Bad Parking

For me, parking is one of the most fury-inspiring things imaginable. My loathing of parking most likely stems from my general impatience. Trying to find a spot in a crowded lot is one big tease. I drove all the way to my location, I can see the entrance, and yet I can't find a place to park my car. I would like to dream calmly about George Jetson and his spaceship that folded into a portable suitcase, but I'm usually too busy screaming and swearing.

I typically employ good parking-lot etiquette, though, as I fear a confrontation with a larger gentleman who might punch me in the face after I steal his spot. I don't speed in the parking lots. I don't inch my bumper onto the pedestrian's legs while following them to their car.

I wish all people were more considerate, or at least aware of their surroundings, to create a more pleasant parking experience.


















Sometimes, when people do strange things on the streets, I can give them the benefit of the doubt by thinking, "Maybe they are unfamiliar with the rules of the road." But this isn't some obscure, footnote DMV rule; this is just staying within the white lines. With so many other cars, this driver has one of two options: 1) They don't care about society and want Jungle Law or 2) They are ridiculously ignorant.


















I'll admit I don't know the "official" rules about parking motorcycles, but I know this: parking your midlife crisis in a perfectly good parking spot in a crowded lot when there is designated motorbike parking is just rude. I would park my car in your tiny, designated motorcycle spot just to spite you, but my car is actually functional and can carry things besides an aging man wearing a leather vest.


















If these kids had enough money to shop at Santana Row, they should be spending their money on copies of The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette. Leaving your bikes in front of the store entrance? These kids are hooligans and rapscallions in the making.

Kids Surprise Me

So, I just finished my first week of teaching middle school.

The middle-school students are easily excited. Their faces have a brightness and eagerness not only to learn but to comprehend. I tell the students about commas before coordinating conjunctions, and I see their minds churning the information until they produce hard-earned understanding. A few times a day, they hang on my every word, gripping my lessons in their academically absorbent fingers.

Most other times, though, I feel more like a babysitter than a teacher. I don't mean "babysitter" in pejorative way; I simply mean that a good portion of my day involves nagging students to be quiet, do their homework, and focus on the assignments.

But despite their short attention spans, I saw some pretty mature behavior this week.

First, while I was writing at the board, a student passed some gas. I saw an embarrassed young man grin and say, "Excuse me." Now at this point, I was laughing; not ruckus belly-shaking, but my shoulders were certainly moving. I mean, farting is funny, or at least my brother and peers all find it humorous. There's something about the rich sound mixed with the personal vulnerability. I laughed out of reaction without considering hurt feelings.

I quickly stopped when I heard another student say to the wind breaker, "Hey, man. It's cool. Everyone farts." There wasn't a hint of sarcasm or mocking in his statement; he genuinely wanted to reassure and support his classmate. And how true a statement! I fart all the time. How could this 8th grader be more mature than me?

Second, one of the students has a fairly obvious physical deformity. To be perfectly honest, the abnormality did make a bit uncomfortable as I have never seen such a characteristic in real life. It wasn't disgust...more like disproportionate interest.

But again, another student surprised me when I overheard him at lunch: "His thing is cool. Check it out," he called to a group of friends. Again, the youthful exuberance was pure—there wasn't a hint of malice. The student with the deformity looked pleased to show his attribute as if it was a medal of honor. How could these 6th graders be more accepting than me?

I'm not sure if these students are incredibly mature, or of they simply have not had their open-mindedness spoiled by the xenophobia of adulthood. Either way, these students showed me something about acceptance and diversity; I might be the English Instructor, but we are all teachers.

Skyward

I kept her deep inside my head: A grain
of rice that rattled free one night and fell
atop the freedom land I prayed deny
her. Starving, I kept her for myself, stored
away, that fate may chance me with a storm
and wet the cloistered plot saved for her.

On fertile ground, she chose to sprout
without me. She found life elsewhere.
She grew tall, over 50 feet of emerald
sinews tempting me up.

I climbed her stalk to reach her face:
I grabbed her hair, hand over hand, and went skyward.
I sank my hands in her hair as I did
when dreaming of kissing her and combing black
strands with my fingers.

I reached her lips and pulled my face
above the crest to peer into her mouth.
I saw a pink pillar of rose petals.

I moved to kiss her, to tell her I can love her
more in freedom's rain than in my sunshine.
I leaned in to whisper my confession,
expecting her breath to smell of rose blossoms.
Instead, I tasted earthy water, drinking her reflection
as she walked away.

