Back

"Hi Mother. I'm back now."

"Back where?"

"Back in Japan!"

"Oh! I didn't know you'd left."

That was my first conversation I had with my mother when I called to let the family know I had arrived safely. I guess she figured I'd just stepped out for a few minutes...

The flight back to Japan was uneventful. Tetsu met me at the airport and we drove the two hours back to Nikko arriving around 1:30 in the morning. The cats gave me a warm welcome. I had two on my lap the minute I sat down and Cleo spent some time caressing my carry on bag.

Choco, I'm afraid barely looked at me. She was upset at being left out in the yard until so late and lunged into the house with eyes only for food. Tetsu says she gave him the same "unwelcome" when he picked her up from staying at the vets. We certainly don't have much of a loving/loyal pet owner/faithful friend relationship.

Yesterday morning Tetsu and I went out for breakfast (no food in the house) and the rice, miso soup, fermented beans, seaweed side-dish, deep friend fish and pickled plum was SOOO delicious! I guess I've had my fill of cold-cut sandwiches and burritos for awhile.

While in America it seemed like all we did was eat at all hours of the day and I swear some days I had 5 meals!!! (I would eat a granola breakfast before everyone else got up, then join people for a breakfast again at a Mexican restaurant, we'd eat sandwiches around 1:30 and then dinner again when my brother came home starving at 4:00 and then someone would go out and get hamburgers or something at 9:00... I am afraid to step on a scale.)

Japan is very humid and green. I love the green! Though the temperature is lower than it was in California, (it was about 41 degrees in California the last week I was there... In Japan it is about 36 degrees.) it feels hotter in Japan and the TV even has emergency warnings to be careful of heat stroke. The Japanese heat is uncomfortable!

Today I will start unpacking. Tetsu had the house clean and fresh smelling for my return so not much cleaning to do there. It feels good to be back!

Good-bye again

Well, I am basically packed up and ready to go. Just a few toiletries to stash away in the corner of a suitcase. I must be feeling confident about not being overweight, because I haven't lugged my suitcases to the scales yet. Of course Tetsu took two suitcases home already...

Over my life I've said good-bye to my family many, many times. As a child my family and I would fly across the States to Indiana and spend summers with my grandparents and fly back to California a month later.

"Good-bye, good-bye. See you next year or maybe you'll come out at Christmas."

When I went away to college in Oregon it was a breezy good-bye with scarcely a glance over my shoulder.

When I went off to Japan the first time, my friend Jane took me to the airport.

"Hmmph. My family is not even coming to see me off!"

No tears there.

I don't think there were any tears when I left Takumi in California for college 8 years ago. He was SO ready to get away, and I was SO ready to stop mothering him.

When Leiya went off to high school 7 years ago... well, that was hard. We both had soggy handkerchiefs that time...

But my mother has never been a weeper. For the past four or five years she usually waves good-bye to me at the front door (the last time she came to the airport with us I almost missed my flight... She's not too rapid a walker...) but I find it harder and harder to stay dry eyed. My mother is 90. And my next scheduled visit is a year away...

Takumi is picking me up to take me to LAX in a couple hours so our good-byes will be said at the front door again. I'm already thinking I'll need my handkerchief.

Grandma

Thank you for all the suggestions on books yesterday. I will go to Amazon.com and download the samples of the ones you've mentioned. Wow! My reading schedule will be nicely planned out for me for the next few months!

***********

Most of my reading is done at Grandma's house. By the front window or on her sofa. Kiana often comes over to read in the cool house also. No matter whether it is me or Kiana, whether we are sitting in strong light or in shadows, Grandma will say,

"I don't think you have enough light there. You are going to ruin your eyes. Turn on a light."

We may already have the light on or we may be squinting from the sunlight coming through the window, but my mother still has to say these words. That's what she's done for 50 some years, that's what comes out of her mouth automatically.

You know how when you are late to going somewhere and you look at your watch just to see if you're going to make it to your deadline? I will glance at my watch and think,

"Good, I still have time." (or "Bad, I'm already 5 minutes late.")

But maybe a few minutes later I'll think,

"What time is it, anyway?"

I looked at that watch but the time didn't register in my brain. Just whether I was late or not.

I watch my mother and think that this must be how her brain cells work these days... She carries on a normal conversation, does normal activities yet some things just don't register.

Like the turning on the light conversation above. Another one is suggesting that she take us out to dinner.

