In the summer of 1959 my mother heard about the Oregon Centennial and was determined that we would go to Portland to see the exposition. She had her own memories of the 1939 World’s Fair at Treasure Island, and she wanted us to have a similar experience. So the six of us set off in […]
The Summer of Sandals
A young relative recently graduated from middle school, and I was stumped as to what kind of gift might be suitable. I am not great at gift-giving, being borderline phobic about shopping and not being a craft-advantaged person who can whip up quirky home-made items that people would not immediately regift or donate to a […]
For my dad on Fathers’ Day
We will not say “sayonara” to you; we will not let go of the small, good things you taught us to love, like the sound of the river, the buzz of a fishline spinning out after a fat, freckled trout. Or cold, dark mornings when you lured us from sleep with a single, whispered word: […]
My mother’s kimono
This week my place is a kimono museum. For the past five years, since we started clearing out my mom’s house, a pile of Japanese kimono* that belonged to my mom and aunt have been sitting on my childhood bed, neatly folded and wrapped in a cotton sheet, while I tried to figure out what […]
Working at Christmas
When I was a child, I was eager to work. It seemed like a “grown-up” thing to do. I helped at my dad’s wholesale business, first on Columbus Avenue, and later, on Bryant Street. I put stamps on envelopes and got rides on the handtruck when my sisters were around. (In reality, my dad was […]
Chinatown
It was a gorgeous April day in San Francisco, so I took BART into the city and walked all the way up Grant Avenue, through Chinatown, to Live Worms Gallery in North Beach, where my brother-in-law Paul was having a show. Although I’ve spent most of my life in San Francisco and the East Bay, […]
Writing “American Fish”
“American Fish” was initially written as a scene in a play. I was taking a playwriting class from Ed Bullins, African-American playwright, and we were assigned to write one scene per week. I wrote it in 1985, so I honestly can’t say that I remember what inspired the scene. I thought it would be very […]
Tsukuba Monogatari
In September of 1989 I took an assignment to work onsite at a foreign-capital company in Tsukuba, Japan for three months—a short-term assignment that would eventually stretch to five months. I had been conducting management development training in California for “high-potential” Japanese managers from The Company since 1987, so I knew quite a few people […]
Bridging cultures
In 2000, students at the American School in Japan read The Loom and Other Stories and had the following questions, which I responded to by e-mail two hours after landing in Tokyo from California (and it was around 4 am California time): 1. How much of the book is autobiographical? I would say that many […]
Where stories come from
In 2001, a young woman in Florida wrote, asking if I would answer some questions about my writing. I said I would be happy to (and refrained from adding, although I wanted to, “…if you’ll answer some of MY questions about what the heck is going on with voting in Florida!”) She and her friends […]