Things from the past

Oldies...

A friend of mine visited for a few minutes last week bringing us cake and old photos that she had found in her album.  More than twenty years ago, our family and this Japanese family used to travel to California and back in the summers.  The kids and I spent the month at my brother's house with my mother and the S family spent the month with their grandparents in a nearby town.  Our kids were about the same age and everyone enjoyed traveling together and we even let Leiya and the daughter sit together on the airplane and Takumi and the son sit together, and Mrs. S and I would hand off their baby to each other allowing one of us to eat or sleep etc.  It was a wonderful arrangement much like a private field trip for all involved!

Another interesting thing about our traveling together was that while we've been friends in Japan we all spoke Japanese to each other and even on the airplane everyone conversed in Japanese.  But once we'd step onto American soil, for some reason, Mr. and Mrs. S and I (usually Tetsu wasn't with us in the summers) would switch to English and whenever we met at one of the grandparents' homes during the summer, the language would still be English.  On the airplane home I think we still spoke English but once our feet hit Japan we'd all switch back to Japanese for the rest of the year.  It was never decided that we'd do this, it just happened...

I sent these photos to Leiya and she was overjoyed!  From left to right.  The S family's youngest.  Their daughter and then Mrs. S.  MY MOTHER!!  Yes the same frail grandma in the later years of my blog!  That's me, and Marcy!  And there's Leiya in glasses still and short hair.  And down front is Kiana, my niece who just got married, and my nephew Colin.  How we all have changed!!!  It looks like the year was 2001.

Hah!  This must have been an even earlier photo with me, Leiya, Takumi, two of the S family's kids and there's my mother again!!!   I don't know how that date is supposed to be read.  Leiya must have been only 6 or 7...

Look at those sun bathing beauties!  I remember how every summer we'd be so amazed at how within minutes Leiya's skin would darken, just like photosensitive paper!!  I bet neither girl is still soaking up the sun like she did in her youth!

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More things from the past.

Marcy sent me some old crewel embroidery pieces she found in a back closet.  Wow!  We may be looking at the beginning of my love affair with hand work!  When I was 11, my parents began taking our family overseas for the summer and the first year we visited Japan and other Asian countries.  Another year we went to Europe, another year we went to Mexico and the Yukatan Peninsula.  One year we hit Alaska and another year we visited Spain and Morocco.  Knowing that the plane trips were going to be long and the waiting in airports and at hotels was going to be boring, my mother began buying me crewel kits and I think these were the first two I ever did.  I so looked forward to doing the handwork... probably more so than visiting far away countries.  

In later years I did larger pieces during our travels but I'm pretty sure they succumbed to time and moths.  I don't know how these survived (though the yarn has frayed in some places.)  They were up on the wall for a number of years and then it looks like my mother had them dry cleaned.  Marcy found them in a plastic bag and yesterday I mounted them on cardboard and stuck them into some old frames that were just the right size.

I'm so glad to have these back in my life after maybe 55, 56 years!