It turns out that Dao can't come to the party after all. Her back is hurting again and one of the children is sick. As the guests disperse, Mum begins to hum her happy hum. She is back in her element. She is never happier than when she is giving something away.
The clubhouse refrigerator is full of food that wasn't eaten. The choir from Watts never showed up, either. We found out a day or two later that their bus had broken down. Mum and I package up leftover roast beef and turkey, fruit and potato salad and we walk, heavily laden, to our car, balloons trailing over our shoulders.
I drive her to the Indo-Chinese section of the city and we park outside the Buddhist temple compound where Dao now rents a tiny house. Small Asian children are gathering by the curb, silently watching us with large eyes. Mum grabs a fistful of balloon strings from the back seat.
"Here!" She smiles reassuringly at them.
The children take them, delighted, and carefully distribute them among themselves. They make room as we step out with our arms full and move toward the gate. Dao is already opening it for us, her tired eyes radiant.
Monday
After her birthday party, Mum takes the book of letters home. She says she will read one a day, savoring each of them.
"How did you do this?" she asks me in amazement. "You've managed to get in touch with people I haven't heard from in years."
"I sneaked into your apartment and borrowed your Rolodex while you were gone. I wrote on the invitation that it was meant not just for the addressee but for anyone the addressee might know who was a friend of yours. A lot of invitations were returned, marked, 'Addressee unknown.' So I checked telephone books to see if the people might have moved within the same area--maybe their change of address order had expired.
"But Mum, one thing bothers me. Some of your closest friends weren't listed. How come?"
"Oh," Mum laughs lightly. "That's because the Rolodex is an old list." She opens a closet and takes out a notebook bulging with names and addresses. "Here's the current one!"
For more about Mum, see:
MUM: The king's treasury
MUM: Living by her convictions
MUM: Healing wounds
MUM: Bodhisattva Barbara
MUM: To the man who mugged my mother
MUM and the exploding wheatgerm
MUM and the olive nut sandwiches
Showing posts with label Mum's party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mum's party. Show all posts
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (6)
There is an airgramme from Hiro. I wish he could have come from Japan for this celebration. Hiro was the first person Mum took responsibility for by "moral adoption." When we met Hiromasa Hanabusa, he was a solemn schoolboy in a dark blue uniform. An only child, Hiro had been orphaned by the bomb. His grandmother made a meagre living for them both from the ruins of Hiroshima by selling soap door-to-door. She carried the soap on her back, with her grandson strapped on top of the load. He remembered the pride he had felt when at the age of four he could help her by collecting scrap metal.
By the time Hiro's grandmother died, Mum was already a stabilizing parent figure in his life. Now Hiro is happily married with seven children and a successful oral surgery practice on the island of Shikoku.
Mum became a mother by default to Miyoko Matsubara, an excitable young woman in her thirties who was 12 when the bomb dropped and is still twelve emotionally 66 years later. Miyoko's face was so scarred by the bomb her own mother rejected her, telling her it would have been better if she had died, that she was too ugly for any man to want to marry her. Miyoko has devoted her life to running a school for blind children.
And of course Mum adopted Dao, the orphanage worker she helped get out of Saigon during the Vietnam war, bringing half-American orphans with her so they would not be killed by the communists.
Rick, my first husband, and I were married in Los Angeles, where I knew no one but his family. Mum arrived from Japan by ship a few days before the wedding. I was so eager to see her. My eyes picked her out at once, surrounded by a crowd of young Japanese women on the dock.
"Mum!" I rushed up and hugged her.
"Hi, J!" she responded warmly. "I'd like you to meet Seiko--" She drew a timid girl forward. "And Mitsuko and Akemi. We met on the boat and we worked on English together." The girls giggled.
"How do you do?" I said dutifully and turned back to Mum. "Are you ready? Rick's folks are waiting for us. I know you want to meet them."
Mum hesitated. "Could we look for a phone first? These girls need to call the families they are going to be living with. They've never been to the States before and--" Numbness within me muted her words. I had wanted to draw her out of the crowd but I couldn't. The crowd was coming with her.
We got two of the girls taken care of. They contacted their American families and were spirited off by them. Seiko clung apologetically to Mum's side. Mum was saying something about Seiko, smiling fondly at the grateful girl.
I braced myself.
"--Just for a few days," Mum went on. My heart sank.
"Sure," I said, with an unconvincing show of hospitality. "No problem. She can stay on the Shavers' couch bed with you."
