Talking Story 
by Polo

I left worrying a lot less about this ethnic stream’s grand elders — athletic Auntie Francis, lion-hearted Uncle Richard, Oregon matriarch Yoneko-san, ballroom queen Alice Sumida — than I wonder about mainstream America’s health and wealth.

From The Asian Reporter, V19, #45 (November 17, 2009), page 7.

Oftentimes I wonder, sometimes I worry, about Portlanders rolling the way we do. We run on several societal tracks, a lot like those separate rails carrying MAX commuters on our sturdy Steel Bridge’s upper tier, while Amtrak passengers and Union Pacific freight run on rails suspended below. Cars and busses stream two lanes east and two lanes west. Walkers with dogs, determined joggers, and sweaty cyclists, own their own safe and separate track on the side.

Mainstream and ethnic stream Portlanders run on several separate tracks. Of course we do. Ask anyone.

And of course, our separate streams have human intersections too. Oftentimes they’re good ones. Careful ones, just like those landscaped car parks TriMet’s engineers set out at transit centers. Just like those clever bike hangers bolted just inside our light rail’s sliding doors. School and workplace desegregation are like that. Well engineered.

Old Town’s Classical Chinese Garden is a kind of intersection too. So are AM-RU International’s annual Russian & Ukranian folk festivals. So too is African America’s river of soul, flooding every corner of town for the holiday celebrating the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

Engineered classrooms and work floors, an intentional garden, a fun festival, and one grand man — terrific traffic control, each and every one.

Pero, just as certainly we own some ugly intersections. You can catch our collisions on TV news. Weeknights at 5, 10, and 11.

Last Thursday we ran into Auntie Francis on our sidewalk. She’s one of those irrepressible neighborhood elders, you never see her without her well-worn Nike cross trainers and a Kaohsiung dragon boat paddle in hand. Auntie Fran made us promise to meet her in Epworth United Methodist Church’s cozy kitchen.

So we did. So we must. So we drove there. My wife yanked my hand and dashed us from car to back door, ducking Oregon rain the way you do, the way we must.

Once inside that humble church basement, we saw something of what’s underlying our society’s segregation. Actually we sat in it. Smack in the middle of them. Oregon history. Lots of them. We chatted among them while waiting for lunch. Heavenly steaming miso, bara sushi made of pearly rose rice, pickled daikon and lively ginger on the side. Yum.

Tuesday and Thursday lunchtimes, often other weekdays too, is Ikoi No Kai Senior Hot Lunch, a program of the Japanese Ancestral Society (Nikkei Jin Kai) of Portland. They’ve been setting out low-cost, high-nutrient, and very traditional lunch since 1979. Same time. Same place. Same purpose.

Portland giants gather down there. Women tall as NFL Samoans, men as mighty as our deep blue sea — though I never knew.

Quickly, to confirm their truth, I clicked my Samsung smartphone to oregonlive.com. But none of these grand elders showed up there. Nothing about how big they figure into our lives. Into Oregon life.

"No results" it read. No response to my inquiry about Old Uncle Richard. Not a thing about how he walked every evening, gentle June and dismal November, year in, year out, arm in arm with his increasingly frail and finally vacant wife, as pretty as the day they wed. Easing her off crumbly curbs and then up them. Talking quietly into her paper-thin, paper-dry ear. Her left one. Her heartside, though she never answered. Ask anyone.

That doggone search engine found nothing about this lion’s epic loyalty, when she still lived. And not a thing about his aloneness, now that she doesn’t. Oh ampun’illaah, that’s one extraordinary love story. Her story, his story. Our history.

I navigated fast to google.com and entered lickity-split: Grandma Yoneko. I did it Japanese-style (family name first, personal name next). I did it Japanese American-style (first name first, last name last).

"We did not find an exact match for your search," those digital smart alecks answered, just like that.

Hmm. No landmark celebrates this muscular elder. No exit arrow. Not even a roadside sign. Nothing like ODOT erected where Lewis & Clark boiled salt from seawater. Not one line about how Oregon traded Issei labor for Chinese pioneers when America suddenly excluded ambitious Chinese and expelled tireless Filipinos and declared Oregon’s East Indians not Caucasian enough to become U.S. citizens.

Not a word about how this American steamed back to Japan and made a family while her two countries made war; and nothing about their return to Portland when all that madness passed. Nothing about her Asian-American kids graduating from Cleveland High; nothing about her younger son bringing tons of Tokyo business to struggling downtown Portland or about him taking Fuji TV to rural Oregon or taking planeloads of Portland spirit to despairing New York, New Orleans, and old Bangkok. Nothing about her son running for mayor. No mention of that precious matriarch’s granddaughter, protecting yet another local ethnic stream’s families from the exact same ugliness her elders endured. Right now. Right here.

History is selective. Memory is short.

I stuffed my Samsung back in my hip pocket. I took back my trust from our mainstream’s tellers of what stories matter, really matter here. Here, on this confluence of our two grand river systems and that deep sea of circulating families and fortunes and futures. I needed a little time to consider what went wrong. What accounts for the distance separating our basement’s giants from our city’s headlines.

And I would’ve wandered aimlessly round and round this well-worn American conundrum, as toxic as a bad marriage, and I probably would’ve ruined a perfectly balanced low-cholesterol lunch, if it weren’t for Madame Alice Sumida rising and smiling in my direction. No one’s allowed any shade of blue when she’s looking. Ask anyone.

This elder auntie started dancing ballrooms in her 80s. She’s now an international champ, she’s now in her 90s. The bones she broke so bad in that car crash are now fine. Her Italian suntan’s terrific.

"What on earth explains these ancient aunties’ resilience?" I whispered at my wife.

"For all she’s lived through —," I googled into my Samsung, "why’s her heart and her step so much lighter than mine?" But this time, instead of clicking another clueless search key, I just looked a little longer at her.

I watched Madame Alice weave among us as if yesterdays don’t matter. I observed her bow as elegant as harvest rice before Japan’s consul-general — also dropping by for Ikoi No Kai lunch. I saw how this living treasure rights herself, as sure of her place in our story as The Honorable Consul is of his.

I bowed deeper than both she and he, when time came for us to leave. And I left worrying a lot less about this ethnic stream’s grand elders — athletic Auntie Francis, lion-hearted Uncle Richard, Oregon matriarch Yoneko-san, ballroom queen Alice Sumida — than I wonder about mainstream America’s health and wealth.

Maybe we should all be wondering how much bigger we can be if only our story were not so small. If American history we wrote with a much-much wider brush. A more generous stroke. A lot more color.

Thank you very much to Mr. Henry Ueno and the Japanese Ancestral Society for caring for our elders, a real Oregon story. A thousand thanks to Ikoi No Kai kindness manager Marv, to chef Kashu-san and kitchen magician Lenny-san, to Marian-san, Alice-san, Noriko-san, Sumi-san, George-san, Lynn-san, Yoji-san, Mary-san, for each of your energetic efforts in making it all happen, all the time.

Terima kasih (I offer our love, in gratitude) to all of you for feeding us, then sending us out to make everyone a bigger story, a better history.