LEARNING TO MAKE IT HEART TO HEART
I’m listening to Agapi Stassinopoulos who wrote CENTER YOURSELF: “Find it and give it to the world.”
This chart was created with what I learned with Thomas Gordon’s PARENT EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING class we organized in our home. In the 1970s we used a lot of “You Language” or talking from the “Parent” and that brought a response from the “Child” in our girls.
I remember one day saying, “Lynette, I feel ‘sad’ that you were so rude.”
She shot back, “Oh Mom, don’t use that stuff on me!” But she didn’t get mad and we learned to not express as much judgementalness.
Today, I am learning more than just picking a “feel word” from a list, communicating and learning with myself. As I explained in a previous blog, I am an “adult” with a Parent-Adult-Child inside me. My own “Parent” is consulting mentors like Agapi to give me ideas for taking care of the Child within me.
Today July 2022, my brother-in-law is in the hospital and may be taking his last breaths. Four years ago, my husband Sam died. Those of us who loved and still love them have a new path ahead. We are still in uncertainty with the Corona Pandemic and other uncertainties.
Repeating Agapi’s words to myself: I want to exercise my inner muscles to be grounded in my calmness, in difficulties, learning to engage in uncomfortable conversations , in my learning and my joy.
I just made a phone call to our 95-yr-old Aunt. She is home and available for a visit. I’m taking our dog, Suki, and I’m using my “Golden Key of Therapy” - TALKING!
![PRACTICING AND CONTINUING T...]()
PRACTICING AND CONTINUING TO LEARN
A granddaughter Kirin drawing
This morning as I was doing my part of clearing the kitchen sink and loading the dishwasher, 15-yr-old came running in to our adjacent utility room, unloading the dryer and putting in the clean washing. It was a chance for me to say, “You’ve been good about doing your own laundry!”
Yesterday, I drove 15-yr-old to Groveland Beach for sunning and swimming with her friends. Since we were alone in the car, I had a chance to discuss some recent "rise in temperature discussions" and compliment her, “I really like how you stay respectful of your Mom when she is reminding you of cleaning up your room and helping keep the living room clean.”
She answered, “That’s because I do respect her. She is a single Mom and has a big load of responsibility.” The answer was somewhat a surprise. I felt good about how we are communicating, but I know we have to keep practicing and learning.
Friends ask me, “How is it going with your daughter moving in to your house with her two daughters?”
I answer, “I’m good at keeping my mouth shut. I have a rule: No talking during problem times.” This is a rule I teach and counsel. I learned it from a class I organized, where I had a teacher come to our home when our daughters were in in their pre-teen years - PARENT EFFECTIVENESS TRAINING.
The skills I had to start learning and find myself still learning are:
1. Learning to quickly recognize “problem times” and “cross communication issues”.
2. Keeping my mouth shut until I can use effective “I language” and “Adult to Adult Communication.
3. Making dates “one-on-one at public places”, discussing issues and “Thinking Beyond Stage One”.
4. Catching others as well as myself, “Doing Good”.
My blogging style is to keep each blog short with an incident or two and new insights I have gained as I keep learning. Therefore, I will discuss each of the four skills listed above in separate blogs going forward.
!["INFINITE LEADERSHIP/PARENT...]()
"INFINITE LEADERSHIP/PARENTING"
Within each of us!!!
The lessons I take from this discussion of LORD OF THE FLIES is that given the reception by academics, 70th on the list of recommended reading, I am willing to agree with those saying this is a good description of our human nature. "There is a dark element in each of us that needs discipline."
I like the follow-up true story about how the boys from Australia who may have read the book and learned to operate differently. Their 15-month ordeal on their deserted island started with an agreement not to argue. I like finding such inspiration as I take on the responsibility of “Infinite Parenting”.
The definition of “Infinite” vs “finite” come from SIMON SINEK who applies it to leadership in business situations. In some of his talks he suggests leadership and parenting are similar. Finite refers to leading a team with the goal of winning. Infinite refers to leadership where the project or business continues beyond the wins.
