Election Day

Today was the first day I asked myself a very specific question:

Was Grandma allowed to vote?

Specifically, I wondered whether Grandma was allowed to vote while interned in Rohwer.

For those of you who don’t know, my maternal grandparents and all of my mom’s older siblings were interned during World War II. (My father’s side was not -- they lived in Maui, and most of the Hawaiian Japanese-Americans were not interned. Some fought, including my grandpa’s brother, who died in a corner of France.)

Wikipedia didn’t have anything. But PRI’s The World did a characteristically excellent story on the matter.

The gist is that there was voting, but it was difficult, and the combination of ballot challenges, state laws, and logistics meant that voting rights were pretty much eliminated.

I try to avoid thinking too much about my racial or cultural identity. But otherness has been a feature of this election in a way that it hasn’t been, at least in the memory of my political life. And so it was perhaps inevitable that I’d come back to that memory, and think about what was, and what might have been, and of course, what may yet be.

It is with a renewed intensity that I gaze upon efforts to make voting harder, not easier. It is with renewed anger that I consider the efforts to change election laws, under the pretense of reducing fraud, to disenfranchise segments of the population. Because it was not so long ago that my family lost those rights, through no fault of their own.

And it’s with some amazement that I consider that, after that experience, my grandparents rebuilt, had sons and son-in-laws serve in uniform overseas, and voted. I wish I had the “I LIKE IKE” button that my grandpa had hanging near his desk for decades. I wonder if he ever knew that Milton Eisenhower led the War Relocation Authority. As a farmer/small businessman, he probably was a registered Republican.

I’m grateful he didn’t get bitter. I’m grateful he didn’t give up. And I’m grateful that he was permitted -- not easily, but permitted -- to rebuild his life. It’s a sobering lesson for me. I’ve experienced nothing remotely close to that level of dislocation, humiliation, and -- I don’t think this is an exaggeration -- state-sanctioned theft. I laugh at my friends who worry about big government taking away their rights or seizing their property. But then I feel shame -- every family has stories of civic failure and grievance, whether governmental or private. It does no good to dismiss their concerns and pain out of hand.

That’s going to be the hard part after today. How do we work together? How will the victors frame their victory in a way that at least reduces the chances that we will spend the next two or four years or decades as two armed camps, unable to do much because we begrudge each other the smallest things?

Because I do think a lot of people are terrible. I do think that support of Trump flies in the face of everything I know and love about this country. I do think that it shows a marked historical ignorance, a lack of empathy to those who would most be hurt by a Trump presidency that borders on callousness and selfishness. I do think that plenty of people, even people more or less on the same page as me, have become stark raving mad.

And I believe I have been one of those madmen.

I've embraced the toxicity that I criticize in others. I've become the partisan that sees winning as essential, even existential. And in my saner moments I feel shame at being part of the problem.

So I’m trying, hard, to remember certain things. I remember that my love for this country is not the naive love I had as a young child. It’s a love that is more aware (though still partially blind) to the real historical truths, and the present truths, experienced by those different from me. I see those flaws, and that pain, and the wars and the cruelty and the short-sightedness.

But I’m finding the strength to not just criticize or willfully ignore it. I’m finding the love that demands I reach out, and do things that are uncomfortable and hard, and pride-crushing, because I know that it makes my tiny corner of the world better.

Not enough. Never enough. But some. And maybe, after today, some more.

I love this country because of its history, too, and not just in spite of it. I marvel at how some individuals and communities discovered, in their pain, in their oppression, in their privilege, something greater, something beyond the limitations of I or tribe.

That all heroes wilt under the scrutiny of history and hindsight is necessary, and even desirable. If America depended on perfect women and men to achieve greatness, we would have no hope to maintain, much less advance, this experiment. I have looked into the mirror, and learned to appreciate the flaws, the dark shadows, without sentiment or excuse. Our scars are our story, though one hopes, not our future.

So this I pray -- and I say that sincerely as a man who has struggled to bend his knees and bow his head, but does so now, at a time of acute need. I pray for a peaceful election day.

I pray for good judgment on the part of the people.

I pray not for an easy life, but to be a stronger man.
I pray for powers equal to my tasks. (Phillip Brooks)

I pray that I remember that the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too certain that it is right. (Learned Hand)

I pray I learn how to borrow from those who came before, from those who know more, and love more -- that my pride does not prevent me from leaning too much on my own understanding, but that my honor demands that I develop my understanding to ensure I am not a weak reed.

Today, I will cast my ballot, thinking about my family that, within living memory, was denied that right. I will vote mindful of the past, with an eye toward the future, our future.

I cast it knowing that this is but a piece of citizenship -- that I will judge my worthiness of that vote based on what I do between elections to better advance this nation and the world, and the extent to which I have opened my heart to those across the fissures and chasms of discord and fear.

Today will be the expression of our will. But every day is the expression of our character.

To you good men and women: I pray you vote wisely, live well, and love openly. For you are why I vote, why I live, and why I love. Thank you.

Thinking about my dad, two years on

I don't think about him too often. But it's been a bit over -- two years? Is that all? It feels like at least four--since he died.

I just finished working with a student on one last waitlist essay for college. And it reminded me that, last year, I had once written a sample application essay to try to illustrate the tone, pacing, humor, and emotional notes that I wanted that student to hit. In retrospect it wasn't fair -- a 30-year old has simply lived more life than an 18-year old. More things have happened, good and bad, and it's easier to write about influential people and moments once their influence has become pronounced over the years. I honestly don't know if the kid got anything out of it, though the mom thanked me for the essay and complimented me on my writing.

Upon a re-reading, I grimaced. It wasn't quite true -- it was my uncle that asked people to pull his finger. My father was usually content to make fart jokes. But my memories of him have been shaped by so many things -- especially, blessedly, time, which dulls wounds and through which the retrospective mind creates order and a logical story where there was none. It was him, in any case, and the rest of it was true.

I don't even know if it would have been a good essay. It is past-focused, and not focused enough on the qualities of character I did develop that would serve me in the future. It might be more of a red flag than a story of overcoming difficulty. And the last paragraph is a bit schmaltzy. But it was a first draft, and I didn't have time to polish it -- I must've worked on fifteen essays for that kid.

I'm too tired or reluctant to come up with a two-year anniversary set of thoughts. It would have been a recycled version at the one-year mark. So it seems strangely appropriate I take something I had written a year ago for the purpose. For it must be marked. I've been  a bit down lately, possibly because I'm seeing these seniors get ready to leave. And I want to leave with them, to give college and my twenties another crack. Or maybe because they remind me that I, too, have moved on from the past, and with equal parts ignorance, optimism, and fear, look toward the future.

“Pull my finger!”

That’s how my dad started every meeting. He was crazy like that, and crazy in other ways. He was bipolar, and I, thankfully, grew up without him in the house. But I did see him regularly – every two weeks. He was, at times, scary, or genial, or grouchy, or energetic – the combination of medications, occasionally illicit drugs, and, most importantly, life. He had enjoyed success as an aerospace engineer at the height of the Cold War, and lost it all – the house, the family, even his freedom.

But it was there, in the institutions, with minimal spending money and limited means of transportation, he developed his relationships, and, if I can be hopeful, some measure of wisdom about how he got there, and what he still had to offer the world.

My father taught me many things. I learned to fear emotion, as that was associated with manic depression. I learned to fear my intelligence, as that was also linked with mental illness. But I also learned the value of laughing, whether to forget, or to share. He could make me laugh, and as he grew older, was better able to laugh at himself, and his past. (And his gas.)

I remember the day he died. I remember his cold form, his mouth agape, stretched in a hospital bed in the care facility where he had spent the last ten years. In life, he had been a terror and an inspiration, a source of merriment and perpetual stress. He was gone, and I didn’t know with what, or how, I would fill the place in myself that was now empty.

Yet even here, there was humor. My aunt came in, and talked with me. After about ten minutes, I realized that she didn’t realize she was standing next to a dead man, and informed her of the fact. The mortician, a young, eager man obviously desperate to keep his job, pleaded with me to rate him highly on the survey that would be mailed to me in a week. “Tens, please!” I couldn’t help but laugh, and I know my Dad would have done the same.

After I had taken care of that business, I looked at him one last time. I recited the words of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. I sat for a while.

And on my way out, I pulled his finger.

My father learned to laugh because it felt good. He laughed to escape the doubts and regrets that plagued him. Honestly, I laugh for the same reasons. But I also value laughter as a way of really understanding and appreciating the human condition. When we laugh, honestly and fully, we begin to open ourselves, to make ourselves vulnerable – and that, perhaps, is the beginning of wisdom.

I have not fought in war. I have not discovered a new technology, or written a novel, or performed in Carnegie Hall. My triumphs, and my tribulations, have been necessarily smaller, more private. They do not capture the imagination, but they echo in my memory. They inform my character, and give me both courage and caution, combining in what I hope to be wisdom. I have faced those old, old fears. And I have learned how to laugh at them, at myself, at the frustrations great and small. He was, in his absence, at least as influential as in his occasional, unstable presence. But he trained me well. For even in that last hour, I laughed a large, wonderful laugh, and thanked my father for his imperfect love.

