checkpoint

The alarm on my phone is set to sound like church bells, although they are ringing rather early this Sunday morning. Bleary-eyed, I turn it off, not worried about waking up my husband -- he should be up, anyway. I had offered to take Miles to the airport by myself, but he said he wanted to go, too.

Our son has a 6:15 am flight out of SFO, direct to Philadelphia, for a college visit. It's only for a few days, but it feels like a trial run of the real thing, less than a year away. We decided to leave the house by 4:30 am. Which really means 4:45 am.

I am putting on my make-up when I hear my son chatting with my husband. Miles is up and ready to go! He had packed his bags the night before, printed out his boarding passes and forms required by the college, charged up his phone, and clearly knew better than to rely on me to wake him up. I got myself dressed and went down to get the sandwiches I had packed for him last night, added napkins and a bag of Popchips, and tried to impart some words of wisdom to him.

"So, when you're done eating the sandwiches or discarding what you decide not to eat -- you should at least keep the big outside Ziploc, because that will still be clean, and it's a good idea to have an extra Ziploc bag when you are traveling. They come in handy sometimes," I say, trying not to sound overly anal, and failing miserably.

"Okay," replies my son. No judgment or eye-rolling. Just the usual okay, thank goodness.

I find myself telling him random things like this with increasing frequency these days. It's as if I sense that my days with him are numbered, and I am realizing there is so much I am not sure he would think of on his own. My father was relentless in telling us the "right" way to do things, and, quite frankly, I still hear his voice today in my head, making me do things better. I fear I have failed my kids in this area, and I'm cramming it in now, in their teenage years. I doubt that they like it much, but they humor me by just saying "okay."

We drive across the Bay Bridge, lit up in its stark beauty against the black sky ... and then, it feels like only a minute before we are driving through the fogginess of South City. We have arrived at our destination: San Francisco Airport.

My husband tells me that he'll wait at the curb with the car -- no need to pay for parking when it will only be a few minutes to see our son off to the security checkpoint. I get out of the car to see Miles jokingly shaking hands with his father as they say their good-bye's, and am surprised when he turns to me, hand extended, saying "Bye, Mom ..."

"What? Oh! No, I'm walking in with you," I say as I give him a quick hug at the curb. "Where's your bag?"

"It's in the back. I'll get it," he zips over to get it and he follows me into the terminal. We stop in front of the monitors, looking up in unison. I see his flight information on the screen, but I don't say anything.

"US Airways. 6:15. On time. Gate 26," my son reads off the monitor. I'm glad I didn't say anything. My son is growing up. He's a seasoned traveler. He will be fine. I'm so relieved. I get ready to say my real good-bye to him.

"Okay -- have a good time," I say, as he hugs me and picks my feet off the floor in the process, "-- but not too much of a good time."

I chuckle, and he gives me the polite okay-that's-a-weird-mom-thing-to-say smile as he starts walking away from me ... and away from the entrance to the checkpoint.

"Wait! Miles! No -- you enter over there, under the sign that says: 'ENTER HERE' --"

"Oh, wait, what? Oh, okay ..."

And with that, my son walked off in the right direction, through the ID checkpoint.

He didn't look back once. I know, because I stood there, discreetly watching him, trying to stay out of his sight. I could have stood there and waved frantically, screaming, "MILES!!!  MILES!!! DON'T FORGET TO CALL!!! MAKE SURE YOU REMEMBER TO EAT YOUR LUNCH! REMEMBER THE TIME DIFFERENCE! THEY ARE THREE HOURS AHEAD OF US! DO YOU HAVE YOUR TOOTHBRUSH? YOU BRUSHED YOUR TEETH, DIDN'T YOU? CALL ME WHEN YOU GET THERE!!! BYE!!!"

But, I didn't.

Instead, I watched in silence. Then, I noticed a few other adults standing randomly, facing towards the security checkpoint maze, much closer to the glass barrier that separates the travelers from those of us watching and waiting. I walk over to that area, not making eye contact with anybody, trying to keep my sight-line on my son.

"Excuse me, ma'am." I look down towards the voice of a man bending over near my foot. Apparently, I'm standing too close to a storefront gate that needs to open, so I apologize and move a few steps over. I look up. Where's Miles? Did he already get through security? Could he have gotten through so quickly?

