Screws and Tiaras

Yesterday afternoon there was a PTA meeting for the mothers of kids who are multiply disabled. There are about ten of us, and all of our kids are deaf and something different, i.e. one kid has Down Syndrome, one kid has diabetes and some sort of attention deficit disorder, and three or four  fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum.  My daughter is the only one in a wheelchair, though there is another kid with cerebral palsy who can walk but is developmentally disabled.  We’re sort of marginalized at the deaf school, but we have our own little sub-group. During yesterday’s discussion, we looked over brochures of places that we might visit during summer vacation, as part of research. We are supposed to be thinking about our children’s futures (and we are, believe me). But I found the brochures depressing.  There are all of these centers in out of the way places where disabled individuals bake bread or grow vegetables, or sort screws by size. Many of these places are residential. On the one hand, it’s reassuring to know that there are places where my daughter can work after she finishes high school. But on the other hand, working solely among others with disabilities would place her firmly on the fringes of society. I don’t want that for her. It sounds snobby in a way, but I don’t.

Yesterday evening, we watched TV en famille.  There was a program about a beauty contest in the Netherlands – the Miss Ability Contest. These beautiful young women with various disabilities appeared on stage in evening gowns and bathing suits. My daughter became extremely hyper while viewing, clearly convinced that there is no need to ever learn to walk when one can cruise  around in a wheelchair AND wear fabulous clothes. I’m not altogether comfortable with the notion of beauty pageants, and there was something a little bit freakish about parading these women (my prejudice?), but I couldn’t help thinking how extremely different things are in the West.

Adopting Alesia

Dee Thompson wrote about learning to live with her adopted Russian teenager in her contribution to Call Me Okaasan. In her new book, Adopting Alesia, she writes about how she came to adopt her daughter.

In Dee’s words:

I never dreamed I would find my child on the other side of the world.

A few years ago, I was single and childless, and 40 years old. I had spent 20 years searching for Mr. Right and he was nowhere to be found.

Longing for a change of pace and some adventure, I went to Russia to sing Handel’s Messiah, in a remote town on the edge of Siberia. There I met a little girl in an orphanage and I knew she was my daughter. I had seen her in a dream the night before. I had never even considered adopting an older Russian child, but from the moment I first saw her, I knew in my heart that Alesia was my daughter, and no matter what it took, I was going to bring her home.

When I returned to the US, my adoption dream hit brick wall after brick wall. My company laid me off. I had to break up with a boyfriend who didn’t want children. I found out the orphanage director didn’t like Americans and wouldn’t even talk to the adoption agency. Alesia wasn’t even available to adopt. The agency told me over and over to choose a different child. I didn’t have the money I needed to complete the adoption. I started another romance that failed. At times I thought I was going crazy.

Many people told me I was crazy to adopt – the child I had thought was about 8, because she was so emaciated – turned out to be 11. I persevered. When I finally got her home, she was 13 years old.

Through it all, I read everything I could about adoption, learned to speak rudimentary Russian, cried a lot, and wrote in my journal. I later spent many late nights turning that journal into a book.

Adopting Alesia is a book about a dream, a miracle, and two people who were meant to be a family, despite everything. Adopting Alesia is not merely an adoption story. It’s a story for anyone who has ever had to learn to be brave, fought to follow a dream, or found faith in the darkest of times. It’s a story of a little girl who didn’t even know the word “adoption.” It’s a story about love.

Dropped Pencils and Other Disasters

So yesterday evening I went to the excruciatingly long meeting to discuss the problems with the fourth grade class.  I arrived at 6:30PM, and didn’t leave until after 9PM, and no, there wasn’t a bathroom break.

The teacher started out by saying “wasuremono ga oi” (ha ha) and then talked about how the students were unable to concentrate. As an example, he talked about how some students dropped their pencils and books during class (that would be my son). I looked at the desk. It’s rather small and flat -topped. There’s no groove for a pencil, not a lot of space for the many items they need for studying. I don’t think my son drops his pencil because of ADD or whatever. Anyhow, it went on like that. The dropping of pencils is noisy and distracting, according to the teacher, and is something that needs to be dealt with.

Around the two-hour mark, the parents began expressing their concerns.  Although there was some praise for the emphasis on academics (one mother mentioned how the students are expected to correct their homework during recesses as if it were a good thing), several mothers complained that there was not enough homework. I realized then that there was no point in expressing my petty concern, which is that there is no recess.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think that if the kids got a break once in a while they might be better able to concentrate.

Of course I also did not object to the teacher having told my son that Americans are “teki to ni” (i.e. careless and not detail-oriented) and that my son should be more like the Japanese who are so very precise and detail-oriented. I believe his exact words were “Nihonjin wo kichiro o suru.”

The Things They Carry

“Wasuremono ga oi.” I’ve heard this from both of my children’s teachers over and over again for the past four years, speaking not only about my kids, but their classmates as well. “They forget to bring many things.” Although, supposedly, the children are supposed to prepare their stuff for school themselves, thus developing independence, there is no way that mine can remember everything without my reminding them, and I can’t remember everything because, well, I’m over forty.

Here’s what my daughter was supposed to remember to bring one day this week:

thermos

handkerchief (for drying her hands after she washes them)

tissues

hearing aid

five regular pencils, sharpened

red/blue pencil

eraser

straight ruler

rounded ruler (what is that called?)

science textbook

Japanese textbook and notebook

social studies textbook

finished homework (three pages)

renrakucho (notebook for writing down the day’s schedule, etc.)

notebook for parent/teacher communiques

zippered bag for memos, etc.

100 grams of salt

30cm x30 cm piece of aluminum foil

Here’s what she forgot:  the aluminum foil, which I prepared for her, but which she uncharacteristically forgot to put in her bag.