One of my counseling goals is from what I learned when I helped start the Suzuki Method of Talent Education. Starting music with a toddler requires a “teacher", the “parent" also learning how to teach the practice and the “child". I suggest “ADULT” means I take care of the “child” within myself by being my own good “parent”, who seeks and finds MY “mentors” such as understanding THE LORD OF FLIES.
Our stories as Americans with Japanese Heritage values will be influential when the JCCCW is part of the Seattle Public Tour 100 years from now.
![Chef from Iran who created 2...]()
Chef from Iran who created 2022 Grammy Award desserts!
![Zooming and staying in touch!]()
Zooming and staying in touch!
“What I don’t know is more important than what I do know,” according to psychologists such as Carl Rogers. Taking the advice of writer, Malcolm Gladwell, I decided the best way to learn more is to TALK TO STRANGERS.
I walked up San Fernando street in downtown Burbank, stopped at the ARTELICE patisserie on that Wednesday. My son-in-law had taken me there earlier and the chef, originally from Iran who had supplied the desserts for this year’s Grammy Awards, waited on me.
As I completed my treats, a gust of wind swept my paper plate on to the floor. The girl at the adjacent table jumped up, picked up the plate and with my permission, carried it to the trash. We ended up talking for about an hour that day. When I thanked her for being so considerate, Rifqa shared that her mother would have chastised her not to help. She had grown up in Michigan’s Chaldean community after fleeing from Baghdad and had recently moved to New York.
Four days later on Sunday, as I was heading for the airport, I went back to have another ham & cheese croissant and to pick up some macaroons to take to my next stop in Portland. We met up again. We decided to stay in touch as she headed back to New York and I home to Seattle.
Rifqa was excited to share with me that she had followed my recommendation of listening to Simon Sinek and the lifestyle recommendations of “Infinite Mindset” as she looks for a more fulfilling job and life partner.
Likewise, I continue confirmation of the value of sharing my stories, starting with my ethnic heritage and life experiences that has brought me to my current eighth decade of life. What a lot of fun it is to talk with STRANGERS to keep LEARNING!
![Dad practiced Racial Integration...]()
Dad practiced Racial Integration, Service and Being True to Himself
There was a time before WWII and the late 1940s, when those of us with Japanese heritage wouldn’t be hired for jobs with established companies, even with a college education like Dad. Therefore, my Dad, born in Orting, WA, in 1908, chose farming and starting a sole proprietor business along with other first generation Japanese Immigrants and second generation Japanese American Citizens of that era.
I was born in Bully Creek near Vale, Oregon, because five pioneer families had migrated with all their possessions in a caravan of a couple cars and three trucks, in 1937, to the Treasure Valley area on the Oregon side of the Snake River that separates Oregon and Idaho. They pioneered east, not west, from Kent/Auburn valley, south of Seattle. A covered wagon pioneer going west, left a diary entry at the Treasure Valley Library saying, “…desert so rugged, so dreary and…changes of thousand and thousands of years won’t yield anything worthy of consideration to the support of human life.”
The opening of the Owyhee Dam provided new row crop faming opportunities, and a few earlier Japanese leaving Mountain States railroad work had bragged about raising onions twice the size they were raising in the Seattle area, Kent Valley. The story is, because of racial discrimination worry, they had to go as a group and caravan in case of vehicle breakdowns or troubles along the way.
I was 4-years-old when Dad, age 35, bought this 30-acre property in Sand Hollow where he built our one-room house with an equipment shed, twice as big as the living quarters, attached. With two horses and borrowed equipment, he cultivated the land into growing onions for income and hay for the horses. Our address was Route 3, Caldwell, Idaho. That’s across the Snake River from Vale, not far from Boise, Idaho.
Dad was also pleased to help build this one-room church east of our farm. According to the current website, it’s now called the Sand Hollow Baptist Church north, of Caldwell on the old highway 30. I think it was non-denominational back in the late 1940s when we were there.