I panic for a millisecond, then realize he is just blocked from my view by a post. I watch as he gets up to the pre-conveyor belt area, puts his bag on the table, grabs a bin, puts in his shoes, puts in his phone, takes off his sweatshirt, puts his backpack down, scoots his stuff over to make room for the person behind him, puts his sweatshirt into the bin, puts his bags on the conveyor belt, waits his turn, and steps into the screening machine. I see him put his hands up as the imaging device does its thing. It's getting harder to see him now, but I catch enough of him to see him grab something (his sweatshirt? yes, his sweatshirt), put on his sweatshirt and grab something else (his shoes?) and something else and something else and then move away from the conveyor belt.

He sits down and disappears from sight. I think about leaving, but wait a moment longer, and try to find him. Could that be him? No, not him. Is that him? It's hard to see with my old eyes, but I make out a young man wearing a hoodie. Is that him? That looks like his backpack. Ah, yes, and that's his bag.

That's him. My son. The young man.

I watch as he disappears down the concourse, not looking back.

Note: I didn't cry as I watched him go, but I can't say the same as I write this. They really do grow up so fast.

snapshot

We go about our lives, increasingly on display. In the old days (i.e., the late 1990’s) when internet service was slow and modems were noisy, with their boing-boing-ccchhhhhhh calls of power, we resorted to sharing via snail mail. A snapshot printed on a photo card, sent out during the holiday season. A few photos enclosed with a thank you note. This was about all we would present to the outside world: a glossy version of our lives, maybe with a carefully edited note on recent happenings.

The video version of our lives, of course, is undoubtedly less attractive. Yes, we now have YouTube, but I find it increasingly hard to believe that anything posted on there isn’t staged. And, the parts that are real, are still edited, in that holiday-card-ready kind of way. This is how we prefer to see our own, and each other’s lives. Nobody really wants to look at the outtakes, the parts that we want desperately to die a thousand deaths on the cutting room floor. And yet, somehow, it is those parts that tend to live on in some deep recesses of our minds, perhaps just reminding us that we, as human beings -- and especially when we human beings choose to live only within ourselves – are fallible and incomplete. It is the reaching out and connecting with others that makes us feel whole.

In our newfangled digital age, we see each other’s snapshots constantly on Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat (oops, wait I missed that!), tumblr, Twitter and probably a zillion other places. It was on Facebook that I saw a post from a friend that has made me think about these things. It said: Erik is missing. I looked at it and paused. Wasn’t her husband’s name Erik? This was not a post about a family pet. This was about her husband. I reached out via Facebook, and we spoke for the first time since our college years.

I would discover that the happy, carefree life of hers that I had viewed through the lens of holiday-card-emails and Facebook posts, had been punctuated by times of darkness that never showed in the snapshots I saw. Erik had battled an assortment of demons, with my friend holding her family together, insulating her children from the consequences of his addictions when she could, and finally setting boundaries on their interactions when she could not.

The struggles she faced living with a bipolar husband were finally highlighted, in video, on a newscast in Los Angeles. Although she is a very private person, she has shed her opaque veneer for a far more translucent one, with the public peering in on her and her family’s lives as they search for their husband and father, trading their privacy for the hope of finding him. She would continue peeling back the layers for the public, doing radio interviews, newspaper interviews, any medium that would take her story to a broader audience.

Summer has come and gone, still with no word on Erik’s whereabouts. And yet, there is hope – hope that he will be found, and hope that his story will help others. While I continue to post my own aspirational glossy snapshots, as well as view those of my friends, I will try to remember to reach out in real time, and be ready to lend support when the story behind the images is less than picture perfect.

For more information go to the Help Us Find Erik Lamberg page on Facebook.

ode to joe

I lost a good friend on Friday night. I will miss you so much, Joe. So glad I got to see you in May ... so sorry that I didn't get my act together to meet up with you since. I always thought I would see you again to share another meal, have another laugh, part with another heartfelt hug. It is truly unbelievable that you are gone.
****************************************
re-post of big buttons (february 2009)

My friend Joe looks down at me as I am buttoning my Woo Stassia coat, and comments,
"Whoa, those are some big buttons you've got there."
"Joe, I love it when you talk about my big buttons," I quip, knowing that he will find this amusing. He is, after all, always ready with a one-liner -- and I know this because we have known each other for over two decades now.

