There’s a corollary to sending out Holiday Cards: receiving
cards and then coming to the point of having to throw them out. We keep a list of names and addresses so we
have a checklist of the people we’ve sent and received cards from. Over the years, that list has declined from
hundreds, and then leveled off to about a hundred, and now to less than a
hundred. Death, and the attrition of friends
with whom we now have only a superficial relationship are the main reasons for
the decline, and some have gone the Email route to express their holiday
greetings. We still like to send a card
and put a stamp on an envelope but probably that too will fall by the wayside
one of these days.
I feel a sense of sadness when old friends or former
colleagues suddenly disappear from our checklist. Of course circumstances change and old
relationships not actively maintained are the main culprits. As much our fault as theirs. On the other hand there are people with whom
we exchange cards, year after year, although our contact with them from decades
ago was strictly accidental and passing.
One such exchange is with Bianca, the woman Ann shared a
hospital room with when our son Jonathan was born. I think we visited one another a few times after
the respective births of our sons more than three decades ago, but outside of
that, the only contact we’ve had has been those holiday card exchanges, she commenting
on her son’s progress in life and we doing the same. It is a touching tradition and we look
forward to those holiday updates as our sons navigate their lives, born on the
same day and at almost the same moment.
Another holiday card exchange is truly remarkable. As the New Year was turning from 1989 to
1990, I had a business trip to Japan and decided to take Ann and Jonathan (his
first such trip, being only 12 years old at the time).
While I was meeting with our host, a Japanese
bookseller in Tokyo one day (this photo is of us, he and his wife in front of
our hotel), Ann and Jonathan decided to take the underground to the Ginza area
to shop and have lunch. As they were
finishing their meal, Ann remarked to Jonathan that she thought a fellow diner appeared
to have been listening very attentively to their conversation. Ann smiled at her and shortly afterward a very
demure looking older Japanese woman came over to their table and in very
correct English apologized for appearing to be overhearing their
conversation. She went on to say “I hope
you will pardon me, I do not mean to interrupt, but may I ask where you are
from?” Ann was a little surprised as it
was quite unusual to hear a Japanese person speaking English so well.
So Ann replied and the woman asked whether she could move
next to them and talk to them a little as she had so few opportunities to speak
to native English speakers. She
explained that she was a language teacher in her nearby home town of Yokohama.
By all means Ann said and so throughout the rest their
meal, the three of them talked. They hit
it off! She introduced herself as Mrs.
Murakami, and invited Ann and Jonathan to be her guests at a specialty dessert shop
down the street. They continued to talk
and then Mrs. Murakami did something very uncharacteristic of the Japanese, she
invited us all for tea and lunch and to see her ancestral home in Yokohama where
she and her husband lived. Ann accepted
knowing we were free that following Saturday.
So off to Yokohama we went where she met us at the train station to help
us find the house, situated in the prime spot at the top of a hill. Although not a house the size of most average
American homes, it was very large by Japanese standards. But it had been handed down from generation
to generation in her family and was highly treasured. We were cordially welcomed by other members
of her family and led into the living room and seated in places of honor. This room also serves as a bedroom where
tatami mats are placed on the floor for sleeping. After a small meal concluded
with tea, we were given a short tour of the rest of the house, in particular
one room devoted to the worship of her ancestors, where a shrine was adorned
with candles.
The following year, we decided to send her a holiday card
and she sent us one as well, the two crossing in the mail. Since then, we have not missed a Christmas
holiday without sending a card and note to her as well as she to us.
As it turns out, Ann and Mrs. Murakami had a chance to
renew their acquaintance ten years later, in 1998, when we flew to Japan to
visit Jonathan, then spending his junior year at Doshisha University in Kyoto. Mrs. Murakami treated Ann to an extraordinary
luncheon where no menus were presented, exquisite small dishes just kept
arriving at their table for almost 2 hours.
Ann remembers thinking that that was the most gastronomically incredible
meal she has ever had!
However, this year we didn’t receive a card and we were
worried, knowing Mrs. Murakami is about ten years our senior. We were about to put our list away and
suddenly there appeared an envelope from Japan and we could tell by the
handwriting that it was from her. We
were elated.
Inside the card was a very neatly handwritten note as
follows:
Dear Ann,
Thank you very much for your 26th
Christmas card. It gives me courage for
life. The picture of you two is so
wonderful and you are as young as you are when I saw you for the first time in
Tokyo. I am not so fine. I was in a hospital ten days this summer and
next year I will have an operation on my eye.
But fortunately I can attend the class of Reading Shakespeare two times
a month. We have spent twenty years
now. Still we have seven plays ahead of
us. Every member is around eighty years
old.
Please tell my best regard to your dear son
Jonathan. I wish you all Merry Christmas
and a Happy New Year.
With love, Toshiko
Indeed, Toshiko, your note too gives us “courage of
life.”
