Carl Nomura:
Marriage & Kids

PAGE 3 OF 3

Carl Nomura: Marriage & Kids

     Kathi and Masaki lived in Japan for twelve years, had three children and studied Chinese literature. Masaki then transferred to Pittsburgh, PA to work for ALCOA. While raising her family Kathi obtained a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Pittsburgh. Seeing the hard life of academic hopefuls up close, she decided to back out early. Instead she opted for practicing healing arts such as shiatsu, tai chi and yoga. Healing suited her better.

TERI

     I was working hard during the day, and always loved coming home and finding the kids. I remember how Teri used to greet me when she was three. I used to bend down to say hello to her. She thought that bending down was part of the greeting so she would bend even lower with her greeting. Then I had to bend lower still to reach her.

     Teri took after her mother and was smaller in stature than Kathi. When Teri was in the first grade, I wondered why she played with such big kids. Lou explained to me that those were her classmates and that they were standard-size children. "Teri is small," she said. "But that doesn't matter. Children play with one another nor according to size, but by age. That gives a better alignment of interests and capabilities."

     When we moved to Palm Beach in the early 1960s, Ron and Marge Williams, our neighbors to the west, became our best friends. We made camping trips to various parts of Southern Florida with our families. They had two daughters who fit in the age group of our four kids, and it made for a nice vacation for all of us.

     Once, when our two cars were heading down the road toward the Everglades National Park, Lou suddenly remembered that she'd forgotten to pick up sugar for our coffee.

     "That's all right," she replied. "We'll just stop for coffee at the next restaurant and pick up a few packages of sugar from the container."

     Sounded good to me, so we all trooped into the restaurant and sat down. When the waitress brought the menu, their five-year-old piped up.

     "We didn't come for breakfast. We came to get some of your bags of sugar."

     Suddenly there were four adults with beet-red faces. Without discussion, we placed our orders for our unintended breakfast.

     Later, Ron and I agreed that if we were going to steal anything, we'd make it worthwhile by stealing at least a million dollars. Especially if we didn't think the person would miss it.

     When Teri was in the seventh grade, she asked me how to take the square root of a number. I outlined the algorithm on the blackboard and gave a geometric interpretation. I proceeded with more of the same for the cube root, and wrapped it up with nifty methods for extracting any root of any number.

     After stifling fifty yawns, she said, "I really didn't want to know that much."

     Since then she has never asked me how to do anything. Teri grew up without my help.

     When I was reassigned back to Minneapolis, we left the kids behind in Florida with the lady next door while we went house hunting in Minneapolis. Teri was six months delinquent in a science project, so she persuaded our lady baby sitter to allow her to stay home so that she could do her project. When we got home about a week later, Teri was a celebrity. She had not only taken first prize for her cytology exhibit at school, but she took first for the entire Palm Beach County. When the press interviewed her, they asked if she intended to become a biologist.

     "No," she said. "I hate biology."

     Teri told me when she was about eighth grader that she wanted to become a chemist when she grew up. I got her a chemistry set. Then, just before Christmas, I decided I should give her a better one than that. So I gave the first one to John, who was very pleased with the gift, but I also made the catastrophic mistake of forgetting to buy Teri her bigger and better set.

     This was naturally a great disappointment to Teri, but she didn't mention it until fifteen years later.

     Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I will carry that mistake with me to my grave.

     Parents, pay heed to your children and follow through with your promises. They are telling you important things!

     High school years were happy times for Teri at University High. She was famous for her parties. The number of guests was never clear because her invitation was: "We're having a party at my place, pass the word." One hundred fifty kids would show up complete with at least two bands. When the drummer beat the drums, the amplifiers drew so much current that the neighborhood lights dimmed. When the neighbors complained, they were invited, so Teri got away with murder. She graduated with honors and then went on to the University of Minnesota.

     One day Teri brought home her boy friend and explained to me how they were going to live. My response was "Holy Mackerel, gasp, choke, you mean cohabit?"

     In time I recovered from my fourteen heart attacks, rounded off a few sharp, square corners and life went on.

     My greatest disappointment in Teri is that she does not allow me the privilege, as a father, to be proud of her. For example, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in art, Summa Cum Laude and a Phi Beta Kappa but she didn't go to her graduation on the grounds that "all that Mickey Mouse wasn't worth twenty-five bucks." I could not bask in the glory of her achievements that only a miniscule percentage of people could ever attain. To compensate for all the fuss I created, she went through the whole nine yards for my benefit when she got her Master of Arts (MA). As a final act of defiance to the system, she gave her academic robe to the Art Department with instructions to let succeeding generations of MA graduates use the gown to save the "Twenty-seven-dollar rip-off for the Mickey Mouse ceremony."

     Teri turned out to be a chip off the old block. I found this out when we attended a self-awareness workshop. In one of the assignments, we had to draw something in the blackboard depicting creativity. We were twenty feet apart from each other so we couldn't see what the other was doing, but we drew the identical diagram.



     Teri wanted to marry a hippie. So, on June 28, 1983, two days after her birthday, she married Mike Bowen, a bona fide hippie. At first Mike wanted to move to Grand Marais, Minnesota, away from the noise and crowds and be very close to the soil. I think Teri dragged her feet until the "Washington" idea came up. They had friends in Washington, so they went for a two-year trial. That trial ended when they started building their house in Port Hadlock. Then Sumiko was born on June 18, 1986. What a lucky girl to have Teri and Mike for parents!

     I am very fortunate to have Teri for a daughter. I burst with pride because she does good things for people. She does things creatively and with high energy and purpose and she is not stymied by seemingly impossible tasks. She excels in art and her values are correct for they include conservation and ecology. She's great.

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“When the neighbors complained, they were invited, so Teri got away with murder.”