When I first met him, he was on a basketball court, even though it sometimes seemed that he was playing football. Off the court, he was usually wearing his Doc Martens, jeans, a t-shirt and a leather jacket. He wore his hair shaved around the back and sides, longer and slicked back on top -- clearly the inspiration for Gavin Newsom's current hairstyle. When we went out to a club, he wouldn't (or couldn't) do the Cabbage Patch. "Do your own dance!" he would say with a smile, as he busted some unique move that he must have created himself or learned during his days as a Valley Guy. He is one of the few people I know who is skinnier and in better shape than he was twenty years ago, but aside from his trimmed down physique, he is the same Joe to me. We used to bond over things like how to cut and roll a room, back in the day when we used to paint our own houses -- before we had kids.

The occasion for seeing Joe (and Nancy, Bill, Debbie, Tim, Ada, Jin, Peter, Steve, Onilda, Jackie and "the kids") tonight was a Happy Super Chinese New Year's Bowl Party, complete with chips & guacamole, calamari, roast duck, pressed duck, chicken, ribs, crab, shrimp, fish, chow mein, two different seafood & veggie dishes, fried rice, sticky rice, duck & organic greens salad, seven-layer jell-o, and a berry trifle made with Chinese sponge cake for dessert. Orchestrated by Debbie and Bill, we somehow managed to find a date when all of us and most of our kids were available to spend a few hours together. As we sat around the dinner table, we talked about how we all knew one another, and it was interesting to see that all of my relationships in that room were somehow tied to my summer clerkship for the Asian Law Caucus in 1987, when Bill took me with him to play basketball. It was great to just have some time together, talking about the old and the new; potty-training puppies and college applications; affirmative action and domestic violence; lumpia and egg rolls; Top Chef and CNN; the Cardinals and the Steelers. Real conversations in real time. Friendships that started out with being connected by something other than a Facebook link. Wow. What a concept.

Thanks for a great evening, and a toast to all the pre-Facebook friendships out there. And, yes, Joe -- I do have some really big buttons. I look forward to showing them to you again sometime soon.

once a farmer

In my renewed effort to enjoy all my jellybeans, I decided to join the dog when he rang the bell hanging on the backdoor, his "command" for me to open the door for him. He has me trained pretty well, and I'm sure he would agree. It's a beautiful morning, sunny already but not too hot. The dog does what he usually does -- plops down on a sunny patch of grass. I have part of the newspaper with me, so I read for a bit, learning what I can about the new PS4 vs. Xbox debate, and what percentage of people actually eat breakfast everyday.

After a while, the dog is still lying there, and I've run out of reading material. I feel an undeniable desire ... to do some gardening. I hop inside, grab my hat, my gloves, and my clippers. It's time to get to work.

I start with deadheading the roses, which are blooming much better this year since I remembered to prune them before Super Bowl Sunday (a tip a neighbor gave me at the first house we lived in, and I have tried to adhere to, even as the Super Bowl has been moved back into February). I trim back the vining thing with the little white flowers, so pretty to look at but an annoyance in the current layout. I will need to stay on this task throughout the summer, or it will get too friendly with the fig tree, pulling it into its grasp and strangling its limbs.

The dog is now rolling around, thrashing his head about and growling at some phantom playmate until he stops, breathing heavily, and continues what he was doing before: lying on the grass. I turn back to the yardwork, and I remember a discussion with my sister when we talked about our mutual love of gardening, and I can hear her saying, "I think our ancestors must have been farmers. I'll be pulling weeds out of muddy ground, and I always think about rice farmers, and how we probably had ancestors who did that." I think she's right. Or, perhaps, it's just being raised by parents who spent their childhoods in Japan, where nature and gardening are just treated with a different level of respect than it is in our American culture. We spent hours as kids pulling weeds and messing around with bugs, and I actually thought it was fun. Our garden always looked great, thanks to my parents and a couple of uncles who knew bonsaiand would help my dad trim our shrubs to perfection.

I also remember one day, pulling weeds with my husband and telling him what my sister said about our family coming from farmers. Without missing a beat, he stood there wearing a pair of my dad's old gardening gloves, both of us covered in a thin film of grime from being outside all day, and replied: "Yeah. I think my ancestors must have been merchants."Can I get a rimshot? Hey, diggy diggy ... the guy definitely knows how to make me laugh. And, I think he's right. Some of us are born to be close to the earth, and some of us would rather go make some money and pay somebody to do that. Luckily, I like being out here, and I have a dog who will remind me to come outside and tend to the roses.

counting backwards

"What's up with the buttons?" Theresa blurts out at the deli ladies.
The deli ladies look like they are going to freak out. "Oh my god, the buttons! My mom collected buttons. The only thing I kept of hers is this box of buttons."
Clearly, Theresa had been sent to the deli to communicate these messages from the afterlife to the deli ladies, and the Long Island Medium has another successful segment for her show.