"I Dislike My Job"

After a quaint Sunday-night dinner in downtown Oakland, I stopped by one of the happiest places on earth: an ice cream parlor. Maybe it's just me, but ice cream parlors seem immune to the fads and tends of today's sweet-treat, hangout spots. Smoothie bars are out, and self-serve froyo is in...but ice cream parlors have been and will always be here.

Ice cream parlors have a distinct effect on your senses. The smell of freshly made waffle cones and the melting chocolate greet you like an old friend as soon as you enter the store. The store is a cheerful 78 degrees, but the freezer windows are ice cold to the touch. You see the mound of rainbow sprinkles, and even though they have no flavor, you can feel the unique sweetness in your mouth.

It's always obvious fun to watch a kid in an ice cream parlor, but if you want a real treat, watch their parents. Ice cream parlors are one of the rare places where you can actually see childish glee break through the stifling seriousness of adulthood. Adults roll their tongues along the poofy ice cream, slowly twisting the cone in their hand getting 360 degrees of creamy delight. They smile just big enough for you to remember that a 50 year old was once a 5 year old.

But amid all this happiness, my server secretly hated his job. This man wasn't rude to me or the customers. In fact, he was very cordial. It was the way he spoke: his words drooped slightly downward after they left his mouth. He scooped the ice cream with a lethargy yet efficiency that showed me he didn't enjoy the work itself, but he took his work seriously.

I sympathized with this employee. Despite a dislike for his occupation, he worked very hard. The line moved quickly. He gave generous portions. He was patient with children asking for samples. He was not a jerk. He understood the charming importance of the ice cream parlor; he just happened to dislike the work itself.

There was a dignified sense of dedication in this gentleman. His dislike for the job didn't adversely affect my experience. He had a sense of responsibility and pride I rarely have the privilege of witnessing. And I respect that.

In an emotional state that could very easily have turned sour, he kept his demeanor saccharine for the benefit of all us children expecting a sweet time.

All You Can Eat Crab Night...

is a bad night to woo a woman. A few nights ago, my buddy and I stopped for an impromptu dinner at a seafood buffet. "Hey, man, pull over. I could go for some crab and fish and shit." My friend made a convincing argument.

Buffets not on the Strip or an Indian reservation are usually pretty bad, so my buddy and I didn't expect first-class food or high-class customers.

But then our server brought us our waters, and in a seafood buffet of low-caliber people, she was lovely Excalibur.

She wore her hair in a bun to keep it out of the food, but you could tell it was beautiful. Her hair was brown like the color of sand right after the ocean receded with the tide. She had calming seafoam green eyes, and hands as gentle as seaweed. Even though there were seven other servers wearing identical uniforms, she wore that navy shirt and khaki uniform in a way that drowned me.

32 crabs legs later, we were ready to leave. But on the way out, I realized that I had to say something to this girl beyond, "Yeah, we have everything we need."

I walked up to her and initiated the conversation by talking about how great the crab was. After about 30 seconds of filler material, I made my move. Through my sheepish smile, I told her that I thought she was pretty, and I asked if she would like to get a drink after her shift.

"I'm sorry, but no." No excuses. Pure denial. I respect that.

She saw me digging through mediocre crab wearing one of those seafood bibs. She saw me using the crab's own claws to extract the meat like I was a neanderthal discovering a tool. She saw me hunched over my plate sucking on crab legs like they were straws. And when I confessed to her, I think I had bits of carapace stuck to my chin.

A charming man would have forgone the meal and spoken to the woman without the crab stink clinging to his clothing. But I'm no charmer...plus, I wasn't about to waste $8.99. I guess the cheap seafood buffet cost me an entrance fee and a date with Tethys herself.

Needless to say, Saturday night dinner, at best, will be with a male buddy.

Sobering Wisdom

So I got a new job. I'm moving from collegiate education to middle-school education. I got offered the job earlier today, and I must admit that I was giddy. Remember Jerry Maguire right after Cushman's father gave the "my word is stronger than oak" speech? That was me around 4 pm.

It was one of those times when you hate that all your friends and family members have real jobs because you want to call them that very instant. Of course, at 4:15 in the afternoon, my jubilation was deflated by voicemail.