In the flurry of wedding preparations that followed, I was scarcely conscious of the extra, obsequious guest. But I was conscious of the familiar resentment I felt as Mum's attention was divided between the two of us, resentment I was ashamed of. Who would have helped Seiko feel at home in an alien culture if my mother hadn't taken her under her wing?
My mind snaps back to the present. Thanks to the Lord and my years of therapy, we've both come a long way in the last 17 years!
After that, Mum adopted people so fast they became a blur to me. A confused young girl whose boyfriend got her pregnant and split but who wanted to keep the baby. An unemployed veteran named Bob who delighted in doing odd jobs around the place and who slept on Mum's couch while Mum, Dao and her three children shared wall-to-wall beds in the other room. A middle-aged woman who had been in two mental institutions and who was so passive at first that she was like a piece of furniture; one forgot she was there. All ages, all nationalities.
It came to a head one day. Mum asked my brother Tim and me if we'd like to go with her to the L.A. airport to meet a Japanese woman whose name was vaguely familiar. Tim took me aside to ask, "Who is this woman? Are we related to her?"
I had to say, "I don't know."
For more about Dao, see
MUM: Maigran,
MUM and the Sergeant-Major's Daughter,
MUM and the naked man up the tree
By the time Hiro's grandmother died, Mum was already a stabilizing parent figure in his life. Now Hiro is happily married with seven children and a successful oral surgery practice on the island of Shikoku.
Mum became a mother by default to Miyoko Matsubara, an excitable young woman in her thirties who was 12 when the bomb dropped and is still twelve emotionally 66 years later. Miyoko's face was so scarred by the bomb her own mother rejected her, telling her it would have been better if she had died, that she was too ugly for any man to want to marry her. Miyoko has devoted her life to running a school for blind children.
And of course Mum adopted Dao, the orphanage worker she helped get out of Saigon during the Vietnam war, bringing half-American orphans with her so they would not be killed by the communists.
Rick, my first husband, and I were married in Los Angeles, where I knew no one but his family. Mum arrived from Japan by ship a few days before the wedding. I was so eager to see her. My eyes picked her out at once, surrounded by a crowd of young Japanese women on the dock.
"Mum!" I rushed up and hugged her.
"Hi, J!" she responded warmly. "I'd like you to meet Seiko--" She drew a timid girl forward. "And Mitsuko and Akemi. We met on the boat and we worked on English together." The girls giggled.
"How do you do?" I said dutifully and turned back to Mum. "Are you ready? Rick's folks are waiting for us. I know you want to meet them."
Mum hesitated. "Could we look for a phone first? These girls need to call the families they are going to be living with. They've never been to the States before and--" Numbness within me muted her words. I had wanted to draw her out of the crowd but I couldn't. The crowd was coming with her.
We got two of the girls taken care of. They contacted their American families and were spirited off by them. Seiko clung apologetically to Mum's side. Mum was saying something about Seiko, smiling fondly at the grateful girl.
I braced myself.
"--Just for a few days," Mum went on. My heart sank.
"Sure," I said, with an unconvincing show of hospitality. "No problem. She can stay on the Shavers' couch bed with you."
In the flurry of wedding preparations that followed, I was scarcely conscious of the extra, obsequious guest. But I was conscious of the familiar resentment I felt as Mum's attention was divided between the two of us, resentment I was ashamed of. Who would have helped Seiko feel at home in an alien culture if my mother hadn't taken her under her wing?
My mind snaps back to the present. Thanks to the Lord and my years of therapy, we've both come a long way in the last 17 years!
After that, Mum adopted people so fast they became a blur to me. A confused young girl whose boyfriend got her pregnant and split but who wanted to keep the baby. An unemployed veteran named Bob who delighted in doing odd jobs around the place and who slept on Mum's couch while Mum, Dao and her three children shared wall-to-wall beds in the other room. A middle-aged woman who had been in two mental institutions and who was so passive at first that she was like a piece of furniture; one forgot she was there. All ages, all nationalities.
It came to a head one day. Mum asked my brother Tim and me if we'd like to go with her to the L.A. airport to meet a Japanese woman whose name was vaguely familiar. Tim took me aside to ask, "Who is this woman? Are we related to her?"
I had to say, "I don't know."
For more about Dao, see
MUM: Maigran,
MUM and the Sergeant-Major's Daughter,
MUM and the naked man up the tree
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (5)
A veteran of World War II and Korea has written in longhand from an isolated cabin in the hills of North Carolina.
