Disturbed

That is exactly how I feel right now.
It has been lingering for a while now.
Ever since I heard the news over tea ( or should I say coffee) with a couple of friends after the meeting we had in school.
Our gossip session was about to end when I suddenly asked my two friends for an advice on how to tell my daughter's homeroom teacher that she would be absent from school. I have always noticed (and has been advised by my daughter) that kids who are absent from school surrender their announcement book together with their file to their homeroom teacher via a friend the morning they are absent. I have seen mothers waiting at the junction, hoping to catch a familiar face in order to help them pass the book and file to the respective teachers. FYI, I am planning something that would require Neesa chan to be away from school one fine day next week (which I will blog about later), and the plan would also require us to go out of the house very early that waiting at the junction to pass her announcement book as well as her file to one of her friends seems impossible.
I suddenly thought of a certain boy who lives in the same building and blurted out the idea to pass the book and file to him the night before. My two friends suggested that I write a note in the announcement book a day earlier so that I do not have to pass the book to anybody.
The suggestion came instantly and simultaneously the moment I mentioned the boy's name. And the fact that both of my friends glanced at each other seconds before the blurted out the suggestion made it more peculiar. Being a number one 'kepochi', I asked raised an eyebrow and a few minutes later, they revealed something that blew my mind.
I did not know how the conversation turned to this year's hottest gossip.
I did not care.
All I care about know is whether the gossip is true.
If it is, then I pitied the boy.
I pitied the boy's brothers and baby sister.
And I pitied the boy's dad.

It seems that they boy's mom left them.
She ran away.
The news has been spreading like wildfire among the kids in school.

The first question that came to my mind was why?
How could she have left her 4 kids behind?
What drove her to do that?
Why can't she at least take the baby with her?

Her children must be traumatized by this.
To be left behind by the mother for a couple of months now.
Now that I have heard the story, I realized that the boys have not been dressing well to school lately. I have seen them without a jacket and an appropriately lengthed trousers during the cold winter. And I have noticed that the Dad has been carrying the little daughter and pushing her stroller in the morning, while towing the third son and lugging a few bags with him. A scene that I would have never seen 2 months ago. I had thought that the Dad was merely sending his two younger kids to the nursery and kindy because the mother was busy getting ready for work (Japanese mothers who are not working or studying or do not have any illness do not send their babies to the nursery school and I was positively sure that the mother was not working before this).

No wonder I have not been seeing the mom lately (not that I always see her around before this. I have only seen her a few times, during her way to pick her third son from the kindy or back from the grocery store. Come to think of it, I have never seen her during the first graders meeting. I thought the reason was because she went to the third grader's meeting instead since she has 2 boys in Neesa's school.

She has always struck me as very distant. She never looked at me (what more to smile or acknowledge me) whenever we pass by each other. I gave her the benefit of the doubt thinking that she must have felt uneasy around a foreign hijab-wearing lady. But now, after hearing the story of how she abandoned her kids and left them with the dad who, like any other Japanese men who are known to be workaholic, must have a hard time taking care of the four kids alone, I am pretty sure that something was wrong with her. Four kids! That is a big number for a Japanese family, who normally have one child to dote on.
She must have been disturbed by something.
Or worst case scenario: she herself is disturbed.

I told Idhamu-san about the story.
He then asked me an equally disturbing question which is obviously rhetoric.
Would I leave my kids to him if anything were to happen to us?
He may be a good dad, but he will not go to the extend of serving home-cooked meal to his kids. The thought of them eating fast-food everyday worries the hell out of me.
And the fact that Reina chan wants to see my face before she doze off and does not want any milk prepared by the dad makes it harder for me to leave her behind even for a day.

I am praying that nothing of such would ever happen to us.
It would take only a mentally-disturbed Bubur Caca to abandon her kids.
Nauzubillah~