Around dinnertime, my mother called me back. Upon hearing the news, she was superficially excited, but I detected a slight negative tone when she said, "Oh, you get paid by the hour?" The conversation continued, and with every detail of my new position, instead of illogical joy and elation for my new job, I was met with logical bits of wisdom and advice. Advice is always good, especially when it comes from such a knowledgeable source, but sometimes you just want to shout "I START WORK ON MONDAY!" without having to hear echoes from reality.

A few hours later, my father returned my call. If I can count on someone for uninhibited emotional excitement, it's my father. In fact, he was the one who urged me to get a job even if it was only to accrue "walking around money." But surprisingly, his usual outlandish enthusiasm was stifled by conservative precautions. "Well, just be careful. Remember that bad jobs never get better."

Bad jobs? I haven't even started yet. I felt like I had to justify my winning the lottery.

Both my parents are very wise, and they are rarely purposefully cynical. But on days like today, where I only have exciting news without the lull of reality, I was looking forward to congratulations, not wisdom that grounds my lofty dreams of being a teacher.

But maybe it wasn't my parents fault. Maybe my extreme euphoria created impossible expectations. Realistically, no one could match my level of excitement that I created for myself. Mom did say that she was "proud of me," and Dad said my "creativity will pay off in the classroom." And, looking back, that's enough for me. After all, Mom and Dad are not my hype men; they are are my parents.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

My father has lost his mind. I went up to San Francisco on Sunday morning to help my father repair his backyard fence. The slats were falling loose from the posts, and the entire fence sagged like a hammock underneath an obese elephant. The old planks of wood fallen from the fence served as braces to keep the entire structure from toppling over; there was something cannibalistic about this—like performing chest compressions on a dying man with his own severed hand.

But none of this stopped my father from wanting to repair the fence.

I just assumed it was 50% frugality and 50% male stubbornness. But after digging holes around the support posts for an hour, he wiped his brow and said, "Man, I would love to just buy a new fence."

"Then why are we fixing this lost cause?" I asked as I knocked termites out of the structural posts with my shovel blade.

"Because! Those neighbors over there won't split the cost of the fence with me. It's principle: I'm not going to spend upwards of $1000 just so they can get a new fence for free."

He had a point...in a crazy sort of way. I agree it would be unfair to give shortsighted neighbors a free fence, but I also wonder why we would spend an entire day fixing a fence that will most likely collapse like a dying star during the next storm.

It was hard work. My back hurt from the digging, and my legs cramped from all the crouching. But even though our bodies ached, we laughed through pain remembering when a bird attacked my father outside a movie theater. Our hands had invisible splinters, but we could only smile when I was too afraid to jump over the fence once we had nailed in the final repairs.

He paid me for my work in Mexican food. My juicy pork was made only more delicious by crunch of dirt from beneath my fingernails.

My father has lost his mind. In his principled stance against his bad neighbors, we worked half a day only to be defeated by a dilapidated fence. But I still had fun. Often times in life, it's the crazy people that know how to have the most fun. I guess bad fences make good father-son relationships.

Damoclean Fear

Leaving my residence at 8:45 this morning, I noticed that a fellow tenant's car had been burglarized. Through word of mouth, I've become aware of the increasing problem of the "smash and grab" in my parking garage, but this was my first witnessing of the carnage.

As I moved in to take the picture, I stepped lightly on the black tinted class. I could feel the small charcoal ice cubes crack underneath my sneakers like I was walking on a half-frozen lake. I imagined slivers of my neighbor's peace of mind lodging in the grooves of my shoes.

Worst case scenario: something irreplaceable was pilfered. Best case scenario: several hundred dollars to replace the glass. But the best case scenario still seems like a pretty terrible circumstance.

Even though I have nothing of value in my 10-year-old car, I still feel violated by these criminals and their selfishness. I thought about sleeping next to my car with a bat, crazily protecting my property like an eccentric man waiting for raccoons to steal his garbage. But I can't spend my life defending my car.

I guess I just need faith—faith that the fools will inflict emotional and financial damage on someone other than me. That sounds selfish, but what else can I realistically ask for?

How can these thugs be so brutal? I don't care about my car in the physical sense, but I am going crazy thinking about my car in the abstract sense. Did I lock it? Did I park in enough light? Is someone smashing my window right now? If I go to the garage right now, can I prevent the crime from taking place?

Don't you miscreants understand? When you choose to steal under the cover of anonymity, you are forcing a paralyzing Damoclean fear onto my life. Food tastes flat, women appear dull, books seem uninteresting—all because I'm frightened of what you may or may not be doing from the shadows.

