In Search of the Village Hugger

Life is short and has no meaning – unless fortified by something enduring.

The above is a close paraphrase of Willa Cather in her Pulitzer winning novel, One of Ours, about everyday guys thrust into the trenches of World War I.

The "something" which endures will vary from person-to-person. In my case, I find some gentle support in the simple expression “everyday guys.”

In a world torn sharply between “our side” and “theirs,” it wise to note that we are all “everyday guys.” No matter the situation or cause, our shared humanity blends us together – or it should. It’s hard to feel exclusive when you discover yourself in another person.

As such, we become better as people not by boosting ourselves up and over those from different backgrounds and circumstances. We become better people by embracing them.

This is what “The Village Hugger,” a Japan Times column from 2006, is all about.

Some notes:

A few months ago, I blogged about the death of our family dog, Tofu. In a time sequence sense, the events here follow Tofu’s demise by about ten days. Publication came later.

In another Japan Times column – one I have yet to blog – I relate a story about my second son when he was very little. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, the boy said:

“A giraffe.”

The disease here is ulcerative colitis (UC), which occurs when ulcers eat the large intestine. UC is quizzical in that it typically strikes in early adulthood and prowls over the populations of North America, Europe and East Asia, leaving the so-called “developing nations” alone. No one knows the cause and there is no cure. UC is a mean sibling to Crohn’s Disease, which attacks the small intestine.

The story related below is my son’s first encounter with UC, while a sophomore in college. I wish it had been his final and the least troubling. Alas, the battle was just beginning.

All of this occurred years before the use of smartphones, at least within our family.

My 2026 title: “In Search of the Village Hugger.” The 2006 Japan Times title is below.

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What Would the Village Hugger Do?

March 4, 2006

Eons ago in an America light-years away, my wife and I stopped at the only eatery available in a town that hit the bull's-eye in the center of nowhere.

As we ordered coffee and toast, an old man shuffling past suddenly stopped and spoke to my wife. She may have been the first Asian he’d ever seen.

"I am not," the man said, "the village idiot."

He shoved his stubbled face close and my wife flinched.

"Nor am I the village drunk."

And now the man pressed her at the elbows and made her stand.

"What I am is the village hugger."

And so saying, he hugged my wife.

"I find this makes the world a better place."

Then he moseyed on, hugging every person in his path.

From that scene of unexpected harmony, we now turn the world upside-down.

I slouch on a rumpled cot in a hospital ward in the American

Northwest. My second son lies out before me with tubes in his body and a packet of blood suspended above his head.

A nurse wiping his brow tells me she too has a 21-year-old boy, a marine somewhere in the firestorm of Iraq.

"He usually e-mails every day, but I haven't heard from him now in a week."

There is a tremble to her lips.

A surgeon enters. I am jet-lagged from my flight, so his words but flutter through my ears: operation… risk… chance of cancer…

"But your son's a lucky fellow. If he'd come in two days later… Well, let's not think about that."

No, let's not.

The surgeon smiles. He has a velvet voice and a bedside manner, both well-rehearsed, I imagine, on patients just like my son – those too feeble to argue back.

"You decide," the fellow says. "But even if the medication works, I'd still advise surgery. Many people go on to lead normal lives."

Then he goes on with his normal life and strolls from the room. The nurse follows. My son weeps. And says:

"What did I do to deserve this?"

For longtime readers of this column, this is the same son who once happily dreamed of growing up to become a giraffe. Now ulcers are chewing his insides. He has dropped 40 pounds in a single month.

My mind replays images of the day I met his mother, standing carefree in the Kyushu sun, of our awkward but determined romance, and of how we beamed with youthful conviction that our Japanese-American bond would triumph over whatever obstacles life flung our way.

But life bides its time and sets traps one can never expect.

"It's not your fault."

I preach on life and its twists, but he is not in the mood to listen.

Einstein must have birthed his theory of relativity in a hospital. Time crawls. We talk. We play cards. We watch the IV tube drip. Every hour – morning and night – I help him rise for the toilet. While he discharges blood, I intake coffee.

On the phone, his mother is frantic. It's frightful to have a child across the world and in harm's way. My son's nurse would agree.

"How's my stepfather?" I ask her.

Incredibly, on almost the same day I rushed to the States for our son, my stepfather also collapsed and had to be helicoptered to an emergency ward in the Midwest. From Oregon to Illinois to Iraq, the Earth seemed to be spinning in flames.

"Holding his own," she says. "You do the same."

I tell her the medication will halt the bleeding and I will bring our son back. I promise her that. We try to hold each other through the telephone line.

From his bed, my son says the first thing he's going to eat when he's well is a plate of nachos. Yet, he knows his sickness is incurable. He may live to be 80, but he will never be well. Not entirely.

"But I'm gonna get better. I am."

And so he does. Well enough so that I can soon walk the hospital halls and haunt the cafeteria.

Sometimes I almost weep myself at the kindness of nurses and doctors. Other times, I boil with stress-fed emotions. I grumble about U.S. health care, medical bills, sugar-pumped cafeteria cookies and a distant war I have never understood.

Another distraught person, whose bumper stickers I can just picture, seethes across the table and says:

"Tell me, mister. Why do you hate America?"

I glare back and tell him I don't. He says I should then shut up or go back where I belong.

"This is the best country in the world and we don't need your kind."

I tell him I love my country so much I can't stand to see it sink to his level. He stomps out, and it's a good thing too. I'm sure he could have beaten me to a pulp.

He's gone, but he's not gone. I sit there in a defensive pout and pick apart our words.

A defeating thought rises from within my memory, a thought that floats above the pain of sickness, conflict and sorrow and nudges my conscience.

The Village Hugger, I bet, would have handled that far differently.

Upstairs, the nurse is beaming.

"I got e-mail from my son! He's fine!"

Great, I tell her, great. May all sons everywhere live long and prosper.

My own son is on his feet. The doctors have released him for a plane ride, but once in Japan, he must zip straight to the hospital.

"We're going home!" he says.

Home…

After so many years in Japan, on which end of the far-reaching ocean does that magic land lie?

Or does it matter? My son and I hug – a hug that spans the globe.

© Thomas Noah Wood

Recent photo of the same son, twenty years, ten hospitalizations, and two major surgeries later.

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