I am mesmerized. Although it's basically about dead people, this is a really happy show. This Theresa woman gets to deliver good messages to random people from beyond. A box of buttons, a stuffed shark hanging over a boy's bed, a pocket watch hidden in a sofa, a catch phrase, a nickname that nobody else knew about -- all of these things serve as her certificate of authenticity in a given situation. Tears of joy outnumber tears of sadness on this show.

As I watch episode after episode, unable to turn away and unaware that this was going to turn into some kind of marathon, I start thinking about my own mortality, counting backwards from the age I think I am likely to live until (based on family history) and calculate how old my children will be at that time. Not happy with that result, I start thinking about how old I will be when my children are my age, and am a tiny bit appalled at the answer.

To see my kids live up to my current age, I will have to live for a good 35 more years, and hopefully, go beyond that in an able-bodied manner that allows me to be useful to my kids or my grandchildren, experiencing the beauty of grandmotherhood without becoming a burden. Or, at least, not too much of a burden. That's a lot of years. By that time, my husband will be in his nineties. He has a good chance of reaching that ripe old age, thought, since he's got better long-life genes in his family than I do.

I remember my late father-in-law, then the spitting image of an active, healthy senior, sitting at our kitchen table, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. He was getting ready to drive into the City to talk to some folks at a senior center -- not for himself, but to see how they ran things, so he could apply these ideas back in Seattle -- and saying to me with a tone of disgust, "Ninety. My life expectancy is ninety! Now, they tell me I have to find something to keep me busy until I'm NINETY." He made it sound dreadful. Trying to make polite conversation, I offered something lame, like, "Well, you can golf ..." to which I'm sure he just shot me a look of disgust. He was tired of having to stay "busy" and challenge himself everyday, but that was what he would do, as long as he had anything to say about it. For him, relaxation was overrated.

One of my friends told me that when he turned fifty, he started counting how many days he had left in his projected life. This, he told me, was a natural thing to do, especially for men -- looking back on his life, and trying to project his future. Calculating that he would live to be eighty, he would have had 10,957 days left. It sounds like a lot, and it probably feels like a lot, too. Maybe it even feels like so many days that you would view it with dread. But if you start counting backwards everyday, suddenly the end is closer than it was yesterday, and one's time on earth feels much more finite.

It's easy to see only the mundane in our lives, when each day just feels like a laundry list of things to do, including doing laundry. I have the fleeting thought that perhaps I would value each day more if I had a way of reminding myself that our time on earth is limited. Maybe I would eat better. No, I mean really eat better. And watch my weight. And get organized, because how will anybody know where anything is when I'm gone?

 What if I got a giant jar of 10,957 jellybeans and took one out each day, watching the jar become more and more empty as the years passed? Maybe that would help ... but I know I'll never do this. First of all, counting out all those jellybeans would take a long time, not to mention the difficulty of finding a jar big enough to hold them all. Also, I'm too superstitious to do this. What if I was meant to put 16,000 jellybeans in, and shortchanged myself by 5,043 days? What if I miscounted? What if somebody else ate the jellybeans while I wasn't looking and depleted the jar prematurely? I know it is silly and illogical to think that I would drop dead on-the-spot when the jar was empty (which I will attribute to having watched one too many Twilight Zone marathons), but why tempt fate? In any case, I will not be embarking on the jellybean jar experiment. Jar or no jar, my days are numbered, and I need to do a better job of valuing each day.

preggers again

This is going to feel like a flashback to an earlier post, but really, I am not obsessed with pregnancy. Sure, I miss the days of unfettered eating, forty-pound weight gain, swollen ankles, the development of hips that were wider than my shoulders, and boobs that actually require a bra. The one thing I don't miss: boob sweat (which, since the aforementioned bigger-than-normal boobs were only temporary, I have not had to experience in over fourteen years).

Somehow, I got pregnant again. For about three-and-a-half hours. It all happened because a friend of a friend who is an artist was looking for women to participate in a photo shoot. Since one of her themes was women-and-aging, I must have seemed like a good pick, with my increasingly "silver" hair. The balance has definitely tipped to more "salt" than "pepper" in my hair color, and I have just accepted it and find humor in the instances when somebody mistakenly thinks I am wearing a Halloween witch wig. My "freckles" have somehow morphed into what I think would now be called "age spots," so I could do double-duty, if needed, within the aging narrative. When I met the artist, however, it was apparent that I didn't quite fit into what had been envisioned for me. Perhaps it was my height or my girth, but whatever the case -- I soon found myself trying on a dress that was a celebration of motherhood, complete with a baby bump. My pregnancy was instantaneous, as soon as I put on the polyfill-enhanced unitard, BOOM. Preggers!

