John 14:2-3 (ESV) 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
My recollections of my dad are vastly different from my sister's. I was born in another generation from hers, being 11 years apart. You can see that in the differences between my sister and me: her generation's values were of self-discipline, hard work and education; my generation was just getting into the entitlement, clothes-makes-the-man (woman) phase; education was still important, and going away for college was becoming faddish. Besides that, I was the youngest child. In a family that lost a son at birth, I was the child they were warned not to have for fear that my mother would be endangered during childbirth. She, too, was older in pregnancy, being 30 at the time. More significantly, the loss of baby John at birth because of a tangled umbilical cord around his neck was so great a tragedy as to render her emotionally fragile to endure another pregnancy. My birth would again place them in an emotional tailspin.
I was born at St. Francis Hospital in Liliha on December 14, 1946, a little over a year after World War II. My premature birth caused complications so severe that the nuns advised my parents to prepare me to be received heavenward through baptism. I was given the name "Mary" by the nuns after the Virgin Mother of Jesus, and my parents waited for God's hand to take me. But He offered instead my life, and I was released from the hospital with a broken collarbone sustained in childbirth that would need a cast in later months, but with no other inherent medical conditions. The intervention of naming me Mary left my parents with only the decision of adding "Ann," thus thwarting their choice of "Edwina."
My father traveled often to the mainland and to the Orient before and after my birth, playing basketball with the Hawaiian All-Stars and subsequently coaching a goodwill team from the Territory of Hawaii. Whenever he would come home, we would meet him at the airport, and I would cry inconsolably because he was a stranger to me. As I grew out of my toddler years, I realized that his trips away meant gifts for me upon his return. There was a lamp with a shade that twirled against a forest background that made it seem to be on fire. I think this lamp, more than 50 years old, still resides in Aunty's garage storeroom. For many years it was my father, not my mother, who was my favorite because he had a kindly manner and seldomly raised his voice, unlike my mother, who was the disciplinarian throughout my pre-teen and teenage years. I would be his companion to various games at the Honolulu Stadium, once situated on Isenberg and King Streets. I went to eat everything there was there, and constantly nagged him for the next thing, much to his chagrin…he couldn't watch the game. Yet I don't recall any yelling on his part. As I began my freshmen year at UH, each Saturday morning my dad would take me to breakfast at the Kapiolani Coffee Shop next to Aloha Motors, where he was a car salesman. I would eat the same breakfast of Wili-wili, which was a Portuguese sausage omelet over rice, and a cup of Kona coffee. Then Dad would take me to school before returning to work. It was a few more times before I offered to take the bus after breakfast. Our conversations during breakfast focused on developing my confidence by letting me know I was as good as the next person. He even coached me on walking confidently by swinging my arms in rhythm. (I never mastered the technique.) After I got married it was my Dad who wrote to me twice a week, who had a TV set delivered to Highland Park by Sears so I wouldn't be lonely, and who sent me boxes of saimin regularly.
We returned to Hawaii in September 1972 with Jennifer, who at 4 months went willingly to each grandparent, surprised to see so many black-haired people among her. Within 1-1/2 years, Grandpa's increasingly noticeable debilitating physical condition would be diagnosed correctly as ALS. It was soon after I learned I was expecting our second child that he asked me if I was pregnant. I denied it as if he had asked me a ridiculous question, and he responded with a grunt, calling me out on the lie. From that point on, I began worrying about how the sadness of his impending demise would affect the baby, and of which event would come first, his death or the baby's birth. There were nights when I would rehearse his funeral in order to cope with the inevitable, or anticipate the phone call that I knew would come. But there was sweetness, too, in watching Jenny and Grandpa play together..with his dementia, he was mentally the same age as her. His death occurred on February 2, 1976, and my grief was mixed with the growing anxiety of the effect his death would have on the happiness of my newborn. Six months and 9 days later, on the day Joanna was born, she smiled at me, over and over again. She would never meet him in this world, but I like to think that he spent 6 months with her before she was born, coaching her to smile for her mommy.
