“Paul
and Keiko dropped by the other day. Can you believe it? They’re still calling
me Atchi-baa-chan. That’s’cause I spent most of my time in
the kitchen, the laundry, or in some other room (atchi), and I guess I was
an old lady (baa-chan) to them.”
“Seems
that Paul and his daughter, Jolene, decided to drop by for a visit during obon about 20-odd years ago. But they
never made it. Somehow they made a wrong turn and ended up at the wrong
cemetery. And the small Christian mausoleum they found certainly wasn’t ours!”
“Rumor
has it that while they were there, Paul told Jolene all about me. He told her
how Keiko’s mom and brother and sister could only see him as this graceless gaijin who could barely squeeze his
knees under the kotatsu. He also told
her how I
treated him as simply another face at the dinner table. And he pointed out that
his halting Japanese had seemed to confound the entire family, except for me. “
“And
now, here he was, squatting awkwardly right in front of our mausoleum apologizing for what had happened years ago. I told him I was proud of
him. I told him it’s the effort and intent of the visitor, not the results, that
count up here. So what if he may have been a few kilometers off track? There
was no unpardonable error. Dropping by like they did, even if it was at the
wrong cemetery, was thoughtful. He and Jolene actually made quite a reputation
for as far as any of us were concerned. And in the process they generated more smiles
and laughter in this oppressively somber setting than there’d been here in
years.”
Link to RLS
This link is probably broken. Paul Rector passed away in Gunma Prefecture, 23 Sept. 2012, at the age of 65.