Apparently, the artist, Kate Mitchell, liked the contradiction of an older, greying woman portraying a pregnant woman, and so it was. I was selected to wear the pregnancy dress.

A few weeks later, I arrived at 8 am, glad that nobody saw me without a lick of make-up on, driving around the artist loft neighborhoods of Emeryville -- ready for my transformation before the photo shoot. I was nervous and excited. Getting pregnant and unpregnant would definitely never be easier than this. Plus, I would get to have my hair and make-up done by a professional! I wondered what my new persona would look like.

As I sat in the chair, the make-up artist reads the instructions given for my look: natural -- like her, but more. "Oh, okay. Got it," she says and gets down to business. We talk about my amazing ability to not blink and flinch while she is putting on my eye make-up, which she attributes to my being a contact lens wearer. Contact lens wearers are good at not flinching. Make-up artists like that. I overhear bits and pieces of her talking to others in the room, and pick up that she has done make-up for The Lion King in San Francisco, and that she did the make-up for some of the female vocalists. It all sounds very glamorous. My make-up, however, looks very much like ... me, just a bit more smoothed out and softer looking. She didn't even cover up my dark eye circles, but I think that maybe the dark circles are part of my pregnant persona, so that would only add to my character portrayal.

We wait and wait for the photographers to be ready for us. When it is finally time to start, I get into my pregnancy garb and go downstairs. In addition to the baby bump unitard and beautifully artistic creaton of a dress, I have a flowy hood over my head, which makes me look and feel like a nun. Very Virgin Mary. Or that older sister on The Flying Nun. As I am waiting, I realize that I'm not standing like a pregnant woman -- I'm standing like a person with a pillow under my dress -- so I force the small of my back inward, shoulders backward, my chest outward, and -- voila! My back is in that uncomfortable "S" curve that we pregnant women have. Okay, now I'm feelin' it. I get into position and my directions are to be ... well, what is it? The photographer and Kate banter about this a bit, then Kate gestures with her hands at her sides, palms facing forward, taking a deep cleansing breath and closing her eyes in a meditative way. I think I hear somebody in the background chanting, "Ommmmm." Okay ... so I should be serene. And motherly. I am creating life. I am woman, hear me be serene. I'm sure a more naturally theatrical person would have been able to take this direction and perform it naturally -- but in my case, I felt stiff and I'm sure I looked even stiffer. My nun hood kept shifting every time I moved the hair out of my eyes, and I felt myself trying not to move so things would not fall out of place during the shot. I'm certain I looked like a cardboard cutout, even though I kept trying to be "loose." Fed up with this cardboard model he has been given, the photographer finally says, "Well ... what would Pee Wee Herman do?"

"Pee Wee Herman?" I'm thinking, hmmmm, Pee Wee is not what I would call serene, but I'll go with it, and I start singing, "Ba dun duh duh duh duh dun dun ... ba dun duh duh duh duh duuuhhh ... tequila!" doing the Pee Wee Herman dance in all my immaculately conceived glory. "Great! I like it!" says the photographer, clicking away. Go figure. I'm a bit confused, but it was fun to dance around, and I certainly wasn't stiff doing the Pee Wee Herman dance.

My part of the photo shoot is finished, at least until the group shot at the end, so I have the opportunity to watch all the other photo shoots, as well. To make sure my dress doesn't wrinkle, I have to stay standing the whole time, so it's good to have the entertainment of watching as the other women emerge from hair and make-up and pose for their shots. It's fun to see all of these women -- most of them dancers -- move and be expressive in such a natural way. There is a spicy, sexy, Temptress; a disheveled, fresh-from-a-romp, saucy Maid; the sweet and innocent Maiden; and the voluptuous, regal Vixen. And then, there's me. The Pregnant Lady. And, after standing up through everybody's photo shoots, a funny thing happened: my back started to hurt, just like when I was really pregnant! I bend over, stretching out to touch the air near the vicinity of my toes, and the saucy Maid reaches over to give me a back rub. I felt old and pregnant. Which, I guess, means I was playing my part well.