Must you hang a sword over my mind?

If an Apple Was a Woman...

If an apple was a woman, she would be your mother. Not the sweetest of the fruits, nor the softest. Not the most beautiful of women, nor the most desirable. Despite this though, our most basic understanding of fruits and of women comes from these wonderfully unique sources.

For every Granny Smith, Fuji, Delicious, or Gala; for every speckle on an apple's gradient peel; for every bump that rests in the cradles of our fingers, there are unique and strong mothers guiding their children. No two mothers and no two apples are identical, and yet there is something consistently wonderful about each and every one.

The apple is one of the most diverse fruits. Apples are packed with pectin, a fiber that aids in digestion and prevents heart disease. And apples have relatively hard flesh that gives them transportability without bruising. Your mother, much like an apple, is healthful and tough. She packed you brown bag lunches when the cafeteria served greasy pizza. She defended you when the bully up the street punched you in the head.

Even in the harshest anger, your forceful words rarely left a soft spot, but if they did, she would always forgive you and make apple sauce.

But apples and mothers are sweet as well. Apples are a perfect snack, but it is the desserts that remind us that within an apple's crispy core, there are sweet liquids eager to be sampled. Mothers love to spoil their children, and apples love to spoil our diets.

French apple pies with crumb toppings as smooth as Hawaiian sand. The baked apples with freckles of cinnamon drip with mocha-colored, sugar-apple syrup. And every time you smell the buttery crust cracking in the oven, you think of your mother baking just because she felt like making something sweet.

Some apples get worms though. Some apples spoil the entire family barrel. Not all mothers are perfect examples of womanhood, but for most of you, the apple and your mother represent a quintessential vibration of comfort and iconography. I say, "fruit," you think apple. I say, "lovely woman," you think mother.

Stand By Me

While shopping at Ontario Mills Mall with my brother, we stopped by Sam Ash Music. The store is essentially a giant toy store for musicians. I could spend an entire afternoon banging on drums, strumming a guitar, or just dancing in the DJ accessories section.
















When we first walked into the store, I saw this couple. The girlfriend patiently waited with her boyfriend as he tested numerous amps for his bass. This bassist was for real: he brought his own bass to the store to test the amps.

Even though this musician was obviously talented, the girlfriend looked annoyed and somewhat frustrated as exemplified by her crossed arms and perturbed face. This couple was so well-established that even his masterful manipulation of the bass strings was familiar to the point of boring. She leaned on a box, not quite in a sitting position, because she wanted to hover over her boyfriend hurrying him along in his purchase.

But the bassist ignored her—not in the rude way, but in the immersed-in-his-passion-for-music way. He strummed the same note over and over fiddling with the balance nobs. He played entire songs seeing if his bass and his amp were a good couple. He went back and forth at least three times among at least five different amps. And all the while, the girlfriend stood by his side, visibly annoyed but lovingly patient.

I wonder how many times in my life I have immersed myself in a passion and forgotten the object of my affection. Like the bassist, this is not out of maliciousness but simply out of passion. But I concede: there must be a compromise between passion and patience.

For you who kissed me goodnight while I was playing Halo 3. For you who listened to me prattle on endlessly about Shakespeare and Hemingway. For you who played my favorite song on the piano. For you who drew me pictures. For you who held my hand when my 360 broke. For you who let me read you poetry, play you music, or sing you songs...

Thank you.

Though we may not be together now because of bigger reasons, you stood by me through my little passions in life. And as the brilliant Sherlock Holmes said, "The little things are infinitely the most important."

An Open Mind. A Bidet.

For the first time in a long while, I stayed in a hotel this past weekend. Upon first inspection, my hotel room was fairly standard. But as I went into the bathroom to ransack my free toiletries, I spotted this contraption screwed to my toilet.




















I've heard of the legendary bidet, but I've never seen one in real life. I thought it was a myth—an ostentatious invention rumored but never implemented. Well, the bidet is not a rumor: I came face to face with this Bigfoot, and I used it.

I decided to try out this machine in a controlled setting. I planned to use the bidet right before I was going to take a shower. That way, if the bidet did something crazy, like spray poo water on the small of my back, it wouldn't matter since the trusty shower would rectify the situation.

So I did my business and hit the WASH function.