A tribute to JL, on his wedding

Just in case this story is deemed unflattering to the subject, I am using the acronym JL. Will anonymize further if necessary.

I was surprised to receive an invitation. I hadn't kept in touch. When asked, JL jokingly (I hope) said, "Oh, that was probably [my fiancee]." I somehow doubted that my volume of article repostings and random thoughts on Facebook had endeared me to her. But it was as plausible an explanation as any.

So I don't know why I was considered special enough for an invitation. But I did think about why he was special enough that I would go.

I knew JL in college. We were suitemates one year, though the "suite" in question consisted of two isolated rooms joined by a long, ominous hallway with an enormous restroom and shower. Both of our roommates were in relationships, and so we occasionally wandered down the hall of horrors to engage in conversation. This was especially true during the summer, when it was just the two of us working that summer.

I remember once during that summer I gave him my video games, in a desperate attempt to quit. A day or two later, I came crawling back for them. He refused to give them to me. Damn him! But he did give them at the end of the summer.

The rest of this post is of a more serious nature.

I am going to say something that I haven't confessed publicly, or to anyone except JL. Once in my life, I drove drunk. Worse, I drove drunk with three others in the car. I was the designated driver, but I caved to pressure and took a double shot at a house party. While driving home, I was drunk enough that I pulled over to the side of the road and pissed in public, near a railroad crossing.

JL took the keys from me and got us safely back. He claims to not remember the incident -- I don't know if he's saying that to be kind, or because he honestly forgot. But he never scolded me, or even brought it up. It was his car, and his life, at stake. I never drove drunk again, but I still feel incredibly guilty about how my gross lapse in judgment could have been fatal. Perhaps he saved our lives that night.

Many years later, in the depths of my depression and unemployment, I spent some time with JL and his then-girlfriend (now wife). I don't know if he asked me to hang out because I was depressed, or if it was just because we had been friends in high school. I had a great time, but I felt too guilty to follow up and hang out with them again. I had nothing to offer. I think I was so depressed that I might not have been entertaining company. We might have met only twice since college, but I was grateful for the lifeline. I don't think he necessarily understood what I was going through, but he was wise enough to know that understanding isn't a prerequisite for empathy.

If you want to judge someone's character, observe how they treat someone who can do nothing for him or her. I'd heard him voice this belief before, many years ago, at a fast food restaurant. It comes back to me now, that distant memory. Maybe as a man he wasn't fully formed -- who is in college? But the framework of his character was already present, and already on solid ground.

One final story. My father died a year and a half ago. I posted it on Facebook, partly because that's what I do, but also because those who know me know how tremendously I have been shaped, both positively and negatively, by my father's presence, absence, and perceived influence. I received many expressions of condolences. But there were only a few people who called, nearly all of them family.

JL called. We talked. He offered to take me out for dinner that week. I put it off, and never followed up. It didn't seem significant then, though in retrospect, it was amazing. I hadn't seen him in a couple years, and yet he felt compelled to reach out with a phone call, nearly anachronistic, incredibly quaint in its courtesy.

He works for one of the most modern companies in the world. And yet, somehow, he's both old school and new tech.

The day of his wedding, my stepdad went to the ER. I almost didn't make the drive to the wedding. But he told me to go. I had to leave the evening celebration early because he had returned to the hospital.

But I'm so glad I went. It was my small way of repaying the many kindnesses I have received from him over the years, to celebrate his commitment to a wonderful woman who, from the first moment, treated me with open-handed friendship.

I cannot claim to know them well. But I am glad to know them. I told them in an absurd post-it note (substituting for a wedding card -- the madness of this week being my excuse) that they were part of my tribe. I mean it. They've met the cutoff of Dunbar's Number. I just need to do better to show it.

Congratulations, JL. I am proud of you, and proud to know you.

Silent Warriors

On my last day in Maui, I noticed a dusty framed certificate in the living room. 

I doubt it had been looked at for years.

I knew that Grandpa Yamada had had a brother who served in World War II in the US Army, and who had died in France. I knew his name was Hideo. I also knew that his family did not want him to go, but he did. His family wasn't interned -- Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were largely exempt.

I remember finding his name on the monument to Japanese-American WWII servicemen in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. I remember making a pencil etching of his name, paying the recommended donation, and hesitating to send it home. Someone suggested that it was unwise to bring him up to Grandpa.

And so, like so many things in my family, it was discarded and unspoken, and the opportunity to hear the story died. How ironic that we would be so cowardly when it came to discussing frankly the brave and honorable death of a relative.

And so here was an artifact from that past. Here was the thing I kept in mind every time I heard a Jap joke, the thing that I thought about every time a Korean or Chinese client or stranger grew slightly brittle upon learning that I am of Japanese ancestry. I have been told that in Asia, a conception of nationality distinct from race is challenging. My exposure was limited, so I can't say if that's the case. But if it is, it is one more reason I am grateful to have been born on this side of the ocean.

But here was new information. I assumed, being Hawaiian, Hideo served in the 100th Battalion. But it appears he served in the storied 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in F Company -- a distinguished company within a legendary regiment.

In high school, I read Silent Warriors: A Memoir of America's 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The author, Jack Wakamatsu, served in F Company.

I think Hideo was mentioned in passing -- just a sentence. At the time I wasn't sure if it was my great-uncle... Hideo is a common enough name.

The certificate indicates he died October 15, 1944, which would put it at the beginning of the attack on Bruyères.  So he died before the regiment rescued the "Lost Battalion".

My father claimed that he was killed by a sniper. But my father had a terrible habit of embellishing stories -- it would be a shame if he chose to embellish this one, for surely it doesn't need artificial drama.

His awards, and brief mention in Silent Warriors, perhaps suggests that he wasn't an exemplary member of the unit. But I'm not sure that means much if the unit itself is the most decorated, for its size and duration of service, in the history of American warfare.

I know nothing else about the man. I can't claim any pride for his service. But I do hope to keep his service in mind as I try to be a more decent man.

Grandma's House

I wish I had said this to you, my cousins. But I couldn't get all four of you together at once. I couldn't, or I wouldn't. For while I felt welcome, I didn't always feel comfortable. It's a powder keg here, and as in all wars, the children will suffer most, and most blamelessly.

What would I say?

I would say that she was your grandma most of all. I was given, unexpectedly, a place of honor at the service, as the surviving descendant of her eldest child, her eldest son. Because of this I was charged with starting the procession for incense and prayer. I also sat in the front row. My mother -- bless her heart! -- sent flowers via the Kahului florist, flowers that read "From Ryan". I know that some read this as arrogance and presumption and not kindness, sounding a dissonant note. (The other two wreaths simply said "Beloved Grandmother" and "Beloved Mother", with no names.) Perhaps worst of all, my aunt proposed, last-minute, to add a brief statement and prayer dedicated to my late father, extending the service another ten minutes.

All of these serve, in some way, to separate me from you. It is the last thing I want, for your kindness has been the one thing that has kept this trip tolerable.

I can't claim her. She gave birth to my father, and my father gave birth to me. But our relationship was a tenuous one, one of a half dozen visits and cards during the holidays. You, on the other hand, were there every week -- even now. You grill, you eat, you laugh, you talk story.

I want to tell you that I don't know that with Grandma Yamada. I'll never know that. But I know what it is to have that, and to lose it.

Every Sunday, with few exceptions, my mother's family would gather at Grandma Yasuda's house. Not everyone had gone to church. But everyone ate. Everyone talked. As the youngest cousin, I enjoyed the attention and patience of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins.

As an only child of a single mother, this experience was absolutely vital. Without it, I have no doubt I would be dead, in spirit if not in body.

I even lived there for a time. In retrospect, I am grateful my mother had both the privilege and willingness to go to half-time employment and live a couple days a week with her parents when they contracted cancer. I spent even more time with some of my cousins. I learned how to change a colostomy bag. I learned to grieve as I saw both my grandmother and my grandfather alive one day and dead the next.

And I grieved, especially for my grandmother. I lost her in 8th grade, on the cusp of graduation, before I could give the valediction. I talked about teaching then, because I didn't have the heart to talk about how much I missed her, what she had meant to me.

If I am honest, then, I do not share your pain. But I know it. I know that pain better than I know my own face.

You aunts and uncles -- I also know what it is to lose a parent, a parent with whom, maybe, you feel you had unfinished business. But damn you and your foolish machinations and grudges. Choke on your bitterness. I will speak to your children.

You may wonder if you'll lose that center, now that she's gone. You may. Maybe not. You are four, and your spouses, and your own children, bound by a father who yet lives there. Will he be your center? Perhaps, though fathers and sons, and fathers and daughters, do not always have the same luxury, the same patience, the same opportunity for love to feel unconditional, though in these cases, at least, it certainly is.

We lost our emotional center, and eventually, we lost our place of congregation. The diaspora is spread less through space and more through neglected ties. It can be rekindled, and I have the good fortune of picking up where I left off with many of these cousins and aunts. But it is different, and in many ways, inferior.

If your bonds live -- and they have a better chance, for you are brothers and sisters -- it will be because you work to reforge the broken links through frequent and strenuous effort. You will be fine, I hope, I think. But the rest of us? If we let three months, six months, a year pass, what will become of us?

