A 10-year wait turns out to be exactly the right length to warm her heart.

A while back, our Japanese-language reporter Mariko Ohanabatake was sorting through her mail for the day, and mixed in among the restaurant fliers, condominium ads, and other junk mail was a letter from her mom. You might be thinking that it’s unusual to bother sending a written letter in today’s digital world, where pretty much everyone has a phone with at least one messaging app, if not more, in their pocket, and you’d be right. What made this written-on-paper correspondence even more unusual, though, is that Mariko’s mom passed away from stomach cancer roughly a year and a half before the letter was delivered.

What’s more, the letter itself was written even farther in the past. In 2015, Mariko’s mom attended an event in her hometown of Nagasaki in which participants could write letters and entrust them to the organizers, who would mail them 10 years later. At the time, Mariko’s mother was yet to be diagnosed with her eventual medical condition, but she was still in a pensive mood. In the months prior to writing the letter, Mariko’s mom had lost both her younger and older brothers to illness, and her ex-husband, Mariko’s father, had also recently passed away. Mariko herself was also going through a rough time. This was before she joined our site as a writer, and she was still stuck in a punishingly exhausting and exploitative job elsewhere.

So no doubt Mariko’s mom had a lot on her mind about family, the pursuit of happiness, and the flow of time as she put pen to paper to write a message to her daughter a decade in the future. Evidently, she’d even gone to the trouble of contacting the organization that ran the letter-writing event after Mariko got married in 2023, updating the delivery information to reflect her new married family name and address.

▼ The letter Mariko received

So what did Mariko’s mom have to say?

This has been a year with so many very difficult days.

Right now, I’m at Mizubenomori Park with your aunt.

In 10 years’ time, will everyone be doing well? Will you, Mariko, be leading a happy life? Will you have children?

I hope you are all doing well.

– Mom

The question about whether or not future Mariko (now present Mariko) would have children stuck out to her, but not because she felt any anger or resentment about her mother’s curiosity. Mariko didn’t get married until she was around 40, but never once had her mom pressured her about finding someone and tying the knot. Because of her age, Mariko went into her marriage understanding that kids weren’t really likely to be part of the deal, but her mom never grumbled about wanting grandchildren. As a matter of fact, in one of their conversations, Mariko’s mom explicitly told her:

“I like kids, but I can’t picture you as a mother. Don’t worry about giving me grandkids, though. You were an adorable child, and that’s all I needed.”

Mariko believes that her mom’s words were genuine, but reading the letter, she couldn’t help but wonder if her mom really would have liked to have had a grandchild, even if she respected and understood that Mariko hadn’t walked that path in life. Given her mom’s kind, caring nature, she could even imagine her nervously wringing her hands in heaven, regretting mentioning grandkids in the letter she’d written a decade ago and that she knew was about to be delivered to Mariko, and which might stir up some complex emotions.

And yeah, the question in the letter did have Mariko feeling emotional, because exactly three days before it arrived in her mailbox…

…Mariko found out that she’s pregnant.

Yes, Mariko, now in her 40s, is expecting. With the timing of the letter’s delivery having been decided on 10 years ago, dry logic would say that it’s a coincidence that it arrived right after Mariko learned she’d be having a baby, but Mariko can’t help but feel like there’s some sort of fate involved, so that her mom can breathe a sigh of relief since the question about whether Mariko would have kids of her own feels prescient rather than pestering.

▼ Mariko’s mom

Mariko’s due date is coming up in the summer, so it’ll still be a while before her baby is big enough to talk or read. Once the kid is, though, she looks forward to showing them the letter from Grandma, and telling them the story of when it arrived.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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