hi mom

 

One of my original intentions was to blog about retirement. Well, it’s been almost three years now and I haven’t written all that much about retirement. Because of the current financial mess many retirees, including myself, have worried whether our savings will last. If we have savings. I am fortunate that I’m in good shape.

But I have been thinking I should go back to work anyway. To shore up my finances, sure, but also to force me out of the house. But really, what is important to me? Retirement should imply resources and time to concentrate on what is important and wisdom and experience to know actually what that is. I may be in trouble.

 

My plan was to write a couple of books–a novel and a non-fiction book on systems analysis. I haven’t made much progress on either. Even in college I was known as a slow writer. But this is ridiculous.  So I need to rethink what I’m doing.

 

And one of things I’m doing is trying to spend more time with my mom. She’s in her eighties and still going strong. People tell me I should spend as much time as I can, they regret the missed opportunity. So there is that. And I have still more selfish reasons. I know so little about her life. What are the little details and incidents that illuminate her story? I am a thief, wanting to know this partly so I can steal it and make it into stories I can write. I am trying to expatiate my sins of being engrossed in my own life and not paying attention to hers. So I wonder, what was her childhood like? A farm girl. Did she have far ambitions? We are used to dramatic changes in our life. As children we take change for granted. But what was it like for her? I saw a picture of her a top a horse. Standing in front of Ford Model A. Such changes in her life.

 

What has it like to be a Japanese-American early in the twentieth century. I am curious about her life before the camps and after the camps. Sometimes it feels that with caucasians our whole history is confined to the camps. I am not the camps. She is not the camps. I am greedy. I want to know what her whole life was like.  Starting next week we’re off on a trip together and maybe I’ll have to courage to pry into her life.