No matter. I will instead focus on my gratitude. You have, without knowing, let me feel the slight touch of a rope tied to a ship long disappeared over the horizon, a ship bearing my happiest memories, my most important influences. I weep for your loss, but I celebrate the realization that I had this best of gifts. I hope you know what you had, and what you must fight to keep.

Sigh - wine has substituted feeling. Food has substituted grief. Let me walk on these sands and clear my thoughts, for they ramble irregularly like the waves in this breakered lagoon.

Small Thoughts on a Small Island

Today is September 13, 2015. I flew to Maui for the funeral of my last surviving grandparent, my paternal grandma. By cruel coincidence, today is also apparently National Grandparents' Day.

I haven't been for 15 years. It may seem strange to avoid paradise for so long.

Fifteen years ago, I was a senior in high school. I had come here with my father to visit family. My grandparents, uncle, and schizophrenic aunt all lived on a small farm in Makawao -- upcountry, about 30 minutes from Kahului.

I remember less than I think I should have from this trip. I remember red soil, a red that stained and dirtied sneakers beyond salvation. I remember that it would rain intermittently at our elevation of three or four thousand feet.

I remember my grandpa showing me his angry, strict constructionist letters to to the editor of the local paper. I remember he gave me Will Durant's book, The Story of Civilization, and showed me his heavily annotated copy. I remember him threatening to shoot the people that stole his cherrymoyas, and my grandmother and father, not taking this threat lightly, said rather lamely in local dialect, "Let them take."

I remember my grandma, who complained about being a farmer, and who fed me lau lau, which, being polite, I ate, even though I hated the stuff.

(I still hate the stuff, though with less passion. All passions, it seem, including those of taste, grow less acute with time.)

But mostly, I remember my father and the AP Biology test.

***

I had brought an AP Biology prep book with me to Maui. My school didn't offer AP Bio, and I had taken Honors Bio as a freshman. Three years later, after determining that I was half a class shy of being a National AP Scholar, I decided to study independently for the AP Bio test. I had done this before -- I had taken the AP Chemistry test as a sophomore, as had four of my classmates. But this was different. For chemistry, I had had the benefit of taking Honors Chemistry that same year. I was on my own this time. And I was three years removed from formal coursework.

So I studied.

During that week, my father had at least one manic episode. Manic episodes with my father resembled volcanic eruptions -- some were sudden explosions, while others started more slowly. This was one of the latter.

He seemed crabby that day. He made some snide comments about how my mother had raised me. I didn't know what he had a problem with specifically, but I did sense the coming storm.

I was studying DNA transcription when he stormed into the house when he marched in. I think he had stormed in and out of the house periodically over the previous thirty minutes. I'm not completley sure -- I was blessed with the power to concentrate and tune out my surroundings.

Finally, he marched in the room. He was shouting at me, telling me I was a bad son, and that Mom had raised me badly. I tried to ignore it. I don't think he used the word "worthless", but that was pretty much the gist of it. He was offended because he was my father, and that I should obey him.

Now, for as long as I had remembered, I was told two things about my father. He was sick, and it wasn't his fault. I was often sad, or angry, but knew I wasn't supposed to be angry with him. (I also was told that I shouldn't work too hard, or feel too happy, or feel too sad, with the unstated implication that I would end up bipolar.)

But something inside me snapped. I told him off. I don't remember everything I said, but I do remember telling him, "You're a small man."

I don't know that I could've chosen worse words to insult his pride. Small man! Small man? I AM NOT A SMALL MAN! Your mother did a bad job! And so on.

He stormed out again. Tears running down my face, I turned back to the book. It took a while for the tears to clear, and for my mind to focus. But I went back to studying.

I honestly have no recollections from the rest of that trip. That May, I took the AP Biology test and got a 5. I also did well enough on my other AP tests (including Microeconomics, which I had studied for on my own) to get the National AP Scholar award.

At Harvey Mudd, I needed to study biology (again independently) and take a placement exam (again independently) to try to pass out of Introduction to Biology (Bio 52), which at that time was notoriously worthless. I ended up doing well enough to pass out of the class, but not well enough to be awarded credit. I was permitted to take Evolutionary Biology (Bio 101), which was a perfectly fine, fairly easy class.

So it didn't really matter that I had studied biology intensively three separate times. It didn't matter that I had gotten the National AP Scholar award. I didn't get an iota of credit from my 11 AP tests.

And yet it did matter. It mattered because it meant I had shit to do. I had a goal, born out of vanity, or ambition, or genuine curiosity, that compelled me to focus on work. It meant that I didn't have time to be patient with the ravings of my father. It meant that the normal precautions and rules dictated by my family, and my own personal anxieties, weren't front and center.

It meant that I could tell him off, recover, and do the job.

***

Fifteen years later, the grandparents are dead. My aunt is dead. My father is dead.  And the dream that I was chasing then is dead. I'm older. Just older.

All passions grow less acute with time. The passion to be right, or to be certain, is diminished. The conviction that something is owed -- resolution, restitution, violence, martyrdom -- by me, or him, or the universe, has been replaced by an accordioning of time and depletion of memory, a diminution of importance.

The house on the farm is half-empty now. I placed some incense at the Buddhist altar, remembering that my grandfather had once said, "Religion is between you and God." Alone, except for the watchful eyes of the god I doubt, I surrendered these memories and committed them to the cerulean sea.

Pausing, but not stopping, to remember the grandmother that passed, and the father who once loomed so unbearably large, but now grows smaller and smaller.

Oh Lord, we commit these bodies to flame, and commit their souls to your mercy. Be merciful to us, Lord, for we do not believe, and yet are saved by the forgetting. Amen.

An Honest Mother's Day Card to Grandma

Dear Grandma,

Sorry I've been such a screwup and haven't kept in touch. Please accept this offering of a glittery card in type that is, upon further reflection, too small to be legible. It is a down payment on the debt of years of equally crappy cards that I never sent.

Guilt is generally effective, and no guilt is as effective as grandma guilt. When I called you last Mother's Day, I did so because I hadn't remembered to send a card in time. It broke my heart to hear you say that none of the other grandkids had written or called. This is the only case in which me wishing you to have memory problems is not a terrible thing.

You're old. Possibly 90. I'm not sure, because I am a terrible grandson, and we haven't kept in touch. You've seen the world. You have stories to tell. But I'm not supposed to ask. Did you really study in Japan and get trapped there by the war? Did you really disguise yourself as a man to avoid rape and forced prostitution? Grandpa isnt around anymore, but maybe you can tell me about his younger brother, about the fights that led to Hideo joining the US army and dying in France. I had copied the inscription of his name on the 442nd/100th monument in Little Tokyo, and was going to send it to you. I can't recall if I did -- I think there was some concern that it would dredge up bad memories.

Is it terrible that I want to know about the dramatic events of your life, instead of the grueling, daily reality of raising five kids on the farm? I know you fucking hated farming, or at least being married to a farmer. I don't know if you hated grandpa or not -- we have the luxury of marrying for love now. You made it work, and thank you for that.

Did you know something was off about Dad? Bipolar I usually manifests itself in the teens. The vocabulary of mental illness didn't really exist then, and certainly not in rural Hawaii. But I don't know -- grandpa did read a lot, when he wasn't writing angrily to the local newspaper about taxes or the constitution. I remember writing to you both about my depression, and he replied with a message advising vitamins and exercise. I think Grandpa knew a lot, but perhaps didn't understand people. Maybe I'm not so different.

I know we discussed about you leaving the farm. It'll be hard to leave, and god knows I hope your family doesn't go through the same problems mine did when they sold property. Your family. Not Mine. It feels that way. I can't say it's just Dad, either. I'm sorry, but I believed that after Dad died, I wouldn't keep in touch with that side. And it's sort of worked out that way. This crappy card is one of the few connections. It's a fragile metaphor of all the things that could have been and weren't, and all the things that shouldn't have been but were.

I'm sorry Grandma. I'm sorry life hadn't been easy for you.

You have a wonderful laugh, and I hope you make more use of it.

Love,

Ryan

The Eulogy That Will Never Be

There won't be a service for my father, so this is perhaps the closest thing to a eulogy that he will receive. It's rough, but so are the emotions. I think I can't bring myself to edit it, even though it probably needs it. Here then, it will rest, as thoughts formed, but unrefined, over the last decades.

I started, but never completed, a eulogy for him in 2009. He was bedridden and near death. But then, as he did so many times, he bounced back. Cats only have nine lives. I can recall perhaps a dozen instances where he sat at the edge of death, or was at least hospitalized for a serious condition, and he returned. Perhaps part of me felt that this time was no different. But I had been bracing for his death, and I find myself more or less ready for it.

In some ways, I lost my father a long, long time ago. He suffered from bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia for most of his adult life, though it became completely unmanageable shortly after my birth.

I am lucky, in many ways. A few years ago I realized how hard it must be for his sister and my mother. When they saw him, they were constantly reminded of the man he used to be. Free from such memories, perhaps he was free from my expectations.