I heard the mechanical whirling and whizzing below. I started to panic. How would this tiny, nonadjustable nozzle hit its fairly small target? Aren't all people's posteriors different sizes and shapes? What is one man's "sweet spot" might be my left buttock.

But the calming lukewarm water hit its mark. The water was warm. The water pressure was just right. It was quite refreshing. And it was a little weird. Overall though, I was excited that such a silly machine worked so well.

I stood up, and I turned on the shower water. But in my excitement, I hadn't dried myself sufficiently. I felt a small trickle of bidet water run from my butt and to my right ankle like muddy water streaking the windows of a car on the freeway. I guess I still have a lot to learn about the bidet procedures.

Despite one small hiccup that was my own fault, the bidet worked perfectly. I thought the bidet would be stubbornly discriminating forcing me to squirm to meet the stream of water. But I was wrong.

The bidet knows. The bidet knows that all people's backsides are generally the same. Despite race, gender, religion, or nationality, everyone's buttocks and anuses are essentially the same proportions once they orient themselves on the almighty bidet toilet seat. The bidet knows that deep down, all of us are the same. But we can't rely on the bidet; we must finish the bidet's job and remember to wipe. We must remember that if our bidets can see past the differences, so can we.

Only then can we achieve a true celebration of human diversity.

An Unannounced Pop-In...

to my apartment is a bad time to woo a woman. We all have crushes on women, but things get infinitely more complex when the object of our affection decides to show up randomly at our domiciles.

I swung open the front door wearing a ratty tank top from the 1990s expecting it to be the Fedex guy with my package of recently purchased Family Guy DVDs. And there she was: Beautiful, adorable, and available.

"You wanna watch a movie or something?" she said holding two red envelopes from Netflix. I couldn't turn her away, but my apartment was unprepared for a woman. I picked my poison: I invited her in.

Even though I held the door open for her, I tried to stay a step ahead of her. I swept my dirty boxers into the closet, but while I was doing that, she noticed the Diet Root Beer cans organized like bowling pins on my coffee table. "Oops. I had a few guys over last night." I tried to grab all ten cans at once, but I ended up dripping some backwash soda on the carpet.

"Hey. Can I use your bathroom?" she asks over the clang of cans in the kitchen sink. "Umm. Sure. Just give me one sec." I rushed into the bathroom and flushed because I had pee pee stewing in the toilet in an attempt to save Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. I crumpled up my Maxim bathroom reading and shoved it under the sink. There wasn't time to wash the toothpaste spittle from mirror, so I prayed she just wouldn't notice.

She came out of the bathroom while I was still trying to button up the new dress shirt I pulled from the closet. "Maybe this isn't a good movie night. We'll try it again another time," she said halfway out the door.

Even now, I'm not sure if it was the underwear, the garbage, the unsanitary bathroom, or simply the overall funk of single-guy apartment. But whatever it was, I'll be eating Saturday-night dinner alone.

Hibakusha

A summer day, a solitary bomb, a single instant; and Hiroshima was transformed into a raging inferno and a hell on earth. Countless precious lives were tragically lost, and even those who somehow managed to survive have lived in constant fear of radioactivity's grim after effects.
- Takeshi Araki -

You asked me once about your father...

It was a surprise one summer Monday.
Walking to work, I saw him ahead of me.
I craned my neck skyward to see his face:
a Little Boy confessing he was made just for me.

He grabbed my arm and pushed me down.
The grit of the sidewalk tangled in my hair.
The waist of my pants pressed into my lower back.
And even in the early hour, the sidewalk heat burned
a criss-cross pattern on my skin.

He hunched over me, his outer thighs
spread my inner thighs.
My temples were clamped between his wrists.
He lowered his head so his bottom lip
slid along my left ear.
And even in a summer morning,
the yellow whisper lit up the sky—

Surrender.

His word tore my shirt open.
He wet my breasts
with clockwise swirls of his tongue.
The goosebumps around my nipples
swelled into blisters filled with white puss.

And all around, the people pretended not to see.
But I saw their dislocated shadows painted on the ground.

I turned my head away from the vermilion
throbbing between my legs.
The glass of shop windows
were crying tears of ice for me,
and the buildings reached to me
with crimson beams of pity.

When I looked up, he was gone.
I touched my leg where he'd finished.
His thrusts had rubbed my skin loose:
flaps of my leg hung like rugs
from a clothing line.

