imagined conversations
wondering about gardens and Grandpa Kuni stories
My mother loves to tell stories about her dad, my Grandpa Kuni, and, one of my favorites is how he was a friend to plants.
She recalls how on weekends, she’d rise early, pleading with him to let her tag along on his gardening rounds. Her younger siblings never joined them because they’d rather sleep late. So, these mornings were just for her and her dad and the plants.
She loved to be in his company, plodding along behind him as he tended the gardens of others, in the Japanese way. Eyes filled with wonderment and inquisitive thoughts swirling, she tried to catch everything he was doing and understand why he did it precisely that way.
I imagine her gathering knowledge tidbits in a butterfly net, pulling it close to examine every flash of color, flutter of wing, before setting them free. She asked questions, and he knew the answers. And she wanted to know them, too.
I’d like to have learned from his soft, familiar voice, and even more so, know the stories behind his vast collection of knowledge. I wonder when his interest in botany sprouted, how it was he came to know so much about tending to living greens.
My thoughts fall back to the year 1942, when Executive Order 9066 struck, dismantling his life and sending his trajectory scattering into unknowns, and we’ll-never-knows, and what-might-have-beens.
I picture my grandpa receiving an official letter from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) notifying him that he was no longer an Engineering student there. I picture his family receiving relocation orders with the only options to be sent to Manzanar incarceration camp or flee somewhere further inland, to start over as strangers.
His father and 6 of his 9 siblings fled inland to Nebraska where they were met with hostility from neighbors who viewed them as “enemy” rather than fellow American citizens. But there they became sugar beet farmers, working and growing and waiting to be reunited with the rest of their family (his eldest sister’s family was in Manzanar and 2 young sisters cared for by a relative in Japan).
By the time he finally returned to California after the war, he needed to find work and try to rebuild a life without the education and Engineering degree his country had denied him.
One of his many jobs was running a small gardening business with his brother Tadashi. Perhaps, this return to plants and tending the earth felt familiar and brought small joys amidst hot days making beautiful the homes of people who never knew the loss of ‘home’ the way he did. The way it lingered and trickled down into next-generations—a hollow space in heart and bones and history.
My thoughts turn to the Yamamoto family home of my childhood in Hacienda Heights, and how Grandpa Kuni had transformed the backyard into a Japanese garden, 2 wooden bridges gently arcing over a pool to reach lanterns hanging from a patio roof he improved with decorative woodwork that reminds me now of a Japanese torii gate or pagoda roof. Small, round bushes of spritely green looked… something toadstools to me and I remember always being tempted me to hop from one to another (though that was strong discouraged).
Looking back at photographs, I have no doubt this home- this place of his own- was special. Perhaps, he worried it would be taken from him someday, but this never deterred him from designing something dear and tending to its care.
Sun streams down through clouds overhead as I step into day, closing the screen door behind me as my cat settles onto the inside doormat to peer past whiskers and observe my doings. I watch the waterline rise in my forest green watering can; groan as knees creak and my lower back reminds me to take care.
It’s time for each potted plant on our windowsill will get their turn, get their drink, and my mind wanders through some questions I wish I could ask my grandfather.
When were you first drawn to plants, Grandpa? Did you have a favorite one? Did you like eating sugar beets in Nebraska, or did you grow tired of them? How did you learn to tell if a plant is healthy or sick? Did you ever sing to your plants like you used to sing to me?
Now, I imagine traipsing after him as my mother did, but instead with me as I am now, as an adult. How I’d follow him with my DSLR camera, framing his movements and pauses through the lens. My only aim: to capture a candid portrait of the artist who knew how to enhance the beauty of already beautiful things. I’d want to tell a story in still photographs that would show how to have a conversation with greenly growing things the way he did. To respect their boundaries, bring out their best, hear their wishes, and witness the joy of fruition. The joy of growing.
-Kimberly Kuniko
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© Kimberly Kuniko
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Thank you Kimberly for this beautiful post. I remember the story of my grandfather, who was exiled from his village in India in 1947.