My grandma always inspired me. I like to write stories and poems, and my grandma was always a central and recurring figure. I'd like to read a poem I wrote for her. It's called For Ewa.
There used to be this road
to get to grandma’s house.
It was just one road,
Fort Weaver,
and it didn’t wind or curve,
so there was little chance of getting lost.
It just divided up the sugar caned flats
like the cut of a cake knife.
Beyond the cane,
and below the setting sun,
dry coral and kiawe and scrub brush
folded gently up to the Waianae range.
It was hard staying up
all the way there,
especially lying in the trunk
of our station wagon Pinto
baking in the leeward sun
like gingerbread.
We’d always arrive late
for monthly otsutome
and grandpa and grandma
would already be crowing their
twenty one ashiki harai’s
out of tune and out of rhythm
to the clapping furoshikis.
In any other neighborhood,
only the dogs would dare join in
but out in Ewa,
it was the late roosters
that vied to be heard.
We’d creep in and kneel seiza
in some corner,
sweat pinched and leaking behind our knees
and pretend to do the service sincerely.
At the ichiretsu sumashite part
my brother and I would part our hands
extra wide like karate chops into each other
and our sidelong eyes would laugh
even as our mouths kept lip-synching.
After grandma’s sermon about
the proper hierarchy of men and women
it was time for lunch.
I barely touched the “old folk’s
country style food”: gobo kimpira
and that stuff that looked like a slug
tied with a rubber band.
I drank two or three cans of grape soda
instead.
And then we would go home.
There used to be
a way to get to grandma’s house.
But grandpa and now grandma are gone.
I will never again get to taste
Grandma’s home-made sushi,
Never again get to half ignore
one of her nature-teaching sermons
Never again feel her calloused hand
Gently touch my arm to make sure I’m paying attention
Never again hear her voice
A voice that always sounded like laughter
Never again see her eyes-
Those eyes, like stars twinkling.
The sky of my world
Is a little less bright
And a little more silent
And the only thing I can do is rely on memories
Memories of you
To keep me from getting lost.
Grandma,
I could always count on you. Whenever I was feeling down or frustrated, I could call you, or drive out to your house. And even if you were busy (and you were always busy, making pillows or food for someone- you were never doing nothing), even if you were busy, you put down what you were doing for me. You would listen to me, and even if everyone else just thought I was full of crap, even if no one else had the patience to listen to me, you listened to me. And after you had me eat something that you seemed to always have prepared just for me, then you had me sit down next to you at your kitchen/conference table, and you would tell me a story, or give me a sermon. A lot of times, I wasn’t sure how relevant it was. And it seemed like I had heard it all before.
“Drink the mamansan rice! Or do the otsutome every day! Or do the sazuke! Or, most frequently, take your Yamazu!” One of your most regular sermons was about how your kids all turned out alright, how they had all gone to college, and how you attributed it to a lesson you learned when they Karen had a really high fever, and how that was a reflection of you, that the fire and water in you was reversed, and how you had to train to be a good wife, to cool that temper and shut that mouth. And I would be thinking, grandma, you are the most outspoken person I know (maybe after my own mom); I can’t imagine what you must have been like before!
And then, somehow, you would always get to talking about marital relationships, even in pretty graphic ways, and I would be thinking: 1) this is kind of gross, and 2) this is kind of sexist, and I don’t know many women nowadays who would sit around and listen to this kind of talk, much less obey it. Except Lynn…
There would be a point where I wouldn’t really be listening to you any more. My eyes would glaze over, and I would just be nodding and saying “Yes” periodically. I think you knew when I had enough. You would close. And then, as I hurried to leave, you would remind me to do mamansan before I left. And I would sit on that chair, the same chair that you sat in every morning and every evening, and I would try to copy what you did, clap 4 times and talk to God, and the ancestors, and to Oyasama (who I always felt was the most like you anyway). And I would leave, waving at you from the car as you hobbled all the way out to the front steps. And you know what? No matter what my problems were, whether it was the trifles of a little boy, or the confusion of a teenager, or even the mid-life crises of a father, I always always always felt better. I always knew that there was someone who would listen to me, believe in me, and do anything that she could to help me.
I want to thank you, grandma, for everything you have done for me and for everyone in this world.
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