I propped myself on my elbow
and felt a drop of water from the sky.
I opened my mouth to catch the rain
only to taste charcoal.

You asked me once about your father.

You asked me once
why you look different
from your brother.

You asked me once
to tell you
how you were born.

If a Denny's Was a Woman...

If a Denny's was a woman, she would be the annoying girl in your upper-division undergraduate class who raised her hand to every question. She never said anything particularly interesting, and when she spoke, you rolled your eyes as if to say, "I'm so much smarter than you."

The professor read a quotation from the text and asked a question to a quiet classroom. Most of the students, like you, didn't do the required readings, so the question was as difficult as the crane game in the lobby of the Denny's. But as predictable as the maroon benches and brown carpet, the girl raised her hand and "answered" the question in an insufficient manner.

You didn't have a better answer for the professor, but you knew her answer was ridiculously off-topic and nonsensical. That's like eating at a Denny's: you knew something better existed, but because you were unprepared for the question of where to dine, you were stuck with the annoying girl's Denny's answer.

She was dumb to be sure, but she was pleasing to the eye like the entree pictures on the menu. Her blond hair was as silky as the melting butter on your short stack. Her skin was caramel like the Denny's coffee mixed with five creams. And her lips, the origin of her inane comments, were as shiny as the top of a sunny-side-up egg yolk.

How is it possible that a girl who comes to every single class can be so annoyingly dumb? How is it possible that a Denny's in the most awful location between a crack den and a sewage plant creates enough revenue to stay open 24 hours a day? Those are the hidden questions of the disgustingly cheap Grand Slam Breakfasts.

But that's the worst part though: Grand Slams are sometimes sexy and appealing under the influence of hunger. The worst part about that girl: sometimes she is attractive. She's always stupid, but sometimes her $5.99 appeal is tempting.

I mean, Denny's sausage and bacon and eggs aren't terrible, they are just horribly unsatisfying. The girl in your class was equally unsatisfying: when she spoke, you didn't know whether to slap her or make out with her. And that's just like Denny's: sometimes the greasy sausage and egg dishes are disgusting, but other times, you just want to put them in your mouth.

6 Things I Couldn't Teach my Daughter

I didn't have any sisters growing up, and my mother didn't teach me in-depth details about being a woman. Why would she? And so if I were a single father, I wouldn't be able to teach my daughter:

1. What exactly Toxic Shock Syndrome is.
2. If she can flush a tampon, tampon applicator, or sanitary napkin.
3. How to put on a bra that doesn't clasp in the front.
4. If she can pee while wearing a tampon.
5. If PMS feels like not eating and getting grumpy.
   
6. How to tell a guy "I love you" without having him take her for granted afterward.

Thank. God. For. Yahoo!. Answers.

Blue Kimono

Most days of the year, the blue kimono lives in a green cardboard box. The corners of the box are fuzzy with age, and it smells like a fresh jigsaw puzzle. The blue kimono is only worn one night a year, but in that one night, it earns its right to occupy valuable real estate in a cramped closet. The first Saturday of every August, the blue kimono re-debuts itself at the Oakland Obon.

Grandma used to dance on the yagura as one of the head instructors for the Oakland Buddhist Church. In the uncertainty of randomly waving uchiwa, she offered confident consistency. In those summer August nights, she was the expert. I remember seeing her elevated on the wooden stage, warmly illuminated by the paper lanterns. She was still my grandma, but when she was on stage, I felt proud to be associated with someone commanding and yet elegant.

I always knew Obon was meant to honor and remember people who have passed away, but Obon took on a new meaning when my grandfather died. That first Obon without Grandpa was strange. It was as if every movement in the blue kimono was a private hello from my grandma to her husband.

And like the first Obon without Grandpa, this year was jarring as well: for the first time in my life, Grandma didn't dance.

With all the struggles of the past year, Grandma was too tired both physically and emotionally to navigate the pot holes and sloping memories of the Obon circles. And because the blue kimono had no wearer, it stayed tucked away at home while Grandma watched the Odori from a muddy-green folding chair.

Every year we take a family picture. I can remember putting one arm around my Grandma's shoulder for the picture. Her kimono always feels rough like a potato sack yet fluffy like a quilt. I'd run my fingers along her fragile uchiwa tucked securely in her obi. These are the textures and sights of summer. These are the things in which I have found refuge.

And while Obon may be the first Saturday of every August, today was not the same summer festival I have come to love and come to rely on.