My Asian American mother
By Kenny Tanemura
My mother immigrated to the U.S. in 1968, two years before I was born. Her father had given her away to distant
relatives. Her grandmother died in the U.S.- bombing of Tokyo during World War II, so my mother grew up in the
ashes of a city, with no real parents. However, she was privileged, compared to those who walked the streets without
limbs, food, money or home. In fact, when the city was in ruins, she attended a prestigious private 2-year women's
college. While her college carried some prestige, the patriarchal system of that time didn't allow women to attend 4-
year universities. I still proudly mention that my mother went to Aoyama Gakuin, when I meet international students
from Japan. They are always impressed.
My mother's grandmother was a streetwise businesswoman, when the 20th century was still new, and when it was
virtually impossible for Japanese women to aspire for careers. Unless they had a particular genius for business that
no system could stop, and my great grandmother had that genius. In contrast, my mother's cousin became a well-
known broadcast journalist at a fairly young age, but he was a man and opportunities were available to him.
I sometimes wonder what my mother would have done with her life had the opportunities been available to her. It
seems to me that her life, blunted by lack of chance, took a dark turn. She married my father to escape the family
that took her in; not because they were abusive or unkind, but because they were not her family, and she was always
treated, indirectly, as if she was not quite a part of the family. This sense of not belonging in her own home haunted
her.
Hollywood movies presented a world of roman holidays and breakfasts at Tiffany's, and even scrubs like Charlie
Chaplin and James Dean found some truth or answer at the end of their complicated cinematic troubles. Sinatra
sang as if anything was possible. And my mother immigrated to the U.S. with great hopes and married my father.
Unfortunately, the U.S. gave her a husband who didn't know how to protect himself, and so could not protect her. It
gave her a mother-in-law who tried to oversee every daily act my mother performed, from cooking and shopping to
motherhood and travel. Ironically, my mother picked up one thing from her mother-in-law: her trade.
My mother has been a seamstress for 30 years. She has always worked out of a two-car garage, and worked late into
the night. She worked harder than I thought anyone could work. I believe her work ethic was partly founded on duty
and responsibility, and partly founded on a feeling of sacrifice she needed to put herself through, because it was the
only way she knew how to express love for her children.
Since my father retired from being a travel agent, my mother has been working even harder to make mortgage
payments and get the bills paid. My father receives social security but the cost of living in the Bay Area is so high
that they are both struggling. When I visit home for winter or summer breaks from graduate school, I see my mother
working in the same two-car garage and at the same desk that my father's company threw out 25 years ago. My
father put two old desks together, and placed a large board over both the desks. He hammered nails that attached
the wood to the desk.
It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, my mother must have thought. She is a kind of romantic aesthete. She
understands that my father's "practical" (though not always actually helpful) and clumsy and good-mannered efforts
are genuine. She is also chronically and profoundly disappointed by my father. She wanted someone who would
convert the two-car garage into a family room, even if he had to construct it himself. Tony, a neighbor across the
street, had done it, with his own tool kit. She wanted someone who took the initiative to make her happy.
She didn't understand that my father did make her happy. My mother is perennially a bit glum by nature, with a
pessimistic take on the world. My father, for all the traumas of his past, which are the traumas of American history-
internment, anti-Japanese laws and discrimination, exile and return-has an optimistic, eager hunger for the smallest
things. A bottle of beer, Hawaiian food, Hawaii, a gift, a drive out to Carmel or Saulsalito, can give him a sense of
contentment and happiness that my mother seems estranged from..
Of course, my father's good nature and positive outlook is marred by a temperamental streak that has mellowed in
his old age, but remains like a ghost from the days when he was a kid behind barbed wire, looking over his shoulder
at the tower where machine-gunners made sure none of the Japanese escaped the internment camp.
If my mother was not blessed with a joyful outlook on life, she was gifted with a sweetness that endears her to
everyone she meets. This side of her is far more evident when she visits Japan. On family visits to her home city, my
mother engages with cab drivers, currency exchange clerks, waiters, and café patrons without defensiveness, with a
friendly and embracing openness that startled me the first time I noticed it. I believe America swindled her in some
inexplicable way. Yet I cannot bear to say that coming to America was the wrong choice for her, and I don't
believe that it was.
And here, it seems, I've painted a rather dark portrait with splotches of light, like one of those overcast days when
the sun seems to be shearing the clouds, without quite getting through them.
