Birthdays #3
Here I am again—safe after a harrowing drive back from a wonderful Japanese lunch with friends in San Francisco. We could hardly see through the torrential rains and it was black as pitch in many areas. But I drove, and my Japanese house guest, Toshi, kept an eye out for signs and road impediments. It always makes me laugh when people ask “Do you still drive?” H---- yes, I still drive; the day they take my license away they might as well kill me. Anyway, Etsuko, my friend and practically my daughter because I love her so much, fixed a magnificent spread, and then I had more presents to open—silver earrings and home-made jellies. My 80th wasn’t especially memorable, but this 81st just keeps going on and on and on like the TV batteries.
Actually, I have spent a lot of time visiting and living with these friends, so it seems the right time to mention the Christmas and Birthday I spent with them in El Cerrito, California. I was on holiday from my teaching job in Japan, and since my own children were spread all over the map and my husband (#2) and I had been on a separation agreement for a few years, I accepted their invitation. It was very cozy and loving with a fire in the fire place and a tree a-sparkle, hovering over piles of prettily wrapped presents. There was an elderly man in El Cerrito who for many years had decorated the empty lot next to his home so lavishly for Christmas that people drove from miles around to see it. We were among the throng, and the scene he created was so amazing it was almost unbelievable. I was having a wonderful happy time enjoying visitors, opening gifts and eating Holiday food—happy, that is until the mail man left what seemed like a psychological bomb. It was a letter from my “ex” enclosing divorce papers to be signed. Even though we weren’t living together, we had parented four children ad shared the grief of losing Baby Charmaine, so I had hoped to at least stay friends. But that was that. Before returning to Japan I joined my friends on their balcony overlooking the city far below. It was New Year’s Eve, and at midnight the sound of guns and Uzzis being shot into the air all through a tough neighborhood below was pretty scary.
That’s enough for tonight. To be continued.
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