Or at least somewhat free. Here's the thing with an almost-absent father. It allows children to project an ideal into the void of absence. I saw him so rarely that I was persistently, if subconsciously, managing that absence. In the absence of real presence, real perspective, I formulated an ideology that was too rigid -- whether as a fundamentalist Christian or a left-wing liberal or an ambitious student. And upon that edifice that substituted for substance, I broke, time and again.

When Roy, my stepfather, came into our lives, I think I readily gave him the title of father, though I didn't say so until their wedding, 15 years later. But how could anyone live up to decades of longing and wishing, at once vague and insistent? Disappointment was inevitable, and our present relationship, while cordial, perhaps suffered from the gulf between what I wanted and what he was capable of providing. He is a good man, a victim of the expectations of a child not fully grown up.

My father was possessed with real charm and humor. In some ways, it seemed that he "got" me more than my mother ever did. She is a wonderful woman who has given me everything, and yet I feel that the gap between her world and mine is nearly unbridgeable. For his flaws, he was more pragmatic, and yet more emotionally self-aware. He had the self-confidence to make jokes, bawdy ones.

So it was natural that I would relate to him a lot more than my mother. As part of that, I harbored a long, deep-seated fear of being bipolar. It didn't help that I was actively discouraged from expressing strong emotions, either positive or negative, in the presence of my mother and grandmother. God bless them, but they knew crap about psychology, and they thought that things like stress, or ambition, or improvised poetry, or seriousness, were all signs of impending and irreversible mental collapse. I exaggerate a bit, but my young mind did magnify the fears. By 7th grade I was aware of genetic predispositions, and was a little scared whenever I had trouble sleeping before a big Academic Decathlon competition, or stayed up to write an overlong English essay.

For the record, I've been cleared on that front. Bipolar disorder generally manifests itself in the teens, and whatever exuberance I may have exhibited was pretty natural. But the strains put on myself did show, and I became depressed. I dropped out of grad school. I developed addictions and antisocial habits. I ran away from home for two months. In the end, the diagnosis isn't bipolar disorder. It's depression coupled with bad coping habits. There is something laughable in how a fear of being mentally ill played a primary role in making me so.

But I am talking more about myself, and not about him. Eulogies are often more accurate reflections of the speaker than the one spoken of.

There were tremendously good things about him, too. Having lost everything, he relished simple things. We would go and get terrible strawberry shakes (before I learned that I was lactose intolerant), or Mountain Dew at Taco Bell. We'd walk around the not-too-great part of Norwalk, and he would say hi to his friends. Wherever he was, he needed to be, and generally was, a big man, known, "well-liked", as Willy Loman would put it. I did pick up insecurity in how he would freely dispense gifts (often going into a bit of debt to do so), but I'd say he was far more confident in social interactions than I ever was.

And his humor! He loved cracking jokes. They were often crude, (I'm packing a gun, and it's got a single chamber.) and occasionally racist (A Frenchman, an Englishman, a Texan, and a Mexican are on a plane. The plane is going to crash if the load isn't ligtened, and so the pilot calls for volunteers to sacrifice to save the others. The Frenchman shouts "Vive la France!" and jumps off the plane. The Englishman shouts "For Queen and Country!" and jumps. The Texan shouts "Remember the Alamo!" and throws the Mexican out of the plane.) But he was quick both to make others laugh and laugh at my own jokes. My students probably wonder where I get my weird sense of humor -- it comes, in part, due to positive reinforcement from my father laughing at my terrible jokes for many, many years.

Most of all, I know that he tried so hard to live up to what he imagined where the standards I set for him. He quit smoking so many times, and would tell me, with pride, how long he had stopped smoking for, and how much money he had saved. Inevitably, he'd start again -- there just wasn't much to do in the facilities in which he lived. And when it would come up, he'd look a little abashed, as if I were the father, and he were the misbehaving child. It was sad, but endearing, and I forgave him for his lapses.

His drug lapses were harder to forgive. He had been, for most of his life, a creature of chemicals, in one form or another. When I was about 10, he gave me a two-page, double-sided, double-column list of all the illegal drugs he had taken in his life. Granted, a lot of these were nicknames for the same sorts of drugs (barbituates, for instance), but it was still pretty impressive. Apparently, one of the problems with mania is that it feels good. He would enjoy feeling manic, and sometimes resort to illegal drugs. Apparently he bought meth a couple times, and was hospitalized for extreme blood pressure (220/180, I think). His strong heart saved him, then and many other times. He did always encourage me to stay away from drugs, a message which seems to have stuck.

His manic episodes were really hard to deal with. My mother would drop me off for visitation -- he didn't have formal visitation rights, but he had the expectation of seeing me once every two weeks. It was usually for a couple hours on a Saturday. Most of the time, he was fine. But sometimes, he was unbalanced, or full-blown manic. He'd rage about losing the house, or imagine getting back together with Mom and having us all live together. He'd make elaborate claims about his work as a senior scientist at Hughes, and his crypto-clearance security. Sometimes he'd make physically intimidating gestures, claiming to know martial arts. (For the record, as far as I know, he never, ever hit me or my mother -- a low standard of decency, to be sure, but I want to be absolutely clear on that point.) Twice -- it was only twice, but I remember each time -- he said he was disappointed in me and thought I was being raised badly.

He'd always ask forgiveness later. And it always came.

I don't know how I was supposed to react. I think I was told that it wasn't his fault, which is hard for a child. Children see things in terms of blame, and without some really subtle explanations, it's easy for a child to think it was his own fault. I don't think I blamed myself for his outbursts, but it felt odd not being able to criticize or judge him on his bad behavior. I don't know where that anger, or confusion, went -- but I know it didn't go away completely.

He was never without a girlfriend. He was charming, and even when obese, reasonably handsome. Some of his girlfriends were sweet and kind. Some seemed almost childlike or developmentally disabled. All suffered from mental illnesses. But they all loved him, and in time, I got used to Dad's girlfriends. Towards the end, we'd even have some decent man-to-man conversations about his relationships.

"Dad, she seems a bit obsessed with money."

"Yeah, she grew up poor."

"She also seems to have a thin skin. I think she gets easily offended by your jokes."

*smiles*

"Uh, are you sure she's the right match for you?"

*thinks* "We like to cuddle, and I can always eventually make her laugh."

Toward the end, his medication balance was decent enough for him to actually feel what normal humans feel, in normal amounts. Sometimes, he wasn't angry or depressed because of bipolar disorder, or becaue of schizophrenia. Sometimes, someone just pissed him off, or he was having an off day. I was actually happy toward the end when I could see that, and a bit disappointed that others in his life would try to medicalize every change in mood. For instance, he was a bit depressed a couple months ago when the managers at his retirement home were fired, because he liked them and cared about them.

In thinking about my father's life, I often focus on the hurt. It hurt having him in my life. It hurt not having him in my life. Sometimes I think it would've been easier if he had been completely out of the picture, or if he was a complete asshole, or if my mother hated him. But he was there, and wasn't an asshole, and my mom, sadly, never stopped loving him, even though they were divorced, and both had moved on. Two years ago I asked if they would've gotten divorced if I hadn't been around. I thought, maybe, she would've toughed it out on her own, but divorced to protect me. I don't remember her answer, but that I asked speaks to some lingering guilt that a child has when parents divorce, perhaps especially when they remain on reasonably good terms.

I've realized that, by focusing on the pain, and what was missing, I've become a worse person. Looking back especially on the last few years, I've lived as though I thought the world owed me something, that he owed me something. And, passively, or in fits of active self-destruction, I was waiting for payment.

Even with less experience, I think I was more wise as a child. I didn't have this attitude. I found gratitude, through my cousins, through the many wonderful role models I have, male and female. I found enjoyment in school. I made my world simpler, and more easy to handle -- yes, in response to chaos and complication and fear, but it was a correct instinct.

So I now know, that memory is a choice. I can dwell on the pain or the missed possibilities, and continue to live like I'm owed something. Or I can choose to remember the good parts, choose to highlight the good things that came from that relationship.

It's not historically accurate. It's not honest. But it's a better way to live. I don't advocate it for everyone -- I can't expect or ask someone, who, say, had an abusive parent to replace those memories with happy ones. But perhaps for those of us carrying around resentments for less serious sins, forgetting and selective memory might be part of the answer. The truth, such as it exists, magnified and distorted by our memories and motivations, is often too expensive to keep.

So I'm going to try, hard, to remember how I learned empathy and forginveness, how I learned the joy in the small and inexpensive. I'm going to remember how Dad showed me how to speak with women, how to make friends, and how to enjoy life. For he did enjoy life, in a way that I never did. Perhaps, seeing his past and future more clearly than I gave him credit, he chose to embrace the people, and places, and activities, available to him in the here and now.

Miles Yamada was a man who loved those around him, imperfectly, but intensely. He exhibited courage in facing his inner demons, and compassion in embracing his friends and family. He played an important role professionally as a successful engineer at Hughes Aircraft during the height of the Cold War, working on a number of civilian and military contracts that earned him the praise of his superiors. Disabled by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, he still strove to exhibit a level of kindness, compassion, and humor that is worthy of emulation. He taught me that it's important to be kind to those who are different, and that a little charm and grace goes a long way in this world. I am grateful for the time spent with him, playing cards, drinking soda, and, most of all, talking. He will be missed.