One Sunday when I was six-years-old, Mrs Talkington was teaching us, Shirley, Phyliss, Dickie, me, with two or three others, Bible stories in one corner. Several adults were in the main section. All of a sudden there was a commotion with many harsh words. Dad and Mr. Nelson had gotten into an argument about a passage in the Bible. Mr. Nelson countered, “What does a ‘JAP’ know?”
I remember, the parishioners all pouring out of building and forming a circle on the sandy, sage brush bordered desert parking lot, with five-foot six inch Dad and six-foot Mr. Nelson in the middle with clenched fists. It never came to real blows because Dad was carrying my 1-yr-old baby sister. But, we did change churches. We drove 8 miles on gravel roads to Notus Baptist Church after the incident.
Dad often had coffee and made friends with neighbors several miles around and got to know them. I remember driving to Mr. Nelson’s place. Dad must have made up with Mr. Nelson, because his daughters were our baby sitters when Dad had to take my Mom to the hospital and follow-up doctor’s appointments the following year in Caldwell. At age 28, Mom almost died of internal bleeding after her Hysterectomy operation. She also lost all her teeth and had dentures.
We were invited to Sunday, after church dinners, with people like the Lenz family or the Barns family from the Baptist Church in Notus. Our neighbor were the Randalls who went to the Seventh Day Adventist Church and Dickie was one of my best friends. I spent a lot of time at their house. One day, I got too close to their dog when it was eating. I can see the scar on my nose where I got bit and had to go to the doctor in Caldwell for stitches.
We often visited the Carters who were Nazarene up north on highway 30. Mrs. Carter picked me up to go to Vacation Bible School in the summers. When I started school Shirley Talkington became my best friend and we used to pan for gold in the creek that ran past her house.
In 1948, Dad sold the farm and became the “Fishman” with a grocery delivery business out of Ontario Fish Market. Ontario is part of the Treasure Valley in Eastern Oregon where, contrary to the other small towns in the area, Mayor Elmo Smith welcomed the Japanese who had to relocate with Executive Order 9066 and welcomed the Japanese who chose farming to start over after 110,000 of us with Japanese heritage in the USA were incarcerated during WWII. Most of the families coming to the Treasure Valley were some of the 9000 incarcerated at Minidoka in southern Idaho.
Dad was not good at making money. Dad played the violin, harmonica and a musical saw. He sang in the church choir and took Sunday’s off. Influenced by my Mom’s complaining and community gossip, I considered Dad a loser because he didn’t work all seven days a week to get ahead like all the others in the Japanese American community.
Dad had a four note musical horn, on which he played a tune, as he drove onto the driveway of each of the farms of his bi-weekly customers. The wives who were often out in the field heard his arrival and came in to shop out of his van. Those days, farmers were poor and their only vehicle may have been a pickup or truck for farming. They also didn’t have time or resources to go in to town for groceries. Dad and the Ontario Fish Market had a big drawer of credit customers who paid after their harvest.
One evening during my high school years, Dad had come home around 9pm from his Nampa, Idaho, route. I asked him, “A bunch of the Japanese kids are going to take dance lessons.” The lessons were at the Japanese Community Hall, out by the airport which Dad helped build.
Dad answered, “No, I don’t want you to do that.” I knew the church people considered it a sin to be involved in bars where there was dancing.
“I hate you”, I yelled back as I left him eating dinner at the kitchen table and went to my room.
I graduated from Ontario High School where there were 12 of us with Japanese heritage, out of the 117 1956 graduates.
I am now the same age when Dad died, 83-year-old. I’m realizing the importance of how Dad ignored being discriminated and was one of the older Nisei striving to be seen as American, who lived out his purpose in life developing friendships with his neighbors, as well as being helpful and serving wherever needed.
![After concert reception in Norcl...]()
After concert reception in Norcliffe Founders Room
with Joe and his daughter Mai
![Box Seats for Hisaishi Concert]()
Box Seats for Hisaishi Concert
THE Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert and the sell out crowd left my face tired from smiling and my hands sore from clapping. How Joe was still standing and able to visit at the reception after the concert after, this his fourth concert this week, and his second one this day is amazing.
