Holy Prayers in a Horse's Ear: A Japanese American Memoir

Holy Prayers in a Horse’s Ear

Holy Prayers in a horse’s ear To Nelson Rowley Whose unholy prayers unhorsed me in mid-Pacific foreword The writing of this book has been one of the most pleasurable adventures of my life and I cannot relinquish it without a few inadequate words of thanks to Dorothy Scarborough for her patient friendship in piloting me through my first literary channels; to Louis D. Froelich for his belief that this manuscript could be written; to Marietta Neff whose personal charm made my first contact with an editor a delight; to Louis G. Haas, the wizard of Saxonwoods, whose many faceted personality is a constant inspiration; to Berta Darling who talked me out of the kitchen; to my husband who has never put his finger in my pies and to Nelson Rowley who has never taken his finger out of them. Kathleen Tamagawa Eldridge 3 chapter one Trying to write about one’s life is like grabbing at a whirling circle. There doesn’t seem to be any beginning and of course as I’m still “going strong,” there is no proper end. With frantic gesture, I grab at the circle and whichever way I turn I get no-where; from nothingness to the unknown future. But are we not all lured along these same fool tracks of destiny? I have been called a “scene of tragedy and intense gaiety,” silly words—unless you think about them, and then you know that there is a point at which things of tragedy do become intensely funny—it’s what is called the saturation point, wherein tragedy becomes chaotic and breaks up into absurdity. I’m familiar enough with that point of existence; in fact I’m not sure but that I sit on the saturation point most of the time. The trouble with me is my ancestry. I really should not have been born; as a matter of fact half of my world declares I never was born. They say, that I am the non-existent daughter of my parents, that I am not their lineal descendant. No, I am not illegitimate, but just an outlawed product of a legal marriage. Illegitimacy is often inconspicuous and easily concealed and sometimes it is even paraded for purposes of publicity. My problem goes deeper than that, for no law can change, no later ceremony right it, for even if I should be completely existent—the problem of my ancestry will still remain. My parents came from two small islands on the opposite sides of the East. My mother was “North of Ireland,” my father is Japanese and I have faced the traditions of the two worlds, so to speak; an occidental and an oriental. Ireland and Japan! Even an instant’s consideration of that combination will convey the thought that such a field of battle for life must needs be a “scene of tragedy and intense gaiety.” My father came to America when he was a little boy of eleven, with a Mr. and Mrs. Chick, under whose kindly supervision his father had placed him. In those days when Japan was first opened, it was progressive for young Japan to accept gracefully and completely the new world. So Father was sent here as a child to enter our Chicago public 5 schools and study our strange barbaric customs. Chicago at that time was not the great Chicago of today, but our customs are unalterable. The question of birthdays puzzled him a lot. In Japan there are no individual birthdays, as everyone celebrates a sort of combined birthday on each New Year’s day. Father noticed that all the little boys and girls at school would say, “tomorrow is my birthday” and everyone would give them a present. He thought it was merely a custom of ours, to choose any day on the calendar and announce to our friends our present-accepting mood. One day, feeling lonely, he confided to one of his classmates the news of his approaching birthday and, sure enough, it worked. Everyone in the class remembered him. It was not until he repeated the performance a month or so later that he discovered our arrangements concerning the custom of natal anniversaries. April Fool’s day distressed him a great deal, and when the boys fed him biscuits of cotton, rushed him down the streets to see imaginary fires and gave him a sponge to eat his soup with...