gotohealth's Blog

I'm home from a most thought inducing trip of staying with friends and relatives with long conversations about life. As I participate again in picking up the girls after school, this article on YouTube about raising kids also applies to life in general and the takeaways I have from each of my own experiences.

 

Instead of the usual “How was school today?”,  here’s a list of more thoughtful questions to ask our kids, suggestions in a CNBC article about raising kids. These questions can apply to adults and myself as well. 

 

1. ‘What was the best part of your day?’

 

2. ‘What’s a mistake you learned from today?’

 

3. ‘Who were you proud of today?’

 

4. ‘What’s one thing that would have made today better?’

 

5. ‘Who did you help today?’

 

6. ‘What was the most interesting thing you learned today?’

 

7. ‘What’s something new you’d like to try?’

Tonight, I stumbled upon an archeological documentary, on YouTube about the pre-Maya culture some researchers have uncovered in Central America. Early in our marriage I surprised Sam with a trip to Guatamala because of his interest in the subject, while I stayed home with our preschool daughters. Later, in 2005 we went on the Lion’s Club Eyeglass Donating trip to Iquitos, Peru, and took a side trip to Machu Picchu. It was never my thing to hike in the hot sun or dig for fossils, but I learned a lot. Sam’s TV picks in his man-cave were always Archeological programs and sports.

 

Psychology, parenting and education have always been my thing, with a focus on Japanese Heritage Values. Sam was always supportive of my work with helping develop the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington and the OMOIDE writing group, but never once took any leadership roles. Verbally expressing his opinions in public was rare. He just did it through his art and comic strips.

 

When I recently heard the line: “Marriage is a commitment where neither side gets’s their way”, it occurred to me that was why we had a good marriage. Sam and I respected and supported each other’s interest, but never tried to get each other involved more in our own thing.

 

Sam was an artist and a perfectionist, and his Dental Lab was always immaculate. His dental work can be found in mouths from Nova Scotia to Australia because patients came for the work he did with strong collaboration with the dentists. Some even have his artwork on their molars. 

 

He never criticized me for how I cleaned house or cooked. I always shopped for an outfit that I liked, twice a year at the Nordstrom sales, but only kept what Sam liked because I figured he was the one who had to look at how I looked.

 

Sam did his morning shaving downstairs and I always got dressed upstairs. I think part of our habits came from our parents, but I still rarely leave my room without being fully dressed and ready to meet others. I pride myself on being able to get myself together in 10 - 15 minutes and work at keeping myself presentable, but both of us liked Dolly Parton. 

 

Arthur Brooks says that research at places like Harvard suggest “Happier” is more important than “Happiness” and comes from feeling the emotion of remembering an experience. This picture of us right after Sam and I said our vowels at the Baptist Church in Ontario, Oregon, and were headed for the reception at the Moore Hotel; makes me happier and smile every time I look at it each day. 

This morning, October 2025, my enemies are the those who support and perpetuate the dark aspects of our social media.  In the 1937-1940s in Eastern Oregon & Western Idaho, my Dad arranged to have coffee with anyone who called him “a Jap”!

 

Our family started over, from Western Washington state, with farming inland. The Owyhee Dam near the Snake River that divides Eastern Oregon and Southwestern Idaho, provided irrigation in that area for row crop farming, skills which the Japanese immigrants had from their heritage.

 

My Dad bought a 30 acre plot of land in Sand Hollow, Idaho, in 1943. He built our one-room house/equipment shed and also helped build a one-room church close to our farm on Highway 30. One Sunday, Mr Nelson called Dad a “Jap”, and the incident ended in clenched fists, with a circle of parishioners outside the front steps, but Dad was carrying my baby sister the whole time. Later that year my mom almost died of internal bleeding and the Nelson daughters were our babysitters.

 

Harvard professor, Dr. Arthur Brooks, may appear “Pollyanna-ish”, but his work comes with science: “Humans are programmed with an Insular Cortex in our brain that brings on `Disgust’ of pathogens in moldy an dirty places with emotions. This same emotional pathway is being used by 7% of our population, who have the buy-in and energy to use public media to promote contempt!” Most of us learned from early childhood to “take the high road”, but Dark Triad stories and incidents get more hits?

Therefore, I want to be part of the 93% that either haven’t figured out yet what we want or are looking for cues from more positive perspectives. For sure, it also takes self-monitoring of my own daily habits and the educational choices I make to learn. 

It’s taken almost 80 years for me to label my Dad as one of my mentors because he was not appreciated in my family and community as I was growing up. Dad loved America and became a Christian. He was known for not smoking and not working on Sundays to get ahead like other Japanese farmers in our Japanese in America community.

