Happy Birthday 2015

Today is my daughter's birthday. Happy Birthday Jenny! She was born in 1978. We along with her husband Dover shared lunch in San Jose's Japantown at Okayama. Moving one building down towards Jackson St she was born at the old dojo on North 6th St. Her Mom and I did a home birth with midwives. She emerged 3:45 in the afternoon after a long labor. I had the honor of catching her as she came out. So we had an immediate connection. This year in January I performed their marriage ceremony. And early next year they are expecting their first child. It is amazing that all this has unfolded thus. I am so proud of her. She is so passionate and caring and really values people. She still styles hair, has become a Pilates teacher, and just keeps going forward.

In late summer of 1974 I left Santa Cruz to ostensibly go pursue a PhD at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. I went via Japan and while there decided to stay there and major in Aikido, not Russian studies.
But my Mom had had cancer surgery just before I left and the prognosis was not good. When Robert Frager sensei was leaving the UC Santa Cruz Aikido Club  in 1975 to found ITP(now Sophia University), the chief instructor position opened up. And I took it and returned. My mom was seriously ill and though she courageously battled the cancer for most of 1975, she finally died in September of that year. I was able to spend most of that year with her. I was at her side the moment she crossed over.

It is interesting how this year has revealed to me how much her death has effected me. To be right there at the moment she passed. It was an honor, and though I was 27 at the time, part of me really had to grow up.
But the sense of loss was overwhelming. What has struck me in the last couple of weeks is that the universe takes, but it also gives and over the long haul everything evens out. Though I was there the at the very moment my mom left, I was also there for the first breath my daughter took. And I see her unfolding and growing, with a wonderful partner in Dover, soon to be a mother herself. Wow!

Some realizations take years, but they hit you in an instant.