"Having fought the Japanese in the Pacific, I was at Okinawa. The bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan, already pulverized, sick and starving, surrendered. My unit was one of the very first to set foot on Japanese soil and as luck would have it, we landed amid the ruins of Nagasaki.
"I didn't know it at the time but what I saw and smelled at Nagasaki was going to burrow deep into my brain, to surface years later.
"During the brief interlude between WWII and the Korean War, I was a badly shaken young man who didn't even know he was badly shaken. I was having nightmares every night, most of them involving Nagasaki.
"I became absolutely terrified. I didn't know who I was. I woke up one morning to realize that my nice suburban home, the two nice cars in the garage, the swimming pool, my work, my lovely upper-middle-class wife, etc. --none of this had any meaning to me.
"That's when I met Barbara Reynolds. She was the first American I'd met who truly understood the spiritual importance of Nagasaki. She didn't think I was crazy when I told her that I couldn't identify in any way with the standard American values. She understood the guilt that was clawing at the back of my mind.
"She and I had one of those very rare relationships that almost never happens between a man and a woman: a brother-and-sister bond that confers total, complete trust and acceptance.
"Barbara gave me the strength to get on with rebuilding both myself and my life. In those dark days when I first knew her, she may have even saved my life. Many's the night when I fired off six-page letters to her. Sometimes I wrote five long letters a week.
"In the years from 1973 to 1981 I came to terms with America and myself, and I made a 'separate peace' which has lasted. I didn't pick up much in the way of a religion, but I did develop a philosophy and a set of values which have borne the test of time. I won the battle over cynicism, no small thing. I made the earthshaking discovery that I could love and be loved.
"The day never passes that I don't think of her. A true World Class Lady."
"Having fought the Japanese in the Pacific, I was at Okinawa. The bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan, already pulverized, sick and starving, surrendered. My unit was one of the very first to set foot on Japanese soil and as luck would have it, we landed amid the ruins of Nagasaki.
"I didn't know it at the time but what I saw and smelled at Nagasaki was going to burrow deep into my brain, to surface years later.
"During the brief interlude between WWII and the Korean War, I was a badly shaken young man who didn't even know he was badly shaken. I was having nightmares every night, most of them involving Nagasaki.
"I became absolutely terrified. I didn't know who I was. I woke up one morning to realize that my nice suburban home, the two nice cars in the garage, the swimming pool, my work, my lovely upper-middle-class wife, etc. --none of this had any meaning to me.
"That's when I met Barbara Reynolds. She was the first American I'd met who truly understood the spiritual importance of Nagasaki. She didn't think I was crazy when I told her that I couldn't identify in any way with the standard American values. She understood the guilt that was clawing at the back of my mind.
"She and I had one of those very rare relationships that almost never happens between a man and a woman: a brother-and-sister bond that confers total, complete trust and acceptance.
"Barbara gave me the strength to get on with rebuilding both myself and my life. In those dark days when I first knew her, she may have even saved my life. Many's the night when I fired off six-page letters to her. Sometimes I wrote five long letters a week.
"In the years from 1973 to 1981 I came to terms with America and myself, and I made a 'separate peace' which has lasted. I didn't pick up much in the way of a religion, but I did develop a philosophy and a set of values which have borne the test of time. I won the battle over cynicism, no small thing. I made the earthshaking discovery that I could love and be loved.
"The day never passes that I don't think of her. A true World Class Lady."
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (4)
Later, when she has recovered a little and made the rounds, I steer her toward the table where she makes herself a small plate of food. Then I realize she is the only one in the room without a chair. I haven't provided a seat for the guest of honor! I hastily give her mine.
There are Chinese noodles in her whipped cream. Her salad dressing has merged with the barbecue sauce from the meat balls and formed a lake around her Jello. Everything that was supposed to be hot is cold. She doesn't seem to mind. She sits blissfully crunching on carrot sticks while I make the presentation of the book of messages from those who could not come. I read aloud selections from some of them.
My closest childhood friend, now stationed with her husband and sons in Germany, has sent a nostalgic letter which brings tears to my eyes--and Mum's:
"My earliest memory of Barbara is that of her sitting at our kitchen table, talking to my mother over a cup of coffee. Her daughter, Jessica, and I played contentedly with our dolls on the worn linoleum floor. The washing machine chug chugged in the corner.
