I was talking to a woman recently and told her I’d lived in Michigan for 35 years. She told me how lucky I was. She and her husband had spent a summer biking and hiking around the upper portion of Michigan. Her experience was of three months of HEAVEN. No humidity, cool days and nights, artist colonies and fruit orchards…she was enthusiastic. I was stunned. That’s not the Michigan I recall, with it’s gloomy overcast days that stretched on for weeks at a time, the wicked winters that last 6 months out of the year, I struggled constantly with depression and longed to see the sun…
After our conversation, I began to reflect on all that I had enjoyed about Michigan. My children were all born there, I was a young wife and mother, I planted large vegetable gardens that flourished in the climate, we were able to keep horses (a childhood dream), the gorgeous autumns and cozy wood fires…
In that moment I realized that even in the trials, there is much to make me glad.

I have a foster mother who is remarkable. When I met her I was a miserable 15 yr old who had literally been battered by life and it’s circumstances for years. I was nervous, anxious and eager to please ANYONE just to be left alone. Emi was also subjected to a terrible childhood. Personally, she was rejected by her divorced parents, hated by her step-mother and step-siblings and sent to live with her elderly grandfather in Los Angeles. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The white people in her neighborhood viewed Emi and her family members with hatred and contempt, even though they were loyal Americans. The government came in one day and gave all of them 24 hrs to pack up one suitcase each and at 5 yrs old, Emi and her Japanese family and neighbors were shipped to concentration camps in the desert. For 4 yrs she lived in a bare wooden shack with her grandpa. When they were released at the end of the war, nothing remained. They had all lost their homes, their businesses, their bank accounts and all possessions. Emi was returned to her bitter step-mom and haughty father. Emi married young, to a Japanese Marine, and she followed him all over the United States as he served his country in wars in Korea and Vietnam. Finally he retired in his forties and bought Emi a house of her own in Los Angeles. Months later he died in a car accident. Life had been hard for Emi, but you’d never know it. She was sweet and gracious, kind and loving, full of life and joy. She is my inspiration and my role model. If she can survive and thrive, so can I.

I have experienced kindnesses frequently throughout my life but the ones that stick out to me are the people who were kind when I was a child. I had a couple teachers who were exceptional. Mrs. Ramos, 5th grade at Williams Elementary School is one. Somehow she knew and cared about my miserable existence at home and made an effort to encourage me at school. Sunday School teacher, youth group leader Jackie Urgeliet was another. Loving, motherly soul who welcomed me into her home and heart. My foster grandmother was another and my Japanese foster Mom, Emi Abe. These women tended someone elses garden in taking care of someone elses child, and I am grateful.