The book will release in November, and I will post a link at that time for anybody who is curious about how I looked ... I'm a little bit scared that my posing skills just weren't up to snuff, but I'm happy that I gave it a try. As a parent, I am always telling my kids that it's good to try new things, and I am glad I was able to walk-the-walk this time!

ojiichan and gung gung

I found out on Facebook.  In response to my post on paper sons, my sister-in-law commented:  

I interviewed my maternal grandfather many years ago while writing a family history paper for school. He was a paper son. His paper "Dad" was from the same Woo village so at least he was able to keep his family name. I can assure you that he was in no way open and willing to tell me much about his immigration experience. Much of the information that I got about the paper son business was hearsay from my mom. Maybe it's the later generations who talk about it openly but the actual paper sons, not so much.

 What?!!! I had gone with a twenty-plus person contingent of Woo family members to the village in China, and nobody spoke about the fact that he was a paper son during or after the visit. Apparently, there was a written family history that was passed around the bus, but I didn't read it (I get motion sickness when I read in a bus), and apparently, neither did my husband. I wish we had known before we went to Angel Island -- it would have made for a very different experience for my kids, and their classmates. I guess this was not exactly a family "secret," but -- like the story of my own grandfather -- it was not something spoken about very often.

I guess I will have to come to terms with the fact that I probably wouldn't have heard about this if I hadn't posted something about paper sons on Facebook, but it's all good. I learned that my children have great-grandfathers on both sides of their family who illegally immigrated to America: my ojiichan, and their father's gung gung. I'm glad I can share this family history with my children, so they can process the current immigration debate through the lens of our own personal history. In outing my ojiichan as somebody who immigrated illegally, I'm hoping we can look back without shame, and recognize the validity of each person's journey. The story of the paper sons has taught us that we can celebrate this -- whether the immigration path was legal, illegal, or somewhere in between. Once our ancestors started their lives here, we became part of the American story. We are all a part of American history.

paper sons

I think it's interesting how different communities view illegal immigration. As a Japanese American, this was not something that was ever spoken of, and certainly not something that was celebrated. In contrast, the Chinese American community has embraced the legacy of the "paper sons" -- which, if you think about it, is probably the biggest concerted immigration fraud ever perpetrated on the US. But it is not viewed as shameful, it is viewed as historic.

While on a school field trip to Angel Island several years ago, I listened to the Chinese American docent describe the horrendous journey of the Chinese who came through that immigration station. Many were "paper sons" -- people who were entering under the guise of being the son of somebody who already had American citizenship. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake had created an inadvertent immigration loophole; birth records were destroyed, and Chinese men who were already living in the country could claim that they had been born in San Francisco, and therefore, were citizens. I'm not sure who first figured out that this ruse might work, but once they established it did, there was no turning back. For those who could overcome the barriers put up by the immigration officials who were trying to combat this practice, the prize was American citizenship. The emotional costs, however, were high, and for some, a heavy burden to carry even as they grew their families in America.

For others, however, the legacy of the paper sons has been cause for celebration, and the renovation of the Angel Island Immigration Station is part of that narrative. During the field trip, I asked the docent -- "Were there ever any Japanese paper sons?" He was stumped. No, he said, he could not remember ever hearing about Japanese paper sons, although they may have existed. There was certainly never a concerted effort and business built around it, as it was with the paper sons.

I'm no historian, but I think I know why we have never heard of a Japanese paper son. As we say in our household, it's a cultural thang. If there were any Japanese paper sons, they would not be talking about it. Ever. Never, never, never ever. Okay, maybe on somebody's deathbed, but not before then. It would be a shameful secret to be kept secret. Japanese Americans barely spoke about the internment, and they were the ones who were wronged! On the other hand, the Chinese American community seems almost universally quite open about the whole paper sons scenario. As my Chinese American husband would say, Chinese are loud. Loud and proud, baby. Successful paper sons had to pass a test that their lives depended on, convincing immigration officials that they knew details about their paper father's family that only a real son would know. And they did it. They had gamed the system and won the prize.

I've spoken with people who will very matter-of-factly state something like, "I'm a Wong but I'm really a Lee." My husband has a whole family of cousins whose middle name is their "real" family name, but their "legal" last name is their "paper" family name. It's confusing and fascinating at the same time. The one thing they never say is: my grandfather was an illegal alien.

Don't get me wrong -- I think it's great that the Chinese American community has chosen to shine a light on the paper sons as part of their history. What I find curious is how different our perception is of a "paper son" versus an "illegal alien." It seems that we as a society are comfortable with treating documentation fraud or marriage fraud as somehow less "illegal" than somebody who enters the country without documents. With the myriad reasons and paths to entry into this country, I can only hope that there will be a shift that recognizes these experiences as equally valid means of becoming a part of America.