"There came to be times in my adult life when I would say to my mother, as I called from many miles away, that I wished I had a "Barbara" like she did when she was my age.
"Later, Barbara moved to Japan with her husband-anthropologist and her three children. Every few years [she] would come back to the States. She always brought intriguing Japanese gifts for us and it was like Marco Polo returning from the Far East with undreamed of treasures.
"After several years in Japan, Barbara's family embarked on a round-the-world trip in their Japanese-built yacht, the Phoenix. They were soon to sail the Phoenix through the U.S. atomic testing zone as an official anti-nuclear protest.
"When Barbara came back to the States now, she was filled with a mission. Her husband had studied the genetic after-effects of the Hiroshima bomb. And Barbara had studied the emotional effects. I remember sitting in a backyard in Yellow Springs [Ohio] where a group of women sat in a circle on folding metal chairs listening to Barbara talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I remember how green the grass was that day and how pretty Barbara looked. She has to have one of the world's warmest smiles.
Years later, Barbara visited me in New York City. As [she] and I sat in my small office talking about her marriage--and her divorce--I realized for the first time that Barbara was not just my mother's friend. She was my friend, too.
"Still, I was confused when Barbara came to my apartment that evening and refused to eat. She was on a hunger strike protesting something. I thought it was rude of her. But there was a still small voice telling me that maybe there were more important issues than eating and being polite. Barbara was not judging me or urging me to join her. She was simply doing what she, in conscience, felt she must do.
"I began to see Barbara as a heroine, a person who spoke out in ways and places that were 'inappropriate.' I put her in a class with Eleanor Roosevelt.
"Barbara doesn't agree with my appraisal of the [world] situation as a largely Feminist issue. She sees the problem to be basically a spiritual one.
"Despite the ups and downs in her life--or perhaps because of them--Barbara is a person full of love for mankind, apparently even rebellious young souls like myself. She has planted seeds in my mind and heart, but the soil of my life produces a plant which may not be what she had in mind! Nevertheless, I feel accepted and loved by her.
"I only wish that Barbara still lived down the street and that she could sit in my kitchen with me, my mother, Jessica, and our children."
There are Chinese noodles in her whipped cream. Her salad dressing has merged with the barbecue sauce from the meat balls and formed a lake around her Jello. Everything that was supposed to be hot is cold. She doesn't seem to mind. She sits blissfully crunching on carrot sticks while I make the presentation of the book of messages from those who could not come. I read aloud selections from some of them.
My closest childhood friend, now stationed with her husband and sons in Germany, has sent a nostalgic letter which brings tears to my eyes--and Mum's:
"My earliest memory of Barbara is that of her sitting at our kitchen table, talking to my mother over a cup of coffee. Her daughter, Jessica, and I played contentedly with our dolls on the worn linoleum floor. The washing machine chug chugged in the corner.
"There came to be times in my adult life when I would say to my mother, as I called from many miles away, that I wished I had a "Barbara" like she did when she was my age.
"Later, Barbara moved to Japan with her husband-anthropologist and her three children. Every few years [she] would come back to the States. She always brought intriguing Japanese gifts for us and it was like Marco Polo returning from the Far East with undreamed of treasures.
"After several years in Japan, Barbara's family embarked on a round-the-world trip in their Japanese-built yacht, the Phoenix. They were soon to sail the Phoenix through the U.S. atomic testing zone as an official anti-nuclear protest.
"When Barbara came back to the States now, she was filled with a mission. Her husband had studied the genetic after-effects of the Hiroshima bomb. And Barbara had studied the emotional effects. I remember sitting in a backyard in Yellow Springs [Ohio] where a group of women sat in a circle on folding metal chairs listening to Barbara talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I remember how green the grass was that day and how pretty Barbara looked. She has to have one of the world's warmest smiles.
Years later, Barbara visited me in New York City. As [she] and I sat in my small office talking about her marriage--and her divorce--I realized for the first time that Barbara was not just my mother's friend. She was my friend, too.
"Still, I was confused when Barbara came to my apartment that evening and refused to eat. She was on a hunger strike protesting something. I thought it was rude of her. But there was a still small voice telling me that maybe there were more important issues than eating and being polite. Barbara was not judging me or urging me to join her. She was simply doing what she, in conscience, felt she must do.
"I began to see Barbara as a heroine, a person who spoke out in ways and places that were 'inappropriate.' I put her in a class with Eleanor Roosevelt.
