A Word in Your Eye

a.k.a. how do I tell him?

Fumie sat in a waiting room full of pregnant women and women with children. She remembered feeling nauseous, and the wife from the public bath asking, "Could you be pregnant?" A nurse called her, and she went in to see the doctor. The doctor smiled and said, "Congratulations. You're pregnant. I would say about two months." Fumie looked at the doctor and said, "A baby?" The doctor nodded. "Yes, you're going to have a baby." Fumie stood up, bowed, and said, "Thank you!"
( Ups and downs... )
Fumie couldn't tell them her big news. Not in the middle of the upstairs guy's depressed leaving, or Haruko's excitement about her new beginning.

<to be continued>

I've been trying to come up with a name for them, and I think that's pretty good. It's harvest time in this area in Japan, so the rice fields are ripe for the crows and such to get into. And most of the farmers put up bouncing dervishes to try to reduce the pilferage.

What's a bouncing dervish? Start with two long limber bamboo poles -- say 20 feet long or so? Stand them up about that far apart, with a long string on each of them. In the middle, hanging on the string, there's a hoop -- maybe 3 feet across? -- covered with... I guess it's plastic, or maybe paper. White, anyway. With huge eyes and a mouth, or some similar pattern on it. Most of them have a bright tail on the bottom to help stabilize it. But every passing breeze makes it flip and jump, with a lot of up and down because the poles are very limber.

I think they really make the rice fields decorative at this time of year. Bouncing dervishes everywhere!