Practically daily my mother will suddenly look up and say,

"Why don't I take us all out to dinner?"

It matters not that we have just come HOME from dinner out, or maybe my mother will be watching Marcy COOK dinner when she makes the invitation.

"Thank you anyway, Grandma. I think we'll eat this tonight."

Another of Grandma's idiosyncrasies is addressing Marcy's news of the day with,

"How do YOU know?"

Some daughter-in-law's could get a little huffy about that...

"I just KNOW these things, Grandma. Trust me."

I can also predict the routine that goes with my mother her checking her purse. Grandma has a big ol' BLACK purse (in all my life I have never seen her carry anything but a BLACK purse. She did not believe in color for purses or shoes... She said black purses and shoes matched her hair. So actually she should be carrying a white purse these days but you get the point.)

The routine goes... Out comes the wallet. Unzip the wallet and check if there is money. At that point if there is money then she'll zip up the wallet and put it back in the purse. If there isn't any money then she'll make the comment that she needs to go to the bank and THEN zip up her wallet and put it back in the purse. The purse will go down on the floor beside her. But in a few minutes, she will pick the purse back up again and pull out her wallet. Her brain is thinking

"Hmm. I wonder if I have money for something." but it doesn't register that she has already checked for it.

She can do this as long as the purse is in her line of vision. It can drive us (me) batty.

And how many times this summer has Grandma asked Kiana what grade in school she is in. It's not like they haven't seen each other in months. I wonder why Grandma does not think it odd that she's asking her granddaughter whom she LIVES with about what grade in school she is. Even if she can't remember the answer, isn't it logical to think you've probably had this conversation before? I guess not... Grandma sees Kiana and asks the same ol' question.

"What grade are you in school now Kiana?"

And Kiana just smiles and politely gives the same answer.

It makes me smile. It perplexes me. It makes me a little wistful. I'm grateful that most else about Grandma this summer seems up to par. It must be a normal part of aging.

"How do YOU know?"

Book reviews

The heat still rages around us and the past week has been filled with lounging around in Grandma's air-conditioned house or out at the air-conditioned mall. Not much activity going on in either place. I have made numerous trips to the library to check out books that I've heard about or stumble across and I usually buy a book or two at the used book stall. What better way to spend a sweltering, hot day than inside a cool room with a book! (But sometimes the book reading turns into a long nap...)

What I'm actually doing is looking for an appropriate book for some of my students, ladies, to read. They like something with an American flavor about it, not necessarily contemporary fiction but maybe not classics that they have already read in their younger days. We have over the years read; To Kill a Mockingbird, Sidetracked Home Executives, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Last Lecture, The Phantom Tollbooth, Holes, American Pie, and Where the Heart Is. I need to start finding the next book for us.

My Year of Meats turned out to be a book about a woman acquainted with both Japan and America, she being a sort of liaison between the two cultures. You can see how I might relate to that. I found myself laughing and nodding at the common occurrences that are not so common in another culture. Lots of dialog (that always makes a book easier for students to get through) and of course sprinklings of Japanese language. But I think a bit too much sex in there for my ladies...

I read Agatha Christie just because I don't think I've ever read anything of hers... I enjoyed that immensely but the English is a bit antiquated for my ladies.

I picked up a dollar book called Jewel at the library which I really, really enjoyed but it is probably too long for my ladies' class. It was interesting to read as it followed a family crossing the country into California and mentioned many of the towns (and the city where my mother lives today!).

Of course I had to get in an easy read from the library, A Quilter's Holiday, but since my friends aren't quilters I don't think they'd appreciate that much...

And I guess I'll be taking back books loaned to me by my friend. Implosion, Water for Elephants, Three Cups of Tea, Bonhoeffer.

Any easy-to-read, realistic American culture (not too much sex... it is so embarrassing to read aloud with my ladies...), lots of dialog books that you've read recently? Amazon allows me to buy almost anything these days.

Black and white

I had found some of the old style black, cardboard albums way up in the back my mother's bedroom closet. They needed to be carefully lifted down as the bindings were broken, the cording holding the brittle papers had disintegrated, the black album sheets fraying and fading brown at the edges. Even so, as I carefully pulled the books from the top shelf, bits and pieces of old paper wafted down on me like confetti and dotted the carpet all the way to the living room table where I laid them out.