My mother seems to have learned, over the past few years, with a kind of wisdom I greatly admire, what the
heights and limitations of her life are. She has to work as hard as ever; both of her children were foolish enough to
go into the field of literature in different ways. She has no grandchildren. She has a son who has a knack for getting
into relationships with volcanic women, rather than settling down. But she's happy. This week, she will be going to
Japan and, for the fist time in 25 years, my father will accompany her. My mother is a Japanese citizen, and my
father has bad memories of Japan — he was born in California's Central Valley, and considered Japan a place of
temporary exile during his teen years when he was American and loved America and when America hated him.
I learned through my sister that my parents are going to Japan this week. My mother thinks I don't call her enough,
that I'm not interested in her life. I don't think she will really believe that I am interested in her life until I get married
and have children because this to her would signal the final frontier of my independence from which I could truly
love my family again.
I was thinking over that last bit when I was sitting at the neighborhood coffee shop in the small non-descript
Midwestern town that is 2,000 miles away from home. I called my mother to ask about her trip to Japan. She said
they were going for the 50th anniversary of my grandfather's death. My father's father. In Japanese Buddhist
tradition, the 50th anniversary is the last anniversary of someone's death, as if, after 50 years, the spirit of that person
is let go. My parents have never attended a memorial service for my grandfather. He lived in a remote part of Japan,
Shiga, that my mother always referred to as "inaka," a contemptuous term used to denote the countryside where the
uncivil common folk live.
I was surprised that my mother encouraged, convinced, my father to attend this last chance to say goodbye. She
always thought of trips to Japan as a chance to hang out with her old college friends in Tokyo. But she has learned
to worry about my father. My father insists that the only reason he is going to the memorial service is that there is no
one left in Shiga to organize it. Strictly business. When I talked to him on the phone, he seemed irritated that I
would bother to ask about the trip.
But I have witnessed my mother's intuitive powers. She is sending him, for the first time in his life, on a journey he
needs to go on. My mother, who had lived out her youth on the premise that she needed to be saved-from culture
shock, racism, a childhood of abandonment-has come to recognize that my father, for the duration of their
marriage, has needed the same thing. And I believe my mother must be recuperating some lost part of herself: the
hope that youth promised her before she immigrated to a country that seemed so misaligned to who she was and
before she married the man who three decades hence would help her find the closest thing to home she would ever
know.
My mother immigrated to the U.S. in 1968, two years before I was born. Her father had given her away to distant
relatives. Her grandmother died in the U.S.- bombing of Tokyo during World War II, so my mother grew up in the
ashes of a city, with no real parents. However, she was privileged, compared to those who walked the streets without
limbs, food, money or home. In fact, when the city was in ruins, she attended a prestigious private 2-year women's
college. While her college carried some prestige, the patriarchal system of that time didn't allow women to attend 4-
year universities. I still proudly mention that my mother went to Aoyama Gakuin, when I meet international students
from Japan. They are always impressed.
My mother's grandmother was a streetwise businesswoman, when the 20th century was still new, and when it was
virtually impossible for Japanese women to aspire for careers. Unless they had a particular genius for business that
no system could stop, and my great grandmother had that genius. In contrast, my mother's cousin became a well-
known broadcast journalist at a fairly young age, but he was a man and opportunities were available to him.
I sometimes wonder what my mother would have done with her life had the opportunities been available to her. It
seems to me that her life, blunted by lack of chance, took a dark turn. She married my father to escape the family
that took her in; not because they were abusive or unkind, but because they were not her family, and she was always
treated, indirectly, as if she was not quite a part of the family. This sense of not belonging in her own home haunted
her.
Hollywood movies presented a world of roman holidays and breakfasts at Tiffany's, and even scrubs like Charlie
Chaplin and James Dean found some truth or answer at the end of their complicated cinematic troubles. Sinatra
sang as if anything was possible. And my mother immigrated to the U.S. with great hopes and married my father.
Unfortunately, the U.S. gave her a husband who didn't know how to protect himself, and so could not protect her. It
gave her a mother-in-law who tried to oversee every daily act my mother performed, from cooking and shopping to
motherhood and travel. Ironically, my mother picked up one thing from her mother-in-law: her trade.
My mother has been a seamstress for 30 years. She has always worked out of a two-car garage, and worked late into
the night. She worked harder than I thought anyone could work. I believe her work ethic was partly founded on duty
and responsibility, and partly founded on a feeling of sacrifice she needed to put herself through, because it was the
only way she knew how to express love for her children.