A letter from dad

Son,

I'm dying for real this time. Slowly, but definitively.There are things I need to tell you, things you need to hear.

I'm sorry I was a lousy father. I loved you, and still do. I loved you as much as I could. But I was also a raging maniac other times. I'm sorry for the times I said you were a terrible son. I'm sorry for melting down in front of you, with no one to help you. I'm sorry I made physically threatening movements to you and your mother; I didn't intend to follow through on them, but you, as a child, didn't know that. I'm sorry I asked you for money, and never paid it back. I'm sorry I put myself in the hospital for using meth.

I'm sorry for the smaller, but still hurtful, things too. I'm sorry I broke so many promises to quit smoking, and exposed you to tons of secondhand smoke. I'm sorry I needed you to pay for everything. I'm sorry I paraded you around the halfway houses and institutions, not only because I was proud of you, but because I was using you and your success to legitimize my existence.

I'm sorry I didn't teach you how to be a man.

I'm sorry I use "couldn't" when I should say "wouldn't". Maybe if I had tried harder, some of these things would have happened.

I will go to my end to accept what judgment may come. But I hope, now, I can teach you a few things.

Please learn from my mistakes. I was 63 when my father died. Part of me never felt free from him. I let him, or what I thought of him, hold me back for most of my life. You will be younger when your father dies, but it's still been too damn long to wait. When I'm gone, life won't get better. I'm not saying it will get worse. But you will retain your ambivalence toward me, and by extension, your own identity, even after I'm gone, if you don't work to challenge those beliefs today.

Please find something to do with your life that both gives you pride and makes you a better person every day. My job as an engineer gave me the former, but it didn't always do the latter. I could've made it about patriotism, about the pursuit of excellence, but I ended up making it about myself, and how I was "the best engineer that ever walked through those doors". I clung to those words from my boss, and never questioned whether I really earned them, or if they actually should be meaningful for me.

Please, please, don't wait for someone to fix your life for you. I waited for decades, entertaining dreams of going back to school, going back to work. But to be honest, I was scared. I didn't want to face the reality that maybe I was unhireable, maybe I didn't have my mental illnesses under control. I chose to not try rather than fail, or accept a job with less prestige and pay.

And finally, please, try to love life. I've stayed alive despite everything because I enjoy myself. Too much sometimes, I know. But you're a goddamn party pooper. Go get laid. Try not to take yourself so seriously; you've read enough biographies to know that a good sense of humor and a willingness sometimes to leap before you look are qualities of some of the great men in history. Pull the stick out of your ass and go fight the world with said stinky stick.

Sorry, I tried to inject some humor into a pretty serious letter. Don't think it worked. Know that I love you, but didn't show it well. Decide what you needed from me, and didn't get, and go find it elsewhere. I say this not dismissively, but humbly, knowing that I failed in many ways.

Remember the good times, too. Our lives can and should be judged not by specific moments of pain, but by the sum total of experiences. It's how we learn to forgive ourselves and others. In time, I hope you can forgive me.

Love,

Dad

Goodbye, Zachary

It has been a rough week. I'm usually not at a loss for words, but this is very, very difficult to write.

There is a family at my mother's church. The father is a tall, handsome police officer. I don't know the mother's profession, but she is blessed with good looks, a particularly gentle disposition, and a gift for teaching young children in an efficient, thoughtful way. There is a set of grandparents, too -- a cheerful Filipino grandpa and a Southern belle grandma. I didn't know the family well, as I don't attend church regularly. But to the extent that I did know them, I liked them. They were part of what I regarded as good and right in this world.

The family revolved around Zachary, a five-year old boy, adopted from Korea. Zachary definitely displayed a high degree of intelligence -- he was definitely smarter, more verbal, and a better reader than I was at that age. He was also remarkably well-behaved.

The parents had adopted Zachary some time after their firstborn had died, after four months of life.

On Wednesday, I learned that Zachary, a five-year old boy at my mother's church, died from cancer. He had been sick for a few months.

I cried then, just as I cried the previous Sunday during Easter service when I heard he was returning home from UCLA for hospice care. I felt guilt over little things, like not stopping by to drop off a cake. (I knew they were overburdened with requests to visit, and didn't want to contribute to that; but a cake is more tangible and, in my view, more effective than distant, silent prayers.)

I was angry, too. Sunday night, I had prayed, in my own reckless, spiteful fashion, to a God I didn't believe in. I made an offer: if God healed him, and allowed him to live a productive life, I'd swallow my pride, become a Christian, and even seriously consider entering seminary. That's how badly I wanted him to live.

And I was angry at God for making this family go through so much. Did any family deserve this much sorrow?

I always hated the story of Job. God came off as prideful, even arrogant, and Job's children and wives are regarded as trivially as the livestock, spoken in the same breath, and completely replaceable. It is only interesting in that it's a case of God having faith in a man, in a book that seems crammed with commandments for the direction of faith to go the other direction.

But, in the end, the anger passed -- or at least died down to a persistent smolder. But the pain did not. Why did I feel so strongly about this boy and this family? I'd met him only once. I barely knew the parents or grandparents. 

If I can be brutally honest, and selfish, the pain I felt was at least in part due to something specific to me and my life, and had nothing to do with them. Their story, their pain, their loss -- these were a stark reminder to myself that life is not fair, that we cannot count on a divine arbiter to promote justice. We are alone, and if our world is to be more just, more fair, more humane and loving, it comes from us.

And the second part is this: I had counted on the young children like Zachary (and my young cousins) to be better than I was -- raised in more stable homes, raised to be brighter and stronger and more emotionally confident than I was. It would make my failures and pain and seeming inability to do any fucking thing right ok. They would be there to pick up the slack.

Except Zachary won't  be. He leaves a hole in his family, in the church community, and, if one can imagine his full life, an absence that won't be fully appreciated, but will have an impact, across everyone who would have had a chance to know him. That's why the death of a child seems particularly wrong, a particularly heinous act of either a spiteful God or an indifferent, godless universe. 

Selfishly, Zachary and others were my "opt-out" card. They were the people who would let me continue to coast along, not doing much of anything, going through the motions of life in a depressed, indifferent, and callous state. 

So perhaps I won't be able to do that, now. I still don't know how I'll ultimately react and change, or if I will. The last couple days have been marked by escapism, headaches, and sleeping a lot -- definitely depressed behavior. And I feel disgusted with myself that it should be because of what it means for my life, rather than what it means for his family's. 

Maybe Tim points the way forward. Tim, Pam, and their son Ben were members of St. Paul's UMC when I lived in Ithaca. They had lost their younger son  to cancer. Tim stopped his previous career and turned the painful experience of caring for his dying son at home to start studying to be a nurse. He found, in his grief, a way to express it through service. He'll e a damn good one too -- if only more fathers would be possessed of such kindness, gentle grace, and good humor as he has. 

So while there might be no one to pray to, I will ask for strength, to do better, to stop waiting for someone to fix me, to stop waiting for my "real" father to show up one day and make things better. I am a flawed, flawed vessel, but hopefully, I can still hold it together enough to carry whatever I must, for as long as I must, if for no other reason than that there might be no one else left to do it.

Why I wanted to become an astronomer

I can't believe I haven't told this story yet.

This is the story of how I got interested in astronomy and managed to will myself somewhat far down the professional path.

There were three primary influences: a man, books, and television.

The man:

I think I was about six when I met Uncle Kimo, a cousin-in-law-in-law. (My aunt married a man who had a sister who married Uncle Kimo.)  At the time, Uncle Kimo worked at JPL as an instrumentation engineer. I really liked "Uncle Kimo". He seemed to know a lot of things! We spent time drawing maps of continents and he would tell me about space. Over the years, he sent me some of those nice high-gloss photos from Voyager and other space missions. Some of my personal favorites were a radio reconstruction of Venus' surface, Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, black and white images of Uranus' satellites, and that stunning deep blue shot of Neptune and the Great Dark Spot, accented by some bright white storms (the largest called "Scooter", if memory serves).





I think I loved Uncle Kimo not just because of the cool space stuff. He was maybe the first male family member I really felt comfortable around. My dad was crazy and unstable; my uncles either scared me because of their anger or were just not that interesting/good with kids. I loved my grandpa, but he was intimidating (especially to everyone older than me), and the language barrier made us not quite as close as we might have been.

Also worth emphasizing: Uncle Kimo was the first adult who really tried to teach me about the world around me, and do it in a way that didn't assume I was just a dumb kid.

I only saw Uncle Kimo a few times growing up, but I'd still place him as a tremendous influence on my life in general, and my interest in astronomy in particular.

Books:

I spent a lot of time alone growing up. My parents divorced when I was three. My mother worked, and so my grandparents played a large role in raising me. They were kind and loving, but didn't speak much English, so I ended up turning to books. My mom says I initially hated to read, and would slam my little hand down on any book she tried to open and read to me. Maybe I was creeped out by Shel Silverstein's artwork in Where the Sidewalk Ends. But, eventually, I did start reading on my own.


As a society, are we still ok with this?


