I love it that Ken, our Japanese “son”, had to have his blanket and pillow sent to him from Tokyo at the beginning of his stay with us. I’m not saying this to belittle or embarrass him. I’m saying it because I find it incredibly endearing, and because both of my boys would have done exactly the same thing. Ken’s mother dutifully express-mailed these crucial items to him, and his smile was radiant when he unpacked them.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think his need was based on the fact that our American blanket and pillow didn’t afford him ample physical comfort. No–this is purely an emotional hole he needed to fill. I can’t even count the times my car has turned around in the middle of a road trip to retrieve these forgotten items for one of my sons. One time in a Dallas hotel, I even rousted an empathetic maintenance man at 11:00 at night to dig through the hotel’s dirty laundry for an errant, but very special, teddy bear.

So–here’s yet another example of how we humans are all the same. This boy, who is brave enough to travel halfway around the world to live with a half-crazed American family, who plays tennis like Roger Federer’s little Japanese brother, this is the boy who wants to feel and smell the artifacts that remind him there are people who would give up everything for him, and who love him fiercely across many, many miles.

It makes it even more painful and incomprehensible, when I remember that we killed thousands of families just like Ken’s during World War II. This keeps me from being able to wrap my head around how men not much older than Ken committed indescribable atrocities against the Chinese during the rape of Nanking. How many of our troops in Iraq go to sleep wishing for a beloved childhood blanket? How is it that we consistently choose to deal in the currency of violence against those who are fundamentally like us? How would our feelings and actions change if we took the time and effort to see ourselves in our enemy?

My Japanese boy wears his blanket to the breakfast table like the suit of armor it is.  A very special teddy bear recently went along to “visit” its college-dwelling owner.  I’m fully vested in the currency of nostalgia.

Tags: human condition, nostalgia, parenting, social commentary

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Denice Bruce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.