Mononoke, Castles in the Sky and others, always featuring nature took my breath away.
Joe was up on the podium orchestrating, then at the piano key board and back and forth; always with dynamic direction. Sometimes it was just the horns, sometimes the choir, once a mandolin and several with Amanda and Mai, vocalizing. The Ghibli films were screened, but the music was live, featuring the thousands of hours of Hisaishi composition creation!
At the reception, Joe shared with me that he started at four years old and took violin lessons from Dr. Shinichi Suzuki and his school "SAI NO KYOKU". We agreed that we are all connected with our activities and inspirations in this life as I shared with him that I helped start the Seattle Suzuki program.
Thank you Yuka for sponsoring this concert and for the invitation to join your party with the Consul General of Japan and his wife Yuki and your parents from Japan.
Arriving home near midnight, a beautiful end to a fulfilling week!!
![Summer 2022 Outdoor receptio...]()
Summer 2022 Outdoor reception at Consul General of Japan's home on Queen Ann hill.
Lori Matsukawa receiving Emperor's award from Ambassador Tomita of Japan
It was a cloudy, but warm summer of 2022 evening as I drove Executive Director Karen Kishi Yoshitomi, of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCCW) and Concert Pianist/teacher Michi Hirata North to Seattle's Queen Ann Hill.
As we sat in the gardens of the Seattle Consul General from Japan, these were some of the words of inspiration from Tomita, Ambassador to the US from Japan, "Cooperation between Japan and the United States covers a wide range of activities, such as measures against COVID-19 and climate change, or even space cooperation. Our economies have also never been closer. Thanks to their investments, Japanese companies have become an important part of the American economy and true partners in communities across the country. Japan has become the world’s largest investor in the Unites States as of 2019."
Lori Matsukawa and I serve on the JCCCW board together. She truly deserves this recognition award from Japan as she volunteers hours and days of her time for our community, gathering people and resources, as a leader that I admire.
It's fun to be invited to such events, but the most fun are finding personal connections. We also heard words from Washington State Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs. Steve's mother is from Japan and I used to know her personally when Steve was a little kid. Miwa was also at the event and I hadn't seen her in over 40 years.
When I was chatting with Miwa Hobbs, the former Secretary of State, Ralph Monroe joined us. I asked him, "Who was your dentist in Seattle's Medical Dental Building?"
He answered, "Dr. David Branch."
I then added, "It was my husband, Sam, that made all the dental work in your mouth!"
There were several other similar encounters last night and we all agreed: THIS IS A SMALL WORLD!!
![CLOUDS OF CREATIVITY]()
CLOUDS OF CREATIVITY
Weather in the Pacific Northwest is terrific practice for facing life issues if I label rain and clouds as bad days. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is sometimes called the “Bellwether State”. Sociologists apply the term in the active sense to a person or group of people who tend to create, influence, or set trends.
In researching and interviewing the history of the first immigrants from Japan of the early 1900s, Seattle and Washington State was said, “We have more intellectuals than the Japanese in California”. A century later, this area is one of the trend setters in technology and establishment of new businesses like Microsoft and Amazon.
Could it be that “Cloudy Days”, of which we have many, is enough “adversity” to generate more creativity and deep thinking?
Lex Fridman has become a new hero for me as I continue to learn from his long podcast conversations with other deep thinking individuals in our national and international community on both sunny and cloudy days.
Lex is a computer scientist that lectures at MIT. He loves dealing with disagreements and the “s…” life offers, choosing to learn from them, even if the idea doesn’t fit with his core values; and he is strong about maintaining his optimism about his life and future in the USA, as a Jew from Russia immigrant.
The foundation of Western philosophy is Tolstoy and Dostoyevski in overcoming and being responsible for the darkness in each of us as Humans. Similarly, Buddhism is labeled as starting with “suffering” and the Yin which we need to balance with the lighter Yang.