"Barbara doesn't agree with my appraisal of the [world] situation as a largely Feminist issue. She sees the problem to be basically a spiritual one.
"Despite the ups and downs in her life--or perhaps because of them--Barbara is a person full of love for mankind, apparently even rebellious young souls like myself. She has planted seeds in my mind and heart, but the soil of my life produces a plant which may not be what she had in mind! Nevertheless, I feel accepted and loved by her.
"I only wish that Barbara still lived down the street and that she could sit in my kitchen with me, my mother, Jessica, and our children."
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (3)
 |
| Mum, surprised by her three kids: Ted, Tim, Jessica |
My mind drifts. A Vietnamese refugee, Dao needed the extra money. I remember taking my husband's brand new pair of Nordstrom's pants there for her to hem--even though Nordstrom's would have hemmed them for us free. Mum called to tell me they were ready, but when I came to pick them up, she couldn't find them anywhere. I knew right where to look. They were on a rack of "Men's pants," priced at ten cents.
She is getting more selective, I notice. She is learning to coordinate colors and to avoid wearing clothes with missing buttons, stains, and pulled threads. Her hair is so white it glows in the June sunshine--my brother Tim calls her "my little old white-haired Mum." I made sure to trim it when she stopped by a few days ago. I see Rick in animated discussion with her. They laugh comfortably together. The appreciation they have developed for one another is a source of great satisfaction to me.
Ssh, everyone! Rick opens the door for her and Mum, absorbed in what she is saying, is as oblivious to her surroundings as the day she was mugged.
She is completely inside before our "surPRISE!" explodes all around her and leaves her with her mouth quite literally hanging open. She is laughing and crying and utterly speechless, dazedly hugging one after another of the guests. Her "crumb-catchers," the smeared glasses hanging by a cord around her neck, get in the way but no one cares.
 |
| "I am. . . |
 |
| . . . Barbara's dog." |
Monday, June 6, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (2)
It wasn't easy getting hold of Mum's address list for the party invitations without her knowledge. I didn't have a key to her apartment so I tried to figure out an excuse to get her to loan it to me. She was going out one afternoon and dropped Miracle off at our house. I mentioned a cassette tape she had which I wanted to hear.
She rummaged through her purse. "Here, I brought it for you."
I tried again. "That book you're reading that you say is so good--can I borrow it while you're gone?" I assumed it was in her apartment.
"Sure, it's in the car. I'll go out and get it."
Nothing was working. I was stumped.
That evening she was going out again. I called her just before I knew she was planning to leave. "I'd like to come get that new book on the life of Christ. Can you just leave the key for me under your mat?"
"I have to come up your way to get on the freeway," she offered. "I'll drop the book off on my way."
She was making it really, really hard to do anything for her.
But I finally managed to get into her apartment and locate a Rolodex among a pile of papers near her desk. I stole it, I addressed the invitations, I was even able to break in again and put the Rolodex back where I found it The invitations went out, the responses came back and the party is tomorrow.
----
I sleep restlessly. I am mentally rehearsing tomorrow over and over. I know there will be plenty of food. I ordered enough for 50 extra people just two days ago when the telephone calls from two pastors sent me scurrying. The caterers are due at ten, I remind myself, and they will be bringing the cakes from the bakery. The full sheet cake will read, "Happy Birthday to Barbara, an instrument of His peace." The half-sheet will say, "We think the world of you!" If ever anyone united east and west, it is Mum.
The balloon bouquet will be at the clubhouse by one. I mustn't forget the bottle opener for the sparkling cider. Name tags. Scotch tape. Pushpins. A bowl of water for Miracle--she will even have her own helium balloon reading "I am Barbara's dog." My niece has offered to tie it to Miracle's collar when Mum arrives.
But, I think suddenly, there's one variable I can't control. As the night deepens I realize all my attention to detail may be for nothing. The party may never materialize. What if Mum doesn't show up?
I think back to the excuse I gave her. "I know your church is having its monthly business meeting, but they don't usually run past three, do they? Come on over to my sister-in-law's after it's over," I had said. In trying to throw her off the scent, had I made the invitation so casual she wouldn't take it seriously? Suppose the meeting runs an hour late? Or two hours?
Or, more likely, suppose on the way she meets a person (or an animal) in distress and stops to do her Samaritan thing. I think of Abraham Lincoln halting his carriage on the way to a formal function to help a pig out of a ditch. That would be Mum. And there are many potential pigs in the ditches between her church and the party she doesn't know she is starring in.
