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Category: San Francisco

Just friend, just daddy

 

Image

(Dapper Daddy and just friend)

My father left Ilocos Sur in the Phillippines for Hawaii when he was 14 years old, obtaining forged documents to make it appear that he was old enough to join his older brothers as workers on a pineapple plantation.  He followed other Filipinos who made their way to the United States, hoping to find better opportunities away from a home country that offered nothing but poverty.  

Kicking the habit

(Nice nuns from the film “The Sound of Music”)

I suppose there are some teachers out there who realize that, in the throes of their venomous behavior, there might be a student or two who might grow up to write about them.  I do not think this occurred to Miss C,  who was my grammar and junior high school instructor.

I confess, and the world is still a mystery


(St. Francis Xavier church, home of my first confession)

Father Guetzloe ushered five of us into his tiny little room where his gowns and sacred chalice were kept.  We lined up and waited our turn, although I did not know what we were doing.  Perhaps there was instruction that I missed, which was entirely possible since I spent many days in first grade just concentrating on the blinds that covered our giant classroom windows.

The bloom and shed of cherry blossoms and festivals

Image(short hair fused with long hairpiece, during the one year we were asked to wear our hair long)

I once had long, thick, straight and beautiful hair until I was 9, when both my grandmother and mother decided that I would survive a humid Japanese summer better with a short cut.  We went to the beauty salon, where my hair was tied back and chopped off with one swift stroke of shears.