Kelly was heard explaining to her friend, “Love sitting out here and basking in the sun on days like today, but we are also appreciative of the natural beauty that is surrounding us with rainy Washington. The girls love drawing, writing their poetry and composing their songs on cloudy days.”
!["Household moments expresse...]()
"Household moments expressed with music"
SINGING and MUSIC
This morning, I was awakened as I heard the girls 12 & 14 getting ready for school singing “TIME”, made popular by NF. Now, they have just come in the door after being dropped off by the school bus at the bottom of our hill. 12-yr-old is at the piano accompanying herself as she belts out her own compositions.
The music tells me she had a good day at school and the distribution of endorphins in our home is energizing! Last night, “all-quiet” was announced while 14-yr-old taped a practice of “BLACKBIRD” on her guitar. I sometimes suggest, “I would like to hear more practice.”
She answers, “Grandma, I practice in my head.”
I respond, “I agree with some of that because I know the story about Korean prisoners of war who had practiced their golf game while imprisoned.” They were known to have done well subsequently.
I am delighted to live with these benefits that are core values in “making life better”. It is also my life path and purpose to pass on our stories of the value of music that has been maintained in their heritage.
One of the first piece of furniture my husband, Sam, and I bought, 60 years ago, was the upright piano in the picture. Sam saw the advertisement in the newspaper. At that time, we were spending $15 a week on groceries and barely paying the mortgage on our first house on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. I thought it a luxury we couldn’t afford. Neither one of us could carry a tune, but I had a couple years of piano lessons when I was in high school. Sam thought it was important and made the purchase.
Music was not my forte, but I had grown up with a father who could play his violin, musical saw and sang in the church choir. He delivered groceries to farmers in the Eastern Oregon, Western Idaho’s rural area where many of us with Japanese Heritage started life over after being incarcerated during WWII. He could often be heard belting out his favorites like the Mikado, “Miya sama, Miya sama,” as he loaded his van with groceries and Japanese menu staples from the ONTARIO MARKET.
Dad’s van had a four-note musical horn. He played a tune as he entered his customer’s farm driveway. The wife was often out in the field helping with farm chores, would hear the tune and come in to buy groceries out of his van.
Sam didn’t ever hear his dad play his mandolin as he was growing up, but we have the instrument and can only guess the story of playing in a band in the 1920s is true.
Because of this heritage, Sam and I chose music as a discipline for character building practice and education for our two daughters. It is one of the most important parenting decisions we made and now I am regaled with “life’s moment expressed through music”!!!
![Screen copy this image, print i...]()
Screen copy this image, print it out, make a commitment and darken right pupil.
Tape it up on your bathroom mirror!
It’s important to me that I work to make a difference today in yours and my own life. Not only do stories engage us and our emotions, but I need “thinking” and “doing” to continue my fulfillment path of INFINITE PARENTING - passing on our heritage legacy to future generations for a better world - one small commitment at a time!
The phrase INFINITE PARENTING comes from SIMON SINEK who applies this principle to business and INFINITE not finite LEADERSHIP. "Finite" means thinking in the past. I like Adam Grant's definition and quote of finite: "Science progresses one funeral at a time". "Infinite" means going ahead with uncertainty, that I stay in the game win or lose at times, but I continue to learn from my mistakes and set the example of leadership/parenting for the future generations.
My challenge, to myself and each reader and listener, is to make a copy of my Daruma drawing, make a one-year commitment to your life path, darken the pupil of the right eye and tape this to your bathroom mirror. I will do the same when I get back home.
I'm in Burbank, CA, this week enjoying the graduations of our granddaughter from Chapmin U and our grandson from Notre Dam High School! Last night at dinner, my granddaughter, who already has a job, announced that she has another offer for a better job and more money. But most of the discussion was of leaving the current job with gratitude and grace as they have been good to her while she was completing her degree.
My own commitment is to develop my podcast this year, starting with STORIES AT THE PANAMA.
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