Black and white. Everything was black and white. The album covers, the pages, the photo corners peeling and pulling away, the photos themselves, even the white script beneath the photos. Not that there was much script. And even Grandma couldn't tell if this was her own handwriting from her younger days... or maybe it was her own mother's. Hand printed in white... It sort of looks like my mother's handwriting... but then again, probably not. No, the albums must be my grandmother's.

The photos themselves were of somber faced people dressed in kimono, most of them posed at a studio for a formal picture.

Children.

People standing by a shrine during winter. My goodness, if the movie "the Last Samurai" had been shot in black and white, these could have been scenes from there.

My grandmother, upon marrying my grandfather, left Japan never to return. She claimed that she wanted to remember Japan as she'd left it. I can imagine her family sending her family pictures each year... a formal record of how her brothers or cousins or nieces and nephews changed over the years. People she would never see again, and pictures that meant nothing to my grandfather nor to my mother nor even to me.

There are no indications WHO these people are... just an occasional name and sometimes a date. I will put the albums back on the top shelf of the closet to consider at another time if I want to keep them or not. I've taken pictures now of the photos of my own grandparents but the rest...

On the last page of the album there is a small faded and slightly out of focus picture of Mt. Fuji, the "mecca" for all Japanese.

"There is nothing more beautiful in the world than Mt. Fuji." I have heard Japanese say.

My grandmother must have thought so too to have saved this small image of a Japan that would never change.

God bless

Yesterday I was next door visiting my mother's neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. G are in their mid-eighties and Mrs. G cares for her garden and chauffeurs her husband to and from doctors' appointments. Mr. G has a strong Nicaraguan accent has always been the patriarch in their devoutly Catholic family. Part of my annual routine is to visit them and see pictures of their numerous grandchildren and hear about what everyone is doing these days.

Mr. and Mrs. G and I had just settled down at the dining room table with iced lemonade, when the telephone rang.

"It's our granddaughter's boyfriend. He wants to speak with both of us. I'll go get on the extension. We'll just be a minute."

Mrs. G hurried off to the bedroom telephone. Mr. G shuffled to the dining room phone. I sipped my lemonade and inadvertently eavesdropped.

"Yes.... Yes.... Oh, how nice.... I am very happy.... Of course.... We welcome you to our family.... That is wonderful.... Please let us know....."

Pretty soon Mr. and Mrs. G were back with me in the dining room.

"That was our grand daughter's boyfriend. He wanted to get permission from Eli (Mr. G) to propose today. He is such a nice boy. We have been waiting for them to make an announcement. Isn't that nice that he would call us first."

Mr. G was just beaming.

"Oh! Then your grand daughter hasn't been asked yet? You know what is coming before she does. That really is exciting. Tonight will be the big night then?"

But not more than a half an hour later (Mr. and Mrs. G and I were still drinking lemonade and I was still looking at grandchildren's pictures) when the phone rang again.

"Yes? Yes! Isn't that wonderful! Congratulations! We are so happy for you both.... He is a wonderful young man..... You will be beautiful... Keep us informed about the wedding plans..... God bless you both."

The young man proposed within minutes of getting the grandfather's permission! Isn't that a courtly and romantic thing to do?

I felt blessed to be on the sidelines.

(Pictures from Mrs. G's rose garden.)

Good friends

I spent two days with my friend Jane and her family down near the beach and returned last evening to the baking 105° (40℃) temperatures of my mother's area. Air conditioning is a must for Grandma (and she benefits from the whole family napping at her place and staying cool.) The cool beach area was NI~CE~!

Jane and I have known each other for more than 40 years. Whew! A LONG~~ time! Jr. high school acquaintances becoming friends in high school, and then staying in touch throughout college and thereafter. Neither one of us is much for letter writing (or e-mail these days) but Jane gives me a call every so often and I spend at least a day with her every summer in her extremely lovely house.

This year it was great fun to relax in her home's elegant surroundings and catch up on what our children are doing these days and talk about our high school days.

I love Jane for her positive outlook on life, living each moment to the fullest with lots of fun balanced by serious outreach to the world near and far. She has been blessed with so much but she is equally generous with her blessings. During the two days we ate frozen yogurt, watched a Captain America DVD, raided her bookshelf for my future reading material, made a work-out walk to the nearby harbor, ate great Mexican food and talked about the importance of a church family in our lives.

Good friends are what keeps a person thinking and developing!