Click for more information on the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and the Angel Island Conservancy.

ojiichan was an "illegal"

 Immigration. I didn’t know what this word meant when I was a little kid; it was one of those confusing words that just didn’t make much sense to me. It was a big word for a simple concept: coming to America.

In my family’s case, it was something that was talked about, but not very often. Although I had heard the story as a child, I didn’t really remember the details until I had to do a family history for school as a young adult. And then, at some point, I realized: my grandfather was an illegal alien.

My father was born here, I was born here, and my grandparents had long since returned to Japan and lived out their lives there, so this realization didn’t strike fear in me -- but it did put things into perspective. I remember growing up and hearing my father, uncles and others routinely speaking about “Wetbacks”* – which was ironic, since my grandfather crossed the border into California, without papers, from Mexico. Family lore tells it something like this:

My grandfather grew up in Japan and wanted to be in the military. However, due to poor eyesight, he was turned down when he went to apply. Having lost face in his failure to join the military, he heard about an opportunity to go to Mexico for work, and was on his way. After spending some time in Mexico, he and his friend decided to head north to California. I wonder how often they thought about how fitting their names were – my not-very-tall grandfather, Oyama 小山,meaning “small mountain,” and his friend, the tall Takayama 高山, meaning “tall mountain.” Perhaps they didn’t think about it at all, given that they were trying to make a new life in a foreign land. They devised a plan to walk across the border, backwards, so that their footprints would always be heading south and they would not attract the attention of the border patrol. They walked only at night, all night, and then they would dig a hole in which to rest and hide during the day. Because they were going through desert, they used a wet tortilla to stay hydrated while they hid during the day. They repeated this routine until they were in California, walking along the train tracks. My grandfather pulled out a silver dollar, and, flashing it in the bright sunshine, caught the attention of the engineer, who stopped the train and let them hitch a ride in exchange for the silver dollar. And, just like that, they made it to Los Angeles. 

My grandfather worked the fields, where the immigration inspectors would conduct raids on horseback. Other undocumented workers would run, and inevitably some would be caught. Apparently, my grandfather would stay put, look up from his work, wave, and say, “Good morning, officer.” Since he didn’t run, they never bothered to check if he had papers. At some point, he went to San Francisco and paid an attorney for some documents that allowed him to live and travel without fear. He went back to Japan, returned to California with a wife, and proceeded to build a life in America – at least, until he felt they had overstayed their welcome and took his family to Japan in about 1940. 

I am one of the younger cousins of my generation, and I always assumed all of the cousins had heard this story of our family history. I discovered that I was mistaken in 1995, when my Uncle Min passed away and I took a trip to attend the service. Uncle Min had visited us in California several times, but usually by himself. I had memories of playing two-square with him when I was in second grade, falling asleep on his shoulder in the back of the Impala as we drove to another uncle’s house for dinner, as well as golfing with him in San Francisco and Los Angeles as an adult. I had always heard stories about my cousins and their children, and had come out to my cousin Mark’s wedding during my college years. Since then, we crossed paths infrequently, and it was bittersweet to see my cousins without my uncle there.

At some point during the visit, my Michigan cousins, my cousin Rick from L.A., and I were gathered at Uncle’s house, and for some reason, the discussion turned to immigration policy. It was the basic keep-them-out attitude that my father had expressed, which was a pretty popular viewpoint at the time and wasn’t surprising at all. I was clearly outnumbered with my pro-immigrant, pro-legalization, lefty Californian perspective.

My polite Japanese upbringing told me to just smile and listen quietly.

Instead, I ended up blurting out, “Well, you know Ojiichan was an illegal alien.”

I can still see the expression on my cousin Mike’s face, stunned and frozen for a split-second, as the collective, “What are you talking about?” clattered out of the group. “He was an illegal! He walked backwards across the border, so his footprints would face south. Haven’t you heard that story before?” I continued. Well, apparently, Uncle Min had neglected to tell this part of the family history to the Michigan Oyamas. After the initial commotion had settled, one of the cousins said, “Doesn’t matter! That was then, this is now!” “Yeah! I got mine, you go get your own!” said Mike, and we all started laughing about it. All the Michigan cousins talked in this humorous, jokey manner that Uncle Min had, and it made me laugh, too.