One of the first books I got was The Golden Book of Stars and Planets.

I read it probably a couple hundred times. I loved the artist's depictions (all images of the planets were hand-drawn).

I still remember it mentioning NGC 5128 (depicted on the cover, right side), thinking "That's a weird name for a galaxy. Why wasn't it called something like the Milky Way? Or Snickers?" (It's a radio source, and got special mention, though I thought it made weird sounds because the artist's depiction made it look like it was surrounded by hair.)

I also went through a weird phase as a kid in which questions in a book would freak me out. They scared me! Because of that, I'd have to skip over the last part of the Mars section? "Was there ever water on Mars? Could there have been life?" It was that and an earthquake preparedness pamphlet that creeped me out with those "?", which I must have mentally read in some sort of spooky voice. (Did anyone else have this, or was this a leading indicator for profound mental unsoundness? -- again, with scary questions!)

I loved that book so much.

More books. Remember Scholastic catalogs? Or Arrow? Or the other one? Classroom teachers would give us these catalogs filled with books that we could buy at (what I thought were) reasonable prices. Now, I didn't know how money worked, even though I loved Scrooge McDuck in Ducktales and tried to swim in a pile of dimes in my grandparent's living room. (Maybe another flag that this boy ain't right.) I remember that in first grade everyone wrote a letter to President George H. W. Bush. I wrote that the process of making change (money, not policy) seemed unfair -- why does someone get to keep more of the money? My teacher helped me write it, but I'm a bit annoyed she didn't try to sit down and explain it to me at the time. I got a photo back, but I don't think the letter had an answer.

Also, in retrospect, this was one place where economic differences started to show. A lot of my classmates probably couldn't afford any books. I always got to pick a few, as well as get a subscription to Highlights! magazine.



Goofus generally gets what he wants, even if he is an asshole. Gallant is a spineless appeaser and a fake, pretentious prick. Guess who I grew up to be?

One of the books I got this way was Planets: A Golden Guide to the Solar System.

This was not my favorite book. I don't know why -- I carried it around everywhere. It just seemed not as exciting, or less accessible because of more data. There were tables of numbers, I think, and maybe fewer dramatic, page-filling images.

I got a more important book that had both dramatic pictures and tons of numbers (though not derivations) around first or second grade. My Sunday School teacher gave me his old college astronomy textbook, a paperback that cost $34.75 at the Aschula's student store. (I still remember the sticker on the cover.) The book was Essentials of the Dynamic Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, Second Edition by Theodore P. Snow. Sadly, I can't track down the cover image, but it must have been a saturated image of a star, or an AGN, or something like that, with some rainbow accents suggesting spectra.

I think I read that book cover to cover several times. This was the source of nearly all of my knowledge of  introductory astronomy. Memory being what it is, those early memories were retained much more easily than ones in college, making it sometimes challenging to rewrite my knowledge of certain important constants. (The distance light traveled in a second was, in my mind, 186,282 miles, and not 299,792 kilometers. Mercury orbited the Sun at a distance of 38 million miles -- and unfortunately all my distance scales inside the Solar System remain imperial.)

Same church: our rather conservative junior minister occasionally called on me, possibly for comedic effect, to quote some astronomical fact -- closest star, distance to the Sun, etc. -- that had some tie-in to his sermon.

Years later, after being accepted at CU Boulder's astronomy grad program, I happened to meet with Theodore P. Snow. (I think he went by Ted at the time.) Usually, meetings were about prospective research, but I spent the entire time as a fanboy gushing about how incredibly important his textbook was to my life. I have no idea whether it was flattering or scary for him, but I was thrilled to put a name to a face. (It also helped that he seemed nice -- read: Not A Professor Asshole.)

This book and interactions with that pastor explain why I never, ever thought of a conflict between science and religion until I started paying attention to politics/went to college. I still think it's misguided/overrated.

Books were a good substitute for technology. I was lucky enough to get a small telescope for Christmas, but quite frankly, it was a piece of crap Celestron. I probably should have read the manual more carefully, but none of us really took the time to figure out how to use the RA and DEC wheels, or how to use coordinates to find things in the sky. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, I couldn't see jack shit because I was too close to Los Angeles. Saturn's rings and the Galilean satellites were nice to see, but a bit anticlimactic after spending years staring at NASA images.

Television

As a kid, I watched a ton of TV, unsupervised. I remember being confused as to why "Orchie Bunkur" was so angry all the time. (This is a reference to All in the Family.) I even wrote a letter to that effect, to no one in particular. (I liked writing letters as a kid.) This letter was proudly placed in my grandpa's scrapbook without further comment, a testament to both his love and the complete absence of analytic evaluation of child behavior in my family.

I watched a lot of Star Trek: TNG. Remember that it ran from 1987-1994. From the age of four to eleven, I saw brand-new TNG episodes. I saw the very first airing of "The Best of Both Worlds". Eat your hearts out, young nerds.

I would record a lot of these episodes and re-watch them endlessly (VHS, in case the young people are curious). I didn't have particularly good taste -- I recorded as much as I could, and ended up with a skewed impression of the overall series, with Data being held up by Samuel Clemens with a .45 revolver playing a more important role than, say, "The Inner Light" or "Darmok". More fortunately, I also recorded and watched "Chain of Command", though maybe even scrubbed and tidied torture scenes weren't the best thing for a young child to process.

I also watched Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Again, I had no taste -- I thought Babylon 5 was an incredibly well-acted show and ST: DS9 weak by comparison (I would reverse those judgments years later.)

But in addition to sci-fi, I watched some sci-fact. NOVA specials were great, and what I know of cosmology comes from them.

The most personally important program, however, was a National Geographic documentary titled Asteroids: Deadly Impact. It primarily focused on Gene Shoemaker and his study of asteroid and comet impacts. Of course, no one man or team can claim sole ownership of such a broad field, but it made for great watching.

Only the intro is available for free online: Asteroids Deadly Impact

Again, I recorded this, and watched in at least 50 times. I returned to it a few times in high school, especially when I had an abysmally poor physics teacher, to sort of remind me why I thought astronomy was worth studying.

Epilogue:

These influences were critical. I enjoyed reading books. I had a person who cared about me, and encouraged my interest. Even my religious authority figures fed this interest in astronomy.

I didn't really know what astronomers do until later, and in retrospect, I probably should have looked into it a bit more before embarking on a professional path.

But in some ways I was more successful than I should have been. How many of us dreamed of being a paleontologist as a kid? Or a marine biologist? At some point, most of us revise those dreams -- ideally because we discover other interests, but often because the impracticality of our dreams are beat out of us by parents, teachers, or others.

When I was about four, I said I wanted to be a pediatrician, probably because my pediatrician, Dr. Nakashima, was a hilarious and awesome guy who claimed to be a ninja turtle, and maintained that despite my challenges. But my mom's asshole friend said that that wasn't a good idea, and I never, ever considered being a medical doctor, even though, in retrospect, I probably would have been a good one.

I was lucky, in some sense. I was lucky to have enough resources and opportunities to follow my dreams without reality intruding. Sure, it was unfocused and overly idealistic. Sure, I hit points when the contradiction between what I felt were my skills and interests diverged from what I appeared to be doing. And yes, it ended pretty badly, and I'm still recovering from poor choices I made.

But I got away with it for a hell of a long time, partly because I was good enough at math and science to do it, but partly because I had just wanted it so badly and didn't know "better" not to irrationally pursue what should have been a more deliberate, cautious, and considered course of action.

Maybe I shouldn't think that I failed spectacularly. Maybe I should instead be grateful that I got away with it for so long.

My grandpa, and writing

It's holiday season. Initially I was going to write about my grandpa, but it may turn into a longer piece about writing.

I've written about my grandfather before. Here's a post about pictures of him, describing both his love of haiku and his arrest during WWII. Here's a more detailed post about his haiku group. This is a long post about anti-immigration laws in California, with a bit about how my grandpa got around the property ownership restriction. (He mail-ordered a bride from Japan with American citizenship.) I also told the brief story about how I ended up with a golf hole in his backyard.

I surprised myself when I realized how much I had written about him. But I shouldn't be surprised; he was probably the man I spent the most time with in my life. He helped raise me and, for better or worse--but mostly for better--, a lot of who I am was shaped by him.

In a lot of ways, I saw the best of him. As a father who ran a farm, he was pretty much a dictator. Even the older cousins told stories about strictness on trips to Disneyland, or getting yelled at, or other things that cowed everyone else into submission.

But I am the youngest grandchild, the only son of his youngest daughter. So I was special. I could do things with both the naivete of a child and the fearlessness of one who is coddled, like scold him for coming home late. By the time I arrived, I was no longer a chrysanthemum farmer, but a comfortable owner (and groundskeeper) of a small trailer park. He wasn't rich, but he was pretty well off -- a member of the 5%, let's say. The trailer park was for senior citizens only, and he kept rent comparatively low.

So he had plenty of time, and a decent amount of money. He drove a Cadillac, and would take me to Chinatown (for haircuts) and to desert trips with his Haiku group. We'd go to McDonalds a lot. Whenever he went to Denny's, he'd always order his steak well done. And when we went to a seafood restaurant in Balboa, he'd always, always order Crab Louie.

