Carl Nomura:
Marriage & Kids

PAGE 2 OF 3

Carl Nomura: Marriage & Kids

     Disgruntled, I returned to the lumberyard to get more wood. (Some of the pieces had been cut too short.) While I was disassembling the doors, Betty came over to ask if I would mind stopping long enough to look at her doors to see if she had done anything wrong.

     Suppressing all signs of blood pressure at 300 millimeters, I strolled over to look at her newly hung doors. The saw cuts looked as if they'd been hacked with an ax, and many of the nails were bent. On top of that, the doors were trapezoids.

     But they fit with a uniform spacing of 1/16-inch all the way around. I swallowed a gallon of bile and croaked, "Betty, those are fine doors."

     This story has produced two rules:

KATHI

     When I look at my children, I am amazed they aren't deformed or mentally defective because we were such ignorant parents. Unlike animals and birds that know by instinct how to care for their young, we inherited no such wisdom. We had only common sense and Dr. Spock to guide us. For example, when Kathi ran a fever of 104° F., common sense suggested that we dunk her in cold water. Her temperature dropped like a rock, but I'm sure the American Medical Association (AMA) would not recommend this procedure.

     All our kids were born in Minneapolis while we were living in the University Village. At first, when we only had Kathi, Lou sterilized everything and created a sterile field for her to play in. These precautions were laughable as we had more kids, and we really did have more kids. We became like hamsters and had a stream of four children in five years. Lou was pregnant and barefooted most of the time. With the last child, she had a hysterectomy. So she probably set the record for menstruating only twice after getting married.

     We no longer sterilized anything. For instance, we washed the nipples and milk bottles with the rest of the dishes. Indeed, we even put their pills on the floor since the kids put everything in their mouths. We were learning to deal with chaos.

     When Kathi was only two years old, we sent her to a pre-nursery run by the University of Minnesota, College of Education. Every day she came back with a BM report pinned to her snowsuit. I learned that bowel movements come in seven colors, four consistencies and five sizes. Kathi was proud of that report and insisted that we read it carefully.

     Kathi went to a speech class for her lisp under the tutelage of Elaine Argetsinger. The kid told us that Johnny Smith said, "It's time for peach class."

     "How should he have said it?" I asked.

     "Thilly Dad. He should have said 'thpeach' class."

     She came home and recited her exercises which went, "gamma gamma guchi no so rimbo..."

The author's second son David with wife Veda at a recent family reunion.


     It was hard to see how this gibberish corrected lisping, but Kathi did overcome her speech defect. Many years later, we drove north with Kathi and Elaine, who was then about eighty; both of them were sitting in the back seat of the car. They had a great time reciting "noso rimbo, gamma..." at the top of their lungs.

     Kathi attended Oberlin College in Ohio. During the summer after her sophomore year, she worked as a counselor at a girl's camp for black kids from Harlem, New York. She wrote us an eleven-page letter describing how she knew more about the black culture than her own. She proposed that we allow her to study in Japan for her junior year.

     We agreed, so she went to Tokyo to study Japanese intensively. She objected to learning the Chinese characters because she thought it was a stupid and complicated way to communicate. More importantly, she was offended by the Japanese disdain for the culturally ignorant Japanese Americans. After becoming somewhat proficient in spoken Japanese, she undertook the study of Chinese, first in Tokyo and then in Taiwan. It is through the study of this language that she learned the Chinese characters. She returned and went to the University of Minnesota for the summer. There she met an enterprising young Japanese man who was working on his Ph.D. in Material Science. Very shortly afterward, he proposed marriage.

     Kathi stood at the foot of my bed late one evening and declared, "I'm going to marry Masaki."

     I pried open my eyes, pulled the pillow over my head and moaned, "Okay, go ahead."

     Subsequently, our son John gave Masaki friendly advice. "You don't know what you're getting into by marrying my sister." Masaki ignored the traitor.



     Kathi returned to Taiwan to complete her studies before getting married. When she was ready to come home, she sent us a letter asking us to organize a wedding for them on December 23rd, which was our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

     "Masaki will have someone take care of the food, and Masaki and I will 'design' the ceremony," she said. She came roaring home in a cab just before the wedding.

     "Pay the cabbie, will you please? I have only twenty-five cents left."

     "What happened to that $1,000 cashier's check I sent you?" I asked. PAGE 3

Page 1 | 2 | 3

“Lou was pregnant and barefooted most of the time. With the last child, she had a hysterectomy. So she probably set the record for menstruating only twice after getting married.”