Saturday
I needn't have worried. In the morning, she calls apologetically. "My battery's dead. Do you think Rick could pick me up at the church?"
Hallelujah! For once I am thrilled that her car has broken down and we have to come get her. My husband can see to it that she's there on time!
She rummaged through her purse. "Here, I brought it for you."
I tried again. "That book you're reading that you say is so good--can I borrow it while you're gone?" I assumed it was in her apartment.
"Sure, it's in the car. I'll go out and get it."
Nothing was working. I was stumped.
That evening she was going out again. I called her just before I knew she was planning to leave. "I'd like to come get that new book on the life of Christ. Can you just leave the key for me under your mat?"
"I have to come up your way to get on the freeway," she offered. "I'll drop the book off on my way."
She was making it really, really hard to do anything for her.
But I finally managed to get into her apartment and locate a Rolodex among a pile of papers near her desk. I stole it, I addressed the invitations, I was even able to break in again and put the Rolodex back where I found it The invitations went out, the responses came back and the party is tomorrow.
----
I sleep restlessly. I am mentally rehearsing tomorrow over and over. I know there will be plenty of food. I ordered enough for 50 extra people just two days ago when the telephone calls from two pastors sent me scurrying. The caterers are due at ten, I remind myself, and they will be bringing the cakes from the bakery. The full sheet cake will read, "Happy Birthday to Barbara, an instrument of His peace." The half-sheet will say, "We think the world of you!" If ever anyone united east and west, it is Mum.
The balloon bouquet will be at the clubhouse by one. I mustn't forget the bottle opener for the sparkling cider. Name tags. Scotch tape. Pushpins. A bowl of water for Miracle--she will even have her own helium balloon reading "I am Barbara's dog." My niece has offered to tie it to Miracle's collar when Mum arrives.
But, I think suddenly, there's one variable I can't control. As the night deepens I realize all my attention to detail may be for nothing. The party may never materialize. What if Mum doesn't show up?
I think back to the excuse I gave her. "I know your church is having its monthly business meeting, but they don't usually run past three, do they? Come on over to my sister-in-law's after it's over," I had said. In trying to throw her off the scent, had I made the invitation so casual she wouldn't take it seriously? Suppose the meeting runs an hour late? Or two hours?
Or, more likely, suppose on the way she meets a person (or an animal) in distress and stops to do her Samaritan thing. I think of Abraham Lincoln halting his carriage on the way to a formal function to help a pig out of a ditch. That would be Mum. And there are many potential pigs in the ditches between her church and the party she doesn't know she is starring in.
Saturday
I needn't have worried. In the morning, she calls apologetically. "My battery's dead. Do you think Rick could pick me up at the church?"
Hallelujah! For once I am thrilled that her car has broken down and we have to come get her. My husband can see to it that she's there on time!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Mum's party, 1985 (1)
You would have loved my mother. I know because everybody did. When she turned 70, I realized the divorce had cheated her out of a golden wedding anniversary. So I threw her a birthday party instead.
June 8, 1985
If the 750 people I invited have all managed to keep it a secret, my mother is in for a humdinger of a 70th birthday party tomorrow.
I had wondered whether I could offer her anything in the way of a party that wouldn't be anti-climactic after the recognition others have showered upon her--the key to and citizenship in the city of Hiroshima, the Wonder Woman Award, the War Resistors' League's Person of 1984. On the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima, she was included at a formal dinner with Prime Minister Nakasone.
But I can give her the one thing she really wants: a family reunion. For they are all family to her, not just her three children and five grandchildren, coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, and Anchorage for the occasion, but all 150 who will be there in person and the other 600 who are unable to come.
And she, in turn, has impacted the lives of each one of them.
We're expecting a busload of people from a church in South-Central Los Angeles. Right after what became known as the Watts riots, Mum moved in with a black pastor and his family there, to heal what hurt and anger she could by her presence. I addressed an invitation to the pastor and his wife and "any other friends of Barbara Reynolds." Two days ago the pastor called to confirm they are coming and bringing the whole choir.
The Cambodian pastor at Mum's present church in downtown Long Beach has let me know that all the Cambodians there are coming, right down to the newest baby. Mum has been helping provide them with furniture, food, and friendship and is currently setting up a literacy program in their neighborhood. It's no wonder many of the young Cambodian women gratefully call her "Mama."