Dad was born in Orting, Washington in 1908. His parents were wealthy Hiroshima, Japan, land owners. His parents were here in Washington to earn money and went back to Japan in 1936. Grandpa left Dad penniless in hopes that he would join them in Japan and monitor the inheritance. 

 

We are currently experiencing a political climate of labeling those who vote differently as enemies. Taking my cues from Dad, I work to have coffee and appreciate our differences.

 

Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology, Andrew Huberman, suggests we can also add  gratitude practice for a more fufilling attitude in life. It's important to write it down.

 

I was given a gift of true gratitude with our last conversation before Dad died in 1991. He said, “The happiest day of my life was the day you were born!”

This morning I’m listening to a Lewis Howes/Andrew Huberman podcast. They are the ones who got me started with my daily practice of learning, seven years ago, when I chose listening to podcasts as helping me define my new path and need when I became a widow and covid isolation happened.

 

Huberman puts his science at Stanford into my practice of “focus with meditation or prayer” with a benefit of “self-guidance” to place my brain into particular states, cutting down my daily unwanted noise.  “As humans we will never have all the answers”? 

 

Huberman is big on the fact that making our exhale breathing longer than our inhale calms our brain and I use it for sleep. Making my inhales longer speeds up my heart and helps me be more alert along with raising my Cortisol levels for morning alertness with sunlight exposure. He says caffeine is not the answer. 

 

My room looks out on Lake Washington and I try to start my day with watching at least three or four planes take off from SeaTac and traverse the inspirational western horizon, to up my Cortisol with sunlight or whatever light I get in our Seattle area.

 

OMOIDE writing and heritage research has become a weekly blogging practice for me and it’s exciting to put the science behind my endeavors for my own “peace of mind” focus!  Arthur Brooks, with his course on “happiness” at Harvard, teaches me that OMOIDE WRITING  and our monthly deadlines, with it’s heritage focus, is part of my DNA. 

 

Writing helps me direct my negative emotions, not at someone else or within my own brain’s thinking! OMOIDE members have a host of emotions with the Japanese in America stories to share with our community and specifically with school children in Washington state. 

 

When I have done presentations at Juvenile Detention Centers in our community, the first question I ask the kids is, “Raise your hands if you have had something UNFAIR HAPPEN TO YOU?!"

 

One of the kids at the Kitsap Detention Center in Bremerton could hardly wait to call his parents and get money to buy our OMOIDE books! That was truly gratifying and gives me fuel for continuing our program.

 

GO MARINERS!!!

Taking my granddaughter to school this week, I said, “Have a good day.” I think my daughter would have said the common parental departure statement: “Love you!” Although Sam and I were “Sansei” (third generation), we were embarrassed to use the word “I love you” in our courtship and marriage. We didn’t like the casual and crude ways the words were used in the media and community where we lived.

 

I am willing to succumb to the grandchildren’s generation in use of “Love You”. But even if Sam were still living, it would be embarrassment that we would keep inside and not say to each other.

 

Sam had several creative ways of showing me his commitment and feelings beyond sex and I have no problem describing it as his love for me - flowers, candy, rings, writings. But on both our parts, it takes more thinking beyond enjoying physical gifts. 

 

Just like the Japanese word, ai encompasses a wider range of feelings, including parental love, sibling love, and affection for living beings and nature. Ai is about the acts of loving and valuing someone, often involving selflessness and a willingness to act for the other person's sake.

 

Dropping my 16-yr-old granddaughter off at her friend’s just now, I asked her how she feels about the words. I like the fact that she is thinking about the words and agrees with me. Her boyfriends do use the words with her, but she says, “We also say we respect each other”.

 

With my husband, we still would not use words, "I love you".  I feel “AI” and all it’s definitions!!!

 

The custodian answered, "I'm helping us get to the moon."

 

Using this example and because I'm a board member,  I called the receptionist at the JCCCW (Japanese Culturall and Community Center of Washington) asking Atsuko, "What do you do?" 

 

With not too much explanation,  she answered, "I try to make the caller feel good and want to become involved." Atsuko is talking about being involved with some of the activities at the center.

 

Asking myself the same question as a blogger, I answer, "I write once a week about what I am learning from being human with Japanese Heritage living in America. " 

 

Our senior years, when my husband was alive, our purpose was to pass on stories of our heritage to our future generations.

 

My daughter came back to live with me with her two daughters who are in high school. I am strong about her taking over the house and making it her own. She likes to see me set an example for the girls of being active and continue to be involved with community and keep learning at age 86. 

 

My life is for learning, sharing and I am grateful.