My recollections of my dad are vastly different from my sister's. I was born in another generation from hers, being 11 years apart. You can see that in the differences between my sister and me: her generation's values were of self-discipline, hard work and education; my generation was just getting into the entitlement, clothes-makes-the-man (woman) phase; education was still important, and going away for college was becoming faddish. Besides that, I was the youngest child. In a family that lost a son at birth, I was the child they were warned not to have for fear that my mother would be endangered during childbirth. She, too, was older in pregnancy, being 30 at the time. More significantly, the loss of baby John at birth because of a tangled umbilical cord around his neck was so great a tragedy as to render her emotionally fragile to endure another pregnancy. My birth would again place them in an emotional tailspin.
I was born at St. Francis Hospital in Liliha on December 14, 1946, a little over a year after World War II. My premature birth caused complications so severe that the nuns advised my parents to prepare me to be received heavenward through baptism. I was given the name "Mary" by the nuns after the Virgin Mother of Jesus, and my parents waited for God's hand to take me. But He offered instead my life, and I was released from the hospital with a broken collarbone sustained in childbirth that would need a cast in later months, but with no other inherent medical conditions. The intervention of naming me Mary left my parents with only the decision of adding "Ann," thus thwarting their choice of "Edwina."
My father traveled often to the mainland and to the Orient before and after my birth, playing basketball with the Hawaiian All-Stars and subsequently coaching a goodwill team from the Territory of Hawaii. Whenever he would come home, we would meet him at the airport, and I would cry inconsolably because he was a stranger to me. As I grew out of my toddler years, I realized that his trips away meant gifts for me upon his return. There was a lamp with a shade that twirled against a forest background that made it seem to be on fire. I think this lamp, more than 50 years old, still resides in Aunty's garage storeroom. For many years it was my father, not my mother, who was my favorite because he had a kindly manner and seldomly raised his voice, unlike my mother, who was the disciplinarian throughout my pre-teen and teenage years. I would be his companion to various games at the Honolulu Stadium, once situated on Isenberg and King Streets. I went to eat everything there was there, and constantly nagged him for the next thing, much to his chagrin…he couldn't watch the game. Yet I don't recall any yelling on his part. As I began my freshmen year at UH, each Saturday morning my dad would take me to breakfast at the Kapiolani Coffee Shop next to Aloha Motors, where he was a car salesman. I would eat the same breakfast of Wili-wili, which was a Portuguese sausage omelet over rice, and a cup of Kona coffee. Then Dad would take me to school before returning to work. It was a few more times before I offered to take the bus after breakfast. Our conversations during breakfast focused on developing my confidence by letting me know I was as good as the next person. He even coached me on walking confidently by swinging my arms in rhythm. (I never mastered the technique.) After I got married it was my Dad who wrote to me twice a week, who had a TV set delivered to Highland Park by Sears so I wouldn't be lonely, and who sent me boxes of saimin regularly.
We returned to Hawaii in September 1972 with Jennifer, who at 4 months went willingly to each grandparent, surprised to see so many black-haired people among her. Within 1-1/2 years, Grandpa's increasingly noticeable debilitating physical condition would be diagnosed correctly as ALS. It was soon after I learned I was expecting our second child that he asked me if I was pregnant. I denied it as if he had asked me a ridiculous question, and he responded with a grunt, calling me out on the lie. From that point on, I began worrying about how the sadness of his impending demise would affect the baby, and of which event would come first, his death or the baby's birth. There were nights when I would rehearse his funeral in order to cope with the inevitable, or anticipate the phone call that I knew would come. But there was sweetness, too, in watching Jenny and Grandpa play together..with his dementia, he was mentally the same age as her. His death occurred on February 2, 1976, and my grief was mixed with the growing anxiety of the effect his death would have on the happiness of my newborn. Six months and 9 days later, on the day Joanna was born, she smiled at me, over and over again. She would never meet him in this world, but I like to think that he spent 6 months with her before she was born, coaching her to smile for her mommy.