He was someone of meticulous patterns. He folded his toilet paper into fourths before using it. (I know this because the flush on one of the toilets was not as strong as it could've been.) His wife would always make him breakfast the night before, leaving it out for him--including pouring the milk into the Cap'n Crunch. Yes, this was left out in the kitchen overnight. It's a testament to pasteurization, or modern paranoia, that he was actually quite healthy and lived until he was 91. When he rolled quarters, he'd stack them five each.

Thanks to the memory of youth, he lived in what will always be the most beautiful house I'll ever see.

It had a large backyard, with dichondra grass meticulously weeded-- he would be on his hands and kness, tweezing away weeds, even as he'd let me hack away with a tiny 4-iron. There were tiger lilies, and bamboo, and a rock path. He had kumquat and persimmon trees. And, of course, he had camelias, which, because of their prevalence in his backyard, I had always assumed were common, dusty, and ugly. (Only later would I learn they hold a special place in Japanese culture.)

He also had rice paper shoji doors to the tea room -- there was a dedicated tea room, with bamboo mats, that my grandmother used for tea ceremony. It also contained the butsudan, or the Buddhist shrine. As a kid, I'd stick my finger through those nice rice paper rectangles, which Grandma would dutifully repair with scotch tape.


He had these very nice scrolls of poetry and art in his house. Once, while watching either Card Shark or The Price is Right, they flashed a number on the screen. I must've really, really wanted to remember it for some reason. So I wrote it directly on the scroll. I might've gotten spanked then. That scroll got beat up quite a bit; it was near the television, where I'd lie down on a set of pillows.

I still have that scroll; it means more to me in its tattered state than anything else.

If someone knows what this blue writing says, please let me know.

The writing--I think he lived for writing. He used the pen name Hakuhanshi; to my shame, I don't know what it means.

He would always write at his old, reddish/brownish/black wooden desk, sticky and bumpy after years of disuse and not enough varnish. The lamp on it must've been at least 30 years old -- one of the lamps you see in the movies that take place in the 1940s on the desks of accountants or police officers. His haiku was written on very thin, crinkly paper. There was a red circle or dot, indicating the start of a line, I guess, and then his neat penstrokes. I still have his fountain pen -- it's a Parker, silver-plated, and it doesn't leak unless you let it. He wasn't a pen fetishist, and didn't really care about keeping them tidy. I was surprised, and a bit regretful, how clean it got with some polish.

I copied him a lot. Once, I had gotten it in my head to sit at his desk and write, just like Grandpa. I proceeded to scribble all over his very neatly written haiku, prepared for mailing to a journal in Japan. I don't remember this, but apparently there was a loud "haaaa!", and I froze, sitting on his chair, with a big crocodile tear starting to come down. (I might've gotten spanked that time -- for whatever reason, I think I got spanked precisely twice by him... probably far less than I deserved.)

We learned "haiku" in first grade. It was basic stuff -- you look at a picture and count syllables. Real haiku has a lot more rules. But he was still immensely proud of whatever I had written.

He kept a scrapbook of my writings. When I wrote my imaginary newspaper, he kept it. I think I had an article about why Orchie [sic] Bunker was so angry (Archie Bunker of All in the Family). I also wrote a notice about his chainsaw accident, where he nicked a vein in his hand and had to drive to the hospital, a notice that I posted on a wooden stick in the middle of the backyard.

As stated in other posts, I'd generally be there when he had his monthly haiku group meeting. They'd talk, recite poems, and occasionally be forced to listen to me sing a song, at the insistence of my very proud grandpa. He'd generally go to his bedroom before the end; he always had the sleeping habit of a farmer, and felt comfortable enough leaving hosting to Grandma.

He was editor-in-chief of that group. He'd correct everyone's poems; I don't know if they corrected his. And he could be jealous; May Sakoda, the creator of delicious cakes and one of the few group members who spoke English fluently, once told me he got upset when a Japanese haiku magazine turned down his submission, but took his wife's.

I'm glad he lived long enough for me to read to him "Grandfather's Table", probably the best poem I wrote before college. It was about being around that kitchen table and listening to the haiku group. Most of all it was about remembering.

For whatever reason, I got the honor of writing, and reading, his eulogy. I remember it included a call for family unity -- his was falling apart as he got sick and after he died, over money, property, and, underlying it all, unresolved problems of not feeling loved enough. I suppose, in the end, all arguments and breakups start there.

***

I don't believe in writing genes. My paternal grandfather wrote a lot -- from what I can tell, mostly angry letters to the editor about some point of Constitutional interpretation. So if you believed in writing genes, I guess you'd say my political posts come from Grandpa Yamada, and my creative ones from Grandpa Yasuda.

But I don't believe in writing genes. As far as I remember, I don't even remember either grandpa teaching me about reading or writing at all. Grandpa Yamada lived in Hawaii, and I barely saw him. Grandpa Yasuda spoke a sort of broken English, and wrote creatively only in Japanese.

What I do remember, and believe in, is a writing culture, a celebration of writing above all else. I think that's why I wrote; in the end, I did it to feel worthy of the most important man in my life.

Writing is a godsend, especially to those of us who feel awkward or uncomfortable in public. Thanks to another titanic influence, my fourth grade teacher, Maureen Manning, I feel quite confident speaking in public. But I remain uncomfortable in public, if you understand. I'm still insecure, with negative body image, and, though I've been told otherwise by lots of people, I still believe I'm not a good conversationalist, and that I don't have much to offer.

Writing is a way for me to communicate in a way that mimics closer to what I would say. I make no claims to being a good writer. But I care passionately about it, which helps. I can be inspiring, or somber, or whatever mood I can think of conveying in a written piece better than I can in public. Because I feel that what is being judged is content, and not me. In the end, this isn't really true at either end--people do judge content when faced with a person, and enough of me is still in the writing that I, and my grammatical lapses, or over-long sentences, am being judged. And I'm a selfish writer -- this, and other posts, are more a diary than a public statement. It's too long; it needs to be organized better; it's not interesting to most others.

But I enjoy writing, especially selfishly. It's liberating. When I'm writing, I'm not thinking about the other things that weigh me down in my life. I'm just writing. For that brief time, I believe I'm someone who has something worth saying, something worth reading, and I can't stop until I can get it out there.

It took my high school English teacher, Eric Burgess, to really teach me how to organize essays, and how to use the power of writing to analyze things -- a book, a poem, or parts of the world around me. I'm grateful for that. But it wouldn't have been possible without the culture of writing I had.

Maybe I depend upon it too much; I can't challenge my negative thoughts about my fitness for society if I stay in my room and just write. But I know that writing will always be a part of me--for better or worse.

Thanks, Grandpa. You gave me a lot, but this, I think, was the greatest gift.

My dad taught me a little bit about being poor

The story of my father is long, but interesting. I'm truncating it here - it deserves several posts.

My father worked as a mechanical engineer for about ten years for Hughes aircraft in California. He was grateful for the opportunity - jobs on Maui, where he grew up, were almost nonexistent, even for, and perhaps especially for, a college graduate. (He was an insurance policy salesman for a few months after graduation.) The new job meant $900 a week - about a 400% raise from what he was expected to earn in five more years at his old job.

He was charismatic and competent, and got to work on satellites -- including Marisat and some secret military projects that, bless him, he still feels are secret and won't talk about. (I doubt any of the projects are operational, or classified, but I don't press him about it.)

He fell in love, married, bought a house, a car, a ridiculously expensive fishing boat he rarely used, and occasionally bought classic cars he started to fix, but usually ended up selling for a loss. He hosted dinners, and was well-liked.

He was also bipolar.

He began to have problems in high school and college. But they didn't come to a head until he was around 32. He started missing work. At some point, he began using drugs - a lot of them. He once handed me a list of two pages, double-column, of all the drugs he had used. No doubt some barbiturates probably were repeats under different names - but it included angel dust, cocaine, heroin, and things called yellow jackets and little bennies.

It was during this time that my mom became pregnant. They had tried for nearly ten years, and finally, during this time of crisis, they were successful.

Meanwhile, my dad lost his job. He was admitted to just about every mental health hospital in Southern California. At one facility, he told my mom he met Brian Wilson. She thought it was a schizophrenic delusion, until she stopped by and saw that it was, indeed, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Eventually, my mom decided, reluctantly, to get a divorce. It's kind of tragic -- I think if I hadn't been born, she might've been tempted to stick it out. I think sometimes she still regrets it -- even though I've told her she made the right choice, and even her traditional Japenese parents supported her. Divorce is always at least sort of sad -- but it's quite sad when the parents still love each other.

We moved into my grandparents' house for a few years. He lived with his sister for a while. But it was too much to manage a man with unmanaged bipolar disorder. He lived in his own apartment, but that didn't work out well.

Eventually, he found some stability in a series of board and care facilities, large group homes, sometimes numbering about a hundred mentally disabled adults.

I visited him every other weekend. Sometimes he was a scary nut. Other times, he was lethargic and barely responsive.

Due to frequent visits at these large institutions, I learned patience and tolerance of aberrant behavior, which, oddly enough, served me very well at Havery Mudd College, and, I believe, in life at large.


