tanabata

Not long ago I found use for the bamboo growing next to our house when we were celebrating Swedish Midsummer. This week it was Japan’s turn to use bamboo for a cultural celebration called Tanabata. Tanabata basically means 7th night, and is a festival usually celebrated on July 7th. Tanabata is a love story with two stars starring as the struggling couple separated by the milky way. They only get to meet once a year, on this very night.

One of the most popular traditions celebrating tanabata is to write a wish on a colored piece of paper and hang it on a bamboo tree, and this we did. After my wife’s work, just when the sun was setting after a very rainy day, we did a little three-people-wish-tree in our garden. After having written our wishes on little pieces of paper, we tied them to the bamboo branch and stood looking at it while the light disappeared.

My wife wrote a long wish and I seem to have managed to replicate it, although in much fewer and simpler words – thinking about the Tanabata story, I am so grateful that me and my wife, who from the beginning were separated by oceans and continents, were able to find a way to be together. I hope it will always be that way, and I hope our wishes for the future will come true; as if the skies answered us, a heavy rain suddenly came making little streams everywhere, and I imagined this being a river that often tradition has it carries the floating bamboo and wishes away as an end of the Tanabata celebration.

Our son got his hands all stained while writing his wish. I have no idea what he wished for, but he was very happy, and that is all I can wish for.

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