Starting from Loomis and Other Stories

My Parents

KL 25 My Parents Rarely does a day go by when my thoughts don’t turn to my parents, Fukumatsu and Kofusa, an unlikely couple who first met at Angel Island—she a seventeen-year-old picture bride, he a man of the world, age thirty-one. Both were attractive people, and I often wonder if that was the reason for their tempestuous life together. No, I don’t think it was vanity; it was more their character. They were fairly similar— strong-willed and unbending. When he tried to dominate her, there was tension because she would not relent, always standing her ground, asserting her place. They fought a lot, causing much grief for us children . We looked for the times when they were loving. Those moments were so beautiful. KL Sometimes after our bath, when we were sitting around the kitchen table, father would say, “How about making some dango, Mama? “Isn’t it late, Papa?” Mother would say; but I knew we would have dango— our version of a pancake—one huge cake as big as the large frying pan in which it was cooked. Mother would fire up the Wedgewood stove and quickly prepare the batter, and soon we would have our dango. DOI: 10.5876/9781607322542:c02 my parents 26 Theneachofthefourofus—myfather,brother,sister,andI—would break off a piece and eat it with melting butter and blackberry jam. “This is good,” Father would say, and we would all agree. “Have some too, Mama?” “It is so late,” Mother would say, but she would join us and Father would laugh. We always ate it with our hands, the real butter melting from the heat of the dango and the sweet-tart blackberry jam. Today I insist on maple syrup with my pancakes, but the blackberry jam was special, made with blackberries that grew wild in the country. The dango scene is a happy memory. The dango tasted like nothing I’ve had since. KL I think they stayed together because of us—the children—and because of the hostile environment outside the home. But their life together was quite brief—just twenty years. Fukumatsu developed tuberculosis and lived in isolation from his family and friends until his death, first in a tent he set up in a field behind our house and then in a sanatorium before and during the war. When he died years later, emphysema was given as the official cause of death, but his lungs had been ravaged by so many years of disease. Kofusa died at age eighty-two, spending the latter half of her life free and independent, something she had always fought for. But it was a widow’s life, lonely and incomplete. As long as the blood coursing through me is warm, Fukumatsu and Kofusa will be with me. I embody them both, the good and the bad, the sad and the happy. ...