The rooms were small, with musty air, but they were clean. He always had a roommate - some of whom were really creepy.

I remember Ed, a schizophrenic with a knack for guitar. Once, we walked in, and he had only a hand towel over his genitals, as he giggled having whatever conversation/experience he was having in his own head.

Believe it or not, I liked Ed overall, even if I was reluctant to shake his hand after that.

He was better than Tom, who was always drunk and/or angry.


He was always broke, and dependent on Social Security Disability payments for rent, and Medicare-Medicaid for treatment/medication.

Dad spent what spending money he got from his sister and my mom on cigarettes. Everyone smoked there - I probably inhaled tons of secondhand smoke, but I was honestly more worried about my dad busting out his (fake, but I didn't know at the time) kung fu during his manic episodes. He'd buy the cheapest, nastiest cigarettes available. He quit periodically -- sometimes because he ran out, and sometimes because he promised me. It's from him that I learned about clove cigarettes, that extremely rare luxury -- they were expensive, incredibly bad for your health, and wonderfully aromatic.

He outlived three girlfriends, all of whom died of lung cancer. Two were in their mid-fifties, and one was in her late-thirties.

For a man who loved food, I was surprised how he adjusted to the kind of boring food. When he moved from one of these large facilities to a smaller halfway house, he was treated to home cooking. He still didn't have any money, but he was happier. We would go to Taco Bell, or Winchell's, where he would relish unlimited refills and enjoy a beef Meximelt, or a glazed donut, courtesy of Mom.

Those who know me may be surprised to know that my dad is an eternal optimist. Every time he moved, he said, "This is the best place! The FOOD is amazing!" Every time. He was either a liar, delusional, or an optimist. Over the last decade, his medication balance got reasonably good, and so I'm willing to conclude that it was optimism. He was definitely not a liar, at least not a habitual one.

He is currently living in a larger facility in Long Beach, an odd mix of mental institution and retirement home.

Through the years, he'd been hospitalized many, many times -- and not just for mental health reasons. There were many of those -- unpleasant rants, either in person or over the phone, were something that was painful, but eventually expected. I was surprised -- after many years of relative calm, he called in October 2008 to tell me I was a horrible son, that he was a four-star general Aztec emperor, etc. Even at the age of 26, I admit, I cried, but I managed to keep my voice calm, and tell myself that this was not my father talking, this was The Disease.

He almost died many times. But because it happened so frequently, I eventually got used to visiting him in a hospital. Apparently he has a very strong heart, one which has saved his life multiple times.

There were good times, too. He taught me gin rummy. He had an interesting (read: vulgar) sense of humor. I'm lucky -- many sons can't poke fun at their fathers like I can.

We almost lost him last year from kidney failure. My relationship with him, even as death approached, has always been a conflicting set of emotions.

But it was only today, as I was picking up a hot-n-ready $5 pizza for our lunch, that I realized he taught me about poverty.

***

As long as I can remember, he was always poor. He didn't have money for gifts; his sister would send me a bit of birthday and Christmas money. I don't know when or how I understood this, but I did, and didn't ask him for stuff, even as I was spoiled rotten by my maternal grandfather. Mom never asked him to help with anything, including college -- and how would he have helped anyway? Asked his sister?

I think it was hard for him to take bits of spending money from my mom, and, for many reasons, hard for my mom to give it.

He'd borrow money. He'd borrow from Peter to pay Paul. A couple times, he borrowed money from me; much later, his sister would find out and yell at him. He'd apologize, and give me the money that his sister gave him to pay  me back.

My mom and I remember only one time when my dad was scared. We were at Winchell's, and he approached a tough-looking guy. He told him that he would return his $20 as soon as he could. Later, he asked my mom for that money. At the time, he lived in a neighborhood where getting beat up, badly, over $20 was pretty likely.

He wasn't a saint, and, even in his poverty, would sometimes use what he had recklessly. At one point, he got admitted to the hospital for a ridiculously high blood pressure - it was something like 220/180. I'm not joking. He claimed it was caffeine -- later on, I found out he had bought meth from a dealer somewhere in the neighborhood.

He never wanted to walk in the park down the block. I don't remember if he had been jumped, or harassed. We'd go by car from Norwalk to Cerritos to nice parks.

Meanwhile, I lived a relatively comfortable middle-class life. My mom was a public school teacher, and therefore not at all rich, but it was just the two of us. I never went hungry; I always had clothes to wear; I always had shoes. It wasn't extravagant, but it was comfortable. Hell, I even had a NES and, a couple years after it came out, a SNES. We never owned a computer until some time in high school, and to my everlasting shame and regret, it was a Macintosh Performa.

So I wasn't poor.

My dad was.

But he didn't starve. He had adequate medical care. He was able to live with some dignity - once he accepted he was never going to be an aerospace engineer ever again. He had fantasies of going back, even after Hughes got absorbed and resold and redundancied and everything else during the passing decades.

He was dependent on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (in California, Medi-Cal).

He's a flawed man, even ignoring his bipolar disorder. And, to be honest, I don't know if he's an example of what's wrong with the social safety net in this country, or what's right.

The only thing I do know for certain is that, without exaggeration, he would've been homeless, and ultimately dead, without those programs.

It's not because his family didn't love him enough to house him -- his sister, a schizophrenic, lived with my grandparents her entire adult life.

I believe that because, without the luck we had with treatment and facilities, he would've found some way to disappear and die.

Had he continued to live in his apartment, he would've had an overdose, or done something that would've gotten him shot by a drug dealer, or a cop. Even at his sister's house, he was unsupervised during the day; I don't know if he did run off during that time, but he definitely engaged in self-destructive behavior including drugs, alcohol, and reckless driving. (He once zig-zagged on the freeway with toddler me in the backseat. Perhaps fortunately, I thought it was a game at the time.)

So I can say, with a measure of confidence, that my dad would've died decades ago without that safety net.

***

I'm writing this mostly because I want to. He's an interesting person, and, quite frankly, it helps me to process my emotions and thoughts in written form.

There's a part that's also writing this because I've seen many criticize welfare, Medicaid, and other programs designed to help the poor. Most do not cite any numbers, and some cite numbers without context, e.g., the number of people on food stamps does go up during a recession. It's designed to do that: that shows the program is doing its job, regardless of whether you think it should be doing it or not.

He's not a "welfare queen". But he's as close as it comes in my personal experience. And so, it's tough for me to disentangle conversation about the poor, and about welfare, from these thoughts about my dad.

In my volunteering in college, I've met homeless people who would drink chunks of their Social Security checks and buy electronics. I met homeless kids for whom homelessness was, at least part, an ideology -- quasi-hippies/anarchists, sharing and creating cheaply made magazines containing their literature. I cleaned human shit out of a food pantry, which means someone -- assuming it was a client, not a volunteer -- decided taking a shit in the storeroom was a good idea. I met two guys who were, in retrospect, probably doing a drug deal, whom I cluelessly interrupted, offered sandwiches to, and left alone to their meal, realizing at some point that one held an almost-but-not-quite-concealed blade in his hand the whole time.

I know poor people who seem so helpless and hapless that I sometimes want to scream at them and hit them and tell them to get their shit together, because they have kids and grandkids who depend upon them. I know friends whose parents worked in sweatshops, in the United States, and never forgot it as they went off to college, got good jobs, and participated actively in public service. I met illegal immigrant, the occasional homeless woman, and a de facto leader in the group at Pomona that showed up at the HMC graduation in an old, but clean, suit -- not for me, but perhaps just to wish the graduates well.

Being poor is simple and complicated.

It restricts opportunity, which can be simplifying. It's complicated, because there are multiple stories, multiple reasons, and multiple outcomes.

Anecdotes don't lend themselves well to analysis, even as they reveal things about the people we meet, and ourselves. But they do inform our values.

I admit -- my support of these programs are a product of the distillation of these experiences, and not based upon statistics of efficiency, fraud rates, longitudinal progress, or anything that's really needed to analyze poverty programs objectively.

But that's not how we decide whether we think something is good or not. We don't start from the statistics -we start from principles, formed by our experiences, our learning, and our environment. I think its the same for the critics of these programs.

It comes down to a moral assumption about certain things:

Do the poor deserve it?

Does it lend itself to abuse or dependence?

Can the country afford it?

I think that anyone claiming, one way or another, that their views on these programs don't rest upon some assumptions on these questions, based on our personal feelings, is not being completely honest. Objective metrics inform whether something works or doesn't - but our values determine the definition of "works" or "doesn't".

Maybe in the coming days, I'll investigate the statistics of these programs - how much they cost; the detected rate of fraud; the specific conditions that must be met; the proportion of funds, if any, that go to illegal immigrants. I suppose these are things I should know, as someone who has, in the past, advocated for the poor, and who continues to believe that the measure of our nation is in part based on how we care for the most vulnerable of our people.

For those who care, I do ask that you consider that, in my case, there is a real person who I care about in these figures.

Based on what I've said, maybe he's part of the problem. Maybe I should feel guilty for having had help taking care of my dad.

If it makes you feel better, I do have guilt.

But I'm also glad that they, and he, continue.