Auntie Kiyoka was like a grandma figure to my sister and I. We could tell you about Auntie who watched us during the summers. Or about Auntie who loved the San Francisco Giants and Sacramento Kings. Or about Auntie who loved watching TV soaps and who I would gossip with about Young and the Restless. However, Id rather tell you about Auntie the passionate Gardener. She may have planted countless seeds outside, however she also planted other types of seeds…The seeds of life long lessons.
The first life lesson she planted was “do not fight with your sibling.” I couldn’t tell you how many hours of bickering Auntie had to put up with between my sister and I, but it seemed like she always had a way of dealing with it. Eventually, we learned life was more enjoyable with less fighting and more appreciativeness.
The second life lesson she planted was “enjoy sushi.” The best part about auntie watching us was the musubi rolls she would make with us at lunch. Simple rice, salt and nori. She was the first to teach me how to roll sushi. This was the beginning to my love for sushi and for cooking. In college I made hundreds of sushi rolls because of what Auntie had taught me all those many years earlier.
The third life lesson is best described in a garden analogy: Grow pumpkins; and the bigger the pumpkin the better. Growing up, I never understood why people bought pumpkins at Halloween, when they could just go to somewhere like Auntie’s house and get them for free. All sizes…regular pumpkins, large pumpkins and huge pumpkins. After nurturing them from seed to pumpkin, she would freely share them with us, and other nieces and nephews. So another way of wording this lesson would be: use your talents and gifts, and to turn them into bigger and better things that you can share with others.
The fourth life lesson she planted was “think outside the box.” Auntie trained my sister and I to be great rummi-tile players. Sure it’s easy to place tiles down in color or numerical order. However, Auntie taught us to take it to another level. To play your tiles, dismantle the sets already in play, rearrange them in a whole new order. And there’s tiles that don’t fit? Well keep reworking them…Keep rearranging them…don’t give up. Alas they finally fall into place, usually. Im certain this laid the foundation to help me think abstractly, think outside the box, make connections in various situations, and find other ways to the end.
Finally the fifth life lesson she planted was “keep learning.” Closely intertwined with the last lesson, she wanted us to learn and receiving a good education. I will forever be grateful for these and other lessons she taught us, and even more grateful for the support she gave us in our own educational pursuits.
So during her life Auntie planted many seeds, literally and figuratively, and they were cared for to maturity. Upon reflection, it is clear to me she watered her garden of life lessons with “Gratitude.” Whether it was teaching us to be grateful for what you have, including siblings, or in offering the first scoop of rice in the butsudan before making sushi, or sharing meals and resources with loved ones, or in giving an education. Gratitude flows through all those situations. Giving gratitude and humbly receiving it - that is what flowed through her life. And gratitude is what we gave back to her, and what we will continue to give back to her.
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