And, my Japanese upbringing told me that this was fine; it was okay to laugh and let this go. We were connected by blood and history -- and not all of it was pretty.

With the current immigration debate going on in our legislature, I have to wonder: would all of our lawmakers be here today if all of the "illegal" ancestors in their past were not allowed to build lives here and give birth to the next generation of Americans? Do our legislators know their own family histories, or our country's history of racist immigration laws?

* Note: at the time, not only was it common to hear racist terminology in everyday conversation, you could see comedians on TV regularly use words like "Polak" -- which, as a child, I actually thought was an acceptable word for a Polish person! Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but we have made some progress!

the convergence

About a decade ago, I came to a startling realization: hormone levels would wreak havoc on our household when our kids became teenagers. And, no, I don’t mean just because of our teenagers. Doing some simple calculations, I realized that my pre-menopausal years would precisely coincide with my kids’ adolescent years.

And, now, it’s happening. The Convergence. All the hormones have been colliding and disrupting our happy home.

I’m sad. I’m happy! Crying at weird moments. Eating everything in sight! My son seems sad. And then, he’s happy! He’s giving me a hug! Then, he disappears into his headphones. I hear sounds of objects and doors slamming. My daughter seems happy – and then she seems really quiet and not particularly happy. She doesn’t slam things though. Well, not so far. I bake cookies to cheer them up. Then, I eat too many of the cookies and get sad. I look at myself in the mirror and hear my friend Laura’s voice saying, “Look at her! She is just a mess!” She never said that to my face, but if she could see me now, I think she would say it about me. Then, I look for something else to eat, while I ponder how quiet the house will be when the kids are off at college and there is nobody around to slam doors. The dog looks at me. I don’t think he is judging me, but I could be wrong.

Going through this has confirmed a theory of mine that – at least from a biological standpoint – women are not meant to bear children in their thirties. This would explain the decreased fertility women experience in their thirties and beyond, and the apparently hyper-levels of fertility of teenagers. I’ve seen Teen Mom. Believe me, that show has caused many thirty-something women on fertility drugs to glare at the television seething with pangs of injustice while watching a 15 year old who can’t even legally drive or vote struggling to care for a baby that was conceived after doing it “only once.”

Think about it. If you had a baby when you were 18, you would be a relatively fresh and young 32 years old when your child turned 14. You would be the cool and hip mom, rational and high-energy, relatively calm in the face of teenage emotional rage. By the time they are off to college – assuming they didn’t get pregnant at 15 and earn a starring role on Teen Mom – you are 36 years old, your kid can drive and vote, and you still have several years before your own hormone levels start getting crazy. You can actually be happy about having an empty nest! You have a whole decade of non-hormonal years left ahead of you! This is what biology intended. I was pretty sure of it before, and now, I feel like I am living proof.

That said, I had my kids in my thirties. Technically, my early thirties, but still my thirties. Which has made things pretty interesting around here lately.

I blame myself for somehow jinxing us, because, before The Convergence, I was very happy with my kids because they were so happy! (My husband will say I blame myself because I have “Japanese guilt” and I tend to blame myself for everything, but that’s a separate issue.) I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had been wrong about the convergence, and our domestic tranquility would emerge from the adolescent years unscathed.

But … I was right. (This, my husband will also say has something to do with my being Japanese, but I digress.) My older one didn’t go over to the dark side until this year, which, of course, coincided with my own shift over to the darkness, as well as my younger child’s very, very, very slight transition into that grey area that precedes the darkness. I was right! I am usually happy about being right, but not this time.

I was discussing our household hormone levels with my kids when my husband stumbles upon the conversation. I have taken the approach that it’s okay to talk about hormones, so I thought it was a good idea to talk about The Convergence with the kids, if for no other reason than self-preservation and, hopefully, giving us all some awareness and context to what’s happening to us.

“Remember?” I say to my husband, “I told you this would happen! When the kids were little. Remember?”

“Uhmmm. No. What did you say?”

“I told you that all the hormones would be raging in our household at the same time, because the kids would be going through adolescence and I would be pre-menopausal. And, I told you that you had permission, in advance, to leave the house to escape us if you needed to.”

“Oh. Okay,” he says. “That’s good to know.”

Shortly after that conversation, he took a spontaneous trip to the Super Bowl. The Convergence at home was balanced out by a Cosmic Convergence for my husband that had the sports and travel gods smiling down on him, and he decided to go to the Super Bowl. Believe it or not, I was honestly happy for him and encouraged him to go. And, I was reallyhappy when he came back home.