Building a stable life

My grandpa died still broken-hearted from the betrayal he felt by his country. He was born in California, fought in WWII, and sent to the Midwest with the rest of the dirty Japs American had come to despise and fear. He met Grandma there, and they came back to California to make a pretty great future for themselves and their five kids. But he never forgot his time in those camps.


Grandma stroked my hair
as I lay in her lap,
running her fingers through
the thick black
courseness passed down
from our ancient samurai ancestors.

She smiled and gazed
off into the sky,
staring at some long-forgotten
landscape of her
youth, murmuring more
to herself than to me,
"It will all be OK, child."

She had seen the stables
of the camps, finely
dressed women corralled like
common livestock, chins
held high, stubborn
as mules clinging to their dignity.

"It will all be OK, child,"
her mama whispered
into her ear under the gaze of guards
who saw them as mere
animals cluttering the barren landscape,
forgetting their hearts still
beat with samurai blood.

--

April PAD Day 10 - future

Back to Jack

Back to Jack

The way my father tells
it, Great-Grandpa Jack
was a lawyer in L.A.

back in the days when
the city was
really beginning to take shape.

He walked out of the
courthouse one day,
fed up with the system,

and across the street to
a construction site
and asked for a job.

He never looked back.


The way I remember it,
it was hot
where he lived. He was

frail and his head shook,
a subtle nodding,
as he smiled at me

and my little baby sister.
I squirmed, not
understanding why we were smiling

and sweating at this house.
Perhaps they knew
that death wasn't far off.

We drove away and never looked back.


I was 6 or so
when Dad whispered
to my mother in the

upstairs hallway that Great-Grandpa Jack
had passed. "What
does that mean?" I asked.

"He died. Funeral is Thursday,"
Dad said. I
wanted to go with him.

He couldn't understand why I
wanted to mourn
a man I barely knew.

Perhaps I just wanted to look back.



--

Poetic Bloomings Memoir Project
Part 8: Death, be not proud