Dao and her three daughters are also looking forward to being at the party. Dao is Vietnamese. Mum was instrumental in arranging their release from the nightmare that is Vietnam under communism.
In response to my invitation, messages have been coming from everywhere, sometimes as many as six a day. Delicate blue stationery postmarked Wilmington, Ohio, addressed in large youthful letters. A crisply typed business envelope from Norman Cousins, former editor of the Saturday Review. Spidery writing on a postcard from an obscure town in rural Oregon. Cornell Law School. York University, Ontario. Holland. Ireland. Twenty-four states and seven foreign countries.
As quickly as they arrive, I open the envelopes and paste the greetings into the bulging scrapbook I plan to present to Mum tomorrow.
The responses are typical of Mum's broad-ranging friendships. There are letters from women in their twenties, couples in their nineties. Liberal peace activists, solid Republicans. Veterans. Pacifists. Married, single, heterosexual, homosexual. Black, brown, white. Quakers. Evangelicals. Roman Catholics. Jews. Buddhists. Humanists. New age. Agnostics. Atheists.
My old boyfriends.
There are letters from people who just met Mum this year and letters from her grade school classmates back in Wisconsin. The woman who played the piano at Mum and Dad's wedding. A number of them are in Japanese; I can make out "Omedetou gozaimasu" (Congratulations).
My husband Rick looks over the quantity of letters arriving daily. "It looks like you have almost every major group represented."
I consider for a brief moment. "We don't have any midgets."
It isn't intentional. Believe me, if my mother knew any midgets, she'd want them included.
June 8, 1985
If the 750 people I invited have all managed to keep it a secret, my mother is in for a humdinger of a 70th birthday party tomorrow.
I had wondered whether I could offer her anything in the way of a party that wouldn't be anti-climactic after the recognition others have showered upon her--the key to and citizenship in the city of Hiroshima, the Wonder Woman Award, the War Resistors' League's Person of 1984. On the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima, she was included at a formal dinner with Prime Minister Nakasone.
But I can give her the one thing she really wants: a family reunion. For they are all family to her, not just her three children and five grandchildren, coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, and Anchorage for the occasion, but all 150 who will be there in person and the other 600 who are unable to come.
And she, in turn, has impacted the lives of each one of them.
We're expecting a busload of people from a church in South-Central Los Angeles. Right after what became known as the Watts riots, Mum moved in with a black pastor and his family there, to heal what hurt and anger she could by her presence. I addressed an invitation to the pastor and his wife and "any other friends of Barbara Reynolds." Two days ago the pastor called to confirm they are coming and bringing the whole choir.
The Cambodian pastor at Mum's present church in downtown Long Beach has let me know that all the Cambodians there are coming, right down to the newest baby. Mum has been helping provide them with furniture, food, and friendship and is currently setting up a literacy program in their neighborhood. It's no wonder many of the young Cambodian women gratefully call her "Mama."
Dao and her three daughters are also looking forward to being at the party. Dao is Vietnamese. Mum was instrumental in arranging their release from the nightmare that is Vietnam under communism.
In response to my invitation, messages have been coming from everywhere, sometimes as many as six a day. Delicate blue stationery postmarked Wilmington, Ohio, addressed in large youthful letters. A crisply typed business envelope from Norman Cousins, former editor of the Saturday Review. Spidery writing on a postcard from an obscure town in rural Oregon. Cornell Law School. York University, Ontario. Holland. Ireland. Twenty-four states and seven foreign countries.
As quickly as they arrive, I open the envelopes and paste the greetings into the bulging scrapbook I plan to present to Mum tomorrow.
The responses are typical of Mum's broad-ranging friendships. There are letters from women in their twenties, couples in their nineties. Liberal peace activists, solid Republicans. Veterans. Pacifists. Married, single, heterosexual, homosexual. Black, brown, white. Quakers. Evangelicals. Roman Catholics. Jews. Buddhists. Humanists. New age. Agnostics. Atheists.
My old boyfriends.
There are letters from people who just met Mum this year and letters from her grade school classmates back in Wisconsin. The woman who played the piano at Mum and Dad's wedding. A number of them are in Japanese; I can make out "Omedetou gozaimasu" (Congratulations).
My husband Rick looks over the quantity of letters arriving daily. "It looks like you have almost every major group represented."
I consider for a brief moment. "We don't have any midgets."
It isn't intentional. Believe me, if my mother knew any midgets, she'd want them included.
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