In which I go to a reunion...

Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future….

Next week it will be a month since I left on my vacation, and plunging almost immediately back into the daily routine has distracted me from finishing what I wanted to say about the trip. Richard teases me that his ADD is catching and that I am becoming more like him… easily distracted.

As the plane started to hurtle down the runway on the leg from Dallas-Ft. Worth to Los Angeles, the young man sitting next to me made the sign of the cross, so I knew he had some sort of spiritual foundation. I believe God put him next to me because it would have been a rather miserable flight otherwise.

A young couple with two young children was sitting directly behind us. The girl, who was about 3 years old sat behind me and kicked the back of the seat off and on for most of the flight. Her little brother, who was maybe 18 months (or younger), began to scream and screech almost as soon as the plane left the ground. This was not the regular crying of a tired baby but more like a temper tantrum, and it lasted for most of the time we were flying over Texas (Texas is a b-i-g state). One of the parents ended up camping out in the bathroom with the screaming child until he finally fell asleep.

I couldn’t seem to get my tray table unfastened from the back of the seat, and so my seat mate showed me how to do that (I am badly challenged mechanically), and he showed me how to work the entertainment console on the back of the seat, even though I never did use it because we ended up talking most of the rest of flight. Over the sound of the screaming child we talked a lot about faith, and God's provision, and how God takes care of us. He was one of the most inspiring seat mates I have had on the many flights between here and the West Coast.

I stayed with my sister. I received instructions on how to use my smartphone (about which I am still mostly clueless), I visited our dad just about every day...

went on some outings with my sister, saw sea creatures...

  and beautiful flowers…

 and then I went to the reunion.

A neighbor from down the street who I had lost touch with was there. My boyfriend in the 7th grade, who I did not recognize at first, was also there. Some of the people I most wanted to see did not come, so I was a little disappointed about that, but it was okay. During most of high school I felt like Pluto circling around the bright shining inner circle, but there were actually a few people who did remember me after 50 years.

Each place setting at the table had goodies we would remember from our childhood in the 1950s, including red wax lips and candy cigarettes (which I didn’t appreciate too much).  Folks had a good time with those wax lips.

As a back story to the reunion, there was a large Japanese American population in the city where I grew up, and so there was a large minority of Japanese American students at the high school. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, many of the grandparents and parents (as children) of the students I graduated with had been rounded up and sent to internment camps, one of which was at Manzanar.
Nobody talked about it. I didn't find out this had happened until I was in college. Three of the students in our graduating class made a documentary film, "The Manzanar Fishing Club,"

about some of the men, women, and children who were confined there and found ways to sneak out, either under the barbed wire that surrounding the camp or hidden in vehicles that were part of work crews, and go fishing. One of the social studies teachers at the high school, Mas Okui, was in Manzanar as a child when he was 10 years old, and he was interviewed in the film. He was at the reunion and spoke about it.

One of my Japanese American friends from school sent me the DVD to watch last year and I brought it with me so I could pass it on to someone else at the reunion. But before that, I showed it to my sister’s family. I was surprised to learn that the grandparents of my niece's husband were in Manzanar and that he had gone to school with the granddaughter of another individual who was featured in the DVD. It was connection I never expected.

One would like to think that would never happen again in this country. One would hope.