Since my father retired from being a travel agent, my mother has been working even harder to make mortgage
payments and get the bills paid. My father receives social security but the cost of living in the Bay Area is so high
that they are both struggling. When I visit home for winter or summer breaks from graduate school, I see my mother
working in the same two-car garage and at the same desk that my father's company threw out 25 years ago. My
father put two old desks together, and placed a large board over both the desks. He hammered nails that attached
the wood to the desk.
It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, my mother must have thought. She is a kind of romantic aesthete. She
understands that my father's "practical" (though not always actually helpful) and clumsy and good-mannered efforts
are genuine. She is also chronically and profoundly disappointed by my father. She wanted someone who would
convert the two-car garage into a family room, even if he had to construct it himself. Tony, a neighbor across the
street, had done it, with his own tool kit. She wanted someone who took the initiative to make her happy.
She didn't understand that my father did make her happy. My mother is perennially a bit glum by nature, with a
pessimistic take on the world. My father, for all the traumas of his past, which are the traumas of American history-
internment, anti-Japanese laws and discrimination, exile and return-has an optimistic, eager hunger for the smallest
things. A bottle of beer, Hawaiian food, Hawaii, a gift, a drive out to Carmel or Saulsalito, can give him a sense of
contentment and happiness that my mother seems estranged from..
Of course, my father's good nature and positive outlook is marred by a temperamental streak that has mellowed in
his old age, but remains like a ghost from the days when he was a kid behind barbed wire, looking over his shoulder
at the tower where machine-gunners made sure none of the Japanese escaped the internment camp.
If my mother was not blessed with a joyful outlook on life, she was gifted with a sweetness that endears her to
everyone she meets. This side of her is far more evident when she visits Japan. On family visits to her home city, my
mother engages with cab drivers, currency exchange clerks, waiters, and café patrons without defensiveness, with a
friendly and embracing openness that startled me the first time I noticed it. I believe America swindled her in some
inexplicable way. Yet I cannot bear to say that coming to America was the wrong choice for her, and I don't
believe that it was.
And here, it seems, I've painted a rather dark portrait with splotches of light, like one of those overcast days when
the sun seems to be shearing the clouds, without quite getting through them.
My mother seems to have learned, over the past few years, with a kind of wisdom I greatly admire, what the
heights and limitations of her life are. She has to work as hard as ever; both of her children were foolish enough to
go into the field of literature in different ways. She has no grandchildren. She has a son who has a knack for getting
into relationships with volcanic women, rather than settling down. But she's happy. This week, she will be going to
Japan and, for the fist time in 25 years, my father will accompany her. My mother is a Japanese citizen, and my
father has bad memories of Japan — he was born in California's Central Valley, and considered Japan a place of
temporary exile during his teen years when he was American and loved America and when America hated him.
I learned through my sister that my parents are going to Japan this week. My mother thinks I don't call her enough,
that I'm not interested in her life. I don't think she will really believe that I am interested in her life until I get married
and have children because this to her would signal the final frontier of my independence from which I could truly
love my family again.
I was thinking over that last bit when I was sitting at the neighborhood coffee shop in the small non-descript
Midwestern town that is 2,000 miles away from home. I called my mother to ask about her trip to Japan. She said
they were going for the 50th anniversary of my grandfather's death. My father's father. In Japanese Buddhist
tradition, the 50th anniversary is the last anniversary of someone's death, as if, after 50 years, the spirit of that person
is let go. My parents have never attended a memorial service for my grandfather. He lived in a remote part of Japan,
Shiga, that my mother always referred to as "inaka," a contemptuous term used to denote the countryside where the
uncivil common folk live.
I was surprised that my mother encouraged, convinced, my father to attend this last chance to say goodbye. She
always thought of trips to Japan as a chance to hang out with her old college friends in Tokyo. But she has learned
to worry about my father. My father insists that the only reason he is going to the memorial service is that there is no
one left in Shiga to organize it. Strictly business. When I talked to him on the phone, he seemed irritated that I
would bother to ask about the trip.
But I have witnessed my mother's intuitive powers. She is sending him, for the first time in his life, on a journey he
needs to go on. My mother, who had lived out her youth on the premise that she needed to be saved-from culture
shock, racism, a childhood of abandonment-has come to recognize that my father, for the duration of their
marriage, has needed the same thing. And I believe my mother must be recuperating some lost part of herself: the
hope that youth promised her before she immigrated to a country that seemed so misaligned to who she was and
before she married the man who three decades hence would help her find the closest thing to home she would ever
know.
