Becoming Mama-San. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

of fire raced down the entire side of the tree, peeling off the bark before it plunged into the ground with a deafening BOOM that shook the house. Rain followed in torrents, soaking my parents as they scurried from the fields back to the house. Trembling, I stood frozen on the back step.

      “Mary-san!” my mother shouted, breathless, as she swooped me up in her arms and rushed inside. We were both shaking.

      What I remember some 80 years later is that in my moment of sheer terror, my mother and father were there to comfort and protect me. A feeling of safety imprinted on every cell in my body. This would be the first of many times I remember my parents being there for me—a knowing I would hold onto for a lifetime.

      Nature’s power, whether it was giving or taking, influenced me profoundly in my early years. One time, my parents were taking the long loganberry canes and winding them between two rows of wire that had been strung for this purpose. They were worried because a wildfire was burning on the island. While they worked, I swung on the wire and prayed out loud to God: “Kami sama, ame oh fu’te kudasai. Faya oh keyasa nai kara.” “God, please make it rain because we have to put out the fire!”

      To my surprise and delight, it rained that night. Years later, Mama-san talked about this incident, reminding me, “It rained hard enough that by morning the fire was out! Amazing what the earnest prayers of a little child can do!”

      On warm summer days, we walked about a mile down the hill to the shores of Puget Sound. The beach was covered with a variety of shells, colored rocks, and driftwood, which I collected and arranged in designs on the beach, only to have the high tide wash them all away. I liked playing with different kinds of crabs and watching them run sideways away from me. Sometimes, we would bring a bucket and dig for butter clams that Mama-san would later cook for dinner.

      Once, I saw my parents walk down to the beach in their bathing suits and go for a swim. I could hardly believe my eyes. I didn’t know they knew how to swim or even that they had swimsuits. Mama-san had tucked her black hair into a swimming cap and she looked trim and tanned. Papa-san had a farmer’s tan with his face and neck much darker than the rest of his body. He was a small man, but solid and muscular from years of hard work. Laughing and calling to each other, they took big strokes away from me and lazily swam in the calm waters. It tickled me to see my parents playful and relaxed. Usually, they were too busy working in the berry fields, planning for the day they would own their own farm. This would be my only memory of seeing my parents swim.

      My first home near the shores of Puget Sound was a Garden of Eden. Towering, thick, old growth trees bordered two sides of our home, creating a cathedral that opened to the sky. There were all kinds of places to explore at the beach and in the woods, ever-changing with the seasons. The world was my playground, and the birds, fish, snakes, and even angleworms were my playmates. In summer, I’d eat fresh fruit right off of the vine or low hanging branches—wild salmonberries, Italian plums, and crisp apples.

      Despite the usual bumps and bruises of childhood, I felt completely safe in nature, and comforted. Nature would later become my refuge during those times when the world was harsh and unjust.

      In early 1929, my father fulfilled a lifelong ambition by cashing in his life savings and buying ten acres of farmland near the center of Vashon Island. To this day, I am amazed by the wise and fortuitous timing of his decision, coming as it did shortly before the stock market crash of October 1929. He planned, worked, and saved for twenty-seven years before deciding the time was right.

      Papa-san hired someone to build a four-bedroom house, and for two years during the start of the Great Depression he provided work and income for the island’s hardware store, lumberyard, and tradesmen. In 1931, we moved into our new house, which had all of the modern conveniences of the time, including electricity, hot and cold running water, an indoor toilet that flushed, and a utility room. All of our friends and neighbors came to our first open house. Mama-san prepared sushi, teriyaki chicken, and teriyaki salmon. The new, extra long kitchen counter, built unusually low to accommodate Mama-san’s five-foot stature, was brimming with even more food brought by our guests. It was an all-American potluck dinner with a Japanese twist!

      Our new home wasn’t extravagant, but compared to the one we had lived in, it was the height of luxury. Yoneichi and I even had our own separate bedrooms. The new house was much warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Our house was among the nicest of those owned by the Japanese families on the island. I was proud of this fact, but Mama-san had to remind me repeatedly not to brag about it.

      The oil stove in the living room provided heat for the upstairs bedrooms through a vent in the ceiling. Mama-san cooked in the kitchen with a wood-burning stove. When it was time for chopping wood, all four of us pitched in. Papa-san split the huge chunks of wood in half or quarters. Yoneichi and Mama-san cut those pieces and split them to fit the kitchen stove. I had a small hatchet for making kindling from the larger pieces of wood. We all worked together and even as a small child I felt as though I was an important part of the effort.

      The four of us, along with our horse Dolly, labored year-round, farming a variety of berries in those early years. Later, we specialized in strawberries, as my father found them to be the best crop. Every summer, he recruited workers of all ages from Seattle and Vashon to harvest the fruit, which was taken by truck to be processed into jam and jelly. As one of the island’s chief employers of school-age children, he influenced many families in positive ways. Child labor was common back in the Depression era, and some of the families needed the income from their children’s labor to buy essentials.

      There was a pond in the next field over where Yoneichi and I played after the day’s work was done. When we first moved into our new house, we didn’t know the pond was there because it was hidden by tall grass and brush. It was a thrill when we first discovered it. Nearby, we found a crude raft and a long pole, so naturally we explored the pond’s environs. I was always a little afraid of the unknown dangers I conjured up in my mind, lurking just below the pond’s surface, but Yoneichi would often float about the pond by himself.

      The pond was full of pollywogs in the spring, and later in the year we could hear the chorus of croaking frogs every evening. We would find clumps of eggs and bring them home in a jar and wait for the pollywogs to hatch. It was fascinating to watch them develop their legs and eventually turn into frogs. We never kept them until they matured, but instead returned them to the pond and let them go free. The pond was a treasure, a hidden preserve full of mystery and adventure, just for Yoneichi and me.

      Spirituality was important to my parents, so Yoneichi and I joined the Vashon Methodist Church, which happened to be the first church we encountered on our walk into town. Papa-san and Mama-san didn’t attend because their English wasn’t good enough to follow the services, but Yoneichi and I quickly became comfortable there. When Mama-san first came to America, she moved on from the Shintoism of her youth and embraced Catholicism in her adopted country. But when Yoneichi and I began telling our parents about what we were learning at the Methodist church, Mama-san got curious, and soon, she and Papa-san joined the Japanese Methodist church in Seattle.

      Occasionally, when the minister was available, my parents hosted services in our home for Japanese-speaking Isseis on the island. The services were Methodist, but the people who attended were of a variety of faiths, including Shinto and Buddhist. Another family on the island held occasional Buddhist services in their home, and we also attended those whenever we were invited. At the Methodist services, we sang hymns that I had learned in church. The Isseis sang in Japanese while I sang the same hymn in English. At the Buddhist services, I listened and had prayerful thoughts in English while the priest chanted, rang a gong, and lit incense in front of the altar. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the atmosphere made it easy to pray to God.

      I was comfortable in all of these situations. It felt perfectly natural for me to grow up in this mixed spiritual environment. I knew only that God is God of all of us, and the language, rituals, and even teachings didn’t change that.

      Cultural education was also important to my parents because they wanted us to retain a sense of our Japanese heritage.