so badly over the past years. It is true.”

　My son cried as he watched me cry while catching the water coming violently out of the desktop with a polyethylene bucket. I told him to take the end of the hose to the bathtub and I applied the hose to the hole in the board .

　After what seemed like an eternity, the violent gush of water subsided and eventually stopped. I licked it and found it was salty. All I could see inside the hole was a board.

“The bathtub is filled to the brim. What should we do? It's ocean water, you know. We can't take a bath in it even if we boil it again. And this room!  What should I do with it? It will take eternity to dry.”

　My son laughed at that, but his face looked like he was crying with happiness.

 In the car on the way to the store, my son was talkative.

He said, "Science is not science unless everyone can get the same answer, so it's not science. And since I couldn't do it by my own will, we couldn't experiment or test it together. So it was just a miracle. I studied topology because through my elbows, I could feel the same waves and wind blow from the left and right and cancel each other's impact.”

“Yeah, you’ve said something like that, Akiar. I had not understood it at all, and I forgot all about it.”

“The board is suddenly connected to the ocean somewhere, or to the wind blowing somewhere. But I want to find out the cause of that phenomenon someday. Even if I can't, it seems that ocean water is not exactly the same all over the world. Even in the Pacific Ocean, the composition of the water differs slightly depending on where it is collected. If we could examine the water of all the oceans in the world, we would be able to find out which oceans are connected to that top plate. All the water that has come out of that hole so far has the same composition. I've done the examination. So that board is connected to the same ocean somewhere.”

 After all these years, we were finally a real father and son.


Translated by DeepL, touched up by Haruno Ogasawara