 

Here’s what my son was supposed to remember to bring to school today:

various textbooks and notebooks, pencils, eraser, ruler, etc. as above

school T-shirt

school shorts

hat

lunch

thermos

bathing suit

bathing cap

goggles

towel

pool card

Yesterday he forgot his hat.

The teachers always say that forgetting things now bodes ill for the future.  I’m not sure what will happen if they don’t remember everything every day, but I do know many Japanese adults who have forgotten things. I’m not convinced that training them not to forget twenty things a day actually insures that they will not forget things as an adult.

Tonight there is a fourth grade PTA meeting. I’m willing to bet money that the teacher will say, “Wasuremono ga oi.”

Yuka Hamano Exhibit

If you’re anywhere in the Kyoto area, be sure and check out Yuka Hamano’s exhibition at the Kyoto International Manga Museum.  Illustrations that Yuka did for my story Playing for Papa will be on display, as well as other works, from June 20-July 5.

Social Justice and the Ten Year-old

If you live in Japan, you’ve probably seen a parent or coach slap a kid upside the head.  You’ve probably seen this kind of thing on TV. Beat Takeshi is always bopping people on the head with inflatable mallets and such. This kind of hitting isn’t taken seriously in Japan, but I find it very disturbing.

My son attends a school that prides itself on raising kind, considerate children. And yet, I have heard from two witnesses that my son’s teacher is slapping the kids.  Slapping my kid. My son is happy at school and he has never once mentioned this. When I asked him about what I’d heard, he shrugged it off said that he was at fault in both instances, and that “it’s the Japanese way.”

I’ve also heard that the some students spend all of their noon recess correcting homework and re-taking tests. According to my son, the students are given the option of doing the work at home. Maybe that’s true, but yesterday I wrote in his notebook (a private note to the teacher) that I would like for my son to be allowed to have recess. Somehow, the entire class knew about what I had written. My son told me that my note caused him misery at school. He tearfully demanded that I never write in the notebook again without telling him first.  Something is not quite right here.

Cookies Against Domestic Violence

If you wander down to the train station, you can usually pick up some goodies.  Often, there is someone handing out tissues to publicize a new restaurant or hair salon. Once, activists were handing out free fans to promote awareness of Hansen’s disease (which used to be called leprosy). Sometimes you can get a red feather if you donate money for…something – I forget.  Today there were some grandmas and grandpas distributing cookies embossed with a picture of a woman with arms crossed.  I’d never gotten cookies before.  Intrigued, I had a look at the accompanying flyer and saw that the campaign in progress was against domestic violence.  Well, good for them.  That’s a cause I definitely support.  And good for them for coming up with such a memorable ploy.  It clearly worked because I’m still thinking about it!

Mindy Friddle’s Cover Story: The Importance of Book Covers

Last summer, Mindy Friddle kindly helped get the word out about my new books.  This summer, she’s got a new book of her own out -  Secret Keepers – about three generations of a family in a mill town in South Carolina.  There’s Emma, the matriarch, who had to miss out on a longed-for trip to Europe due to her roguish husband’s untimely demise; Dora, a one-time hippie peacenik who’s now a devout church member and instructor of an aerobics group called Firm Believers at a Christian mall (where she tries hard – and usually fails – to resist  retail therapy) and Kyle, the grandson, who devises a way to get out of Saving Souls to hang out with his wayward grandmother and mentally disturbed uncle.

 

Here, Mindy writes about how her fabulous book cover came to be:

 As an author, I count myself lucky to have a publisher that solicited my ideas for both of my novels’  book covers. When it came time for the art department to put together some cover ideas, I was happy to send along images that I felt captured the feel of my novel. Of course, it was up to the graphic artist to design the covers–and the publisher has the final say–but I found St. Martin’s receptive and eager to consider my ideas—or photographs—in this case. 
 
As booksellers will tell you, readers DO judge a book by its cover. Or, ahem,  “dust jacket”—to use the formal term.  So… should an author get involved with cover art? Only if she wants to. If you happen to have some passages or some images that you feel drawn to, or that you feel inspired your work, by all means share it!
 For example, the cover for my first novel, THE GARDEN ANGEL, went through several different versions. My editor felt the idea of a porch was important—since it figures prominently in the novel—as well as a cemetery angel (the “garden angel” in the story). Easy, right? Well…not after you consider just how many styles of porches and cemetery angels there are out there; angels ranging from grief-stricken and morose, to pixie-ish and cherubic. After several versions, everyone agreed a photograph from a famous cemetery captured the nostalgic feel of the cemetery “garden” angel in the novel. (The publisher purchased the image.) The porch—that’s a different story. 
 
In an early version, the porch appeared much too pristine, and resembled the sort of porch you’d encounter in Charleston, SC, and the southern coast. The Garden Angel is set in a mill town near mountains. So after they requested some examples of  the “ruined finery” feel of the porch that figures prominently in THE GARDEN ANGEL, I sent a few snapshots I’d taken near my neighborhood—beautiful, elegiac but crumbling porches. And they ended up using one of the digital photographs I sent. I must say, that was really thrilling for me: to be part of the visual creative side of the book. The porch in my mind’s eye was there on the cover.
 
Just after SECRET KEEPERS was accepted—and we still had editing in front of us— I met with my editor and we talked about cover ideas. I’d brought a couple of pages from garden magazines that illustrated rescued heirloom gardens.  I also brought along some pictures of vintage seed packets and catalogs. The first version of the book cover –a vintage seed packet illustration–was striking, but a little old-fashioned for the contemporary angle of the story.  My editor asked that I send in more ideas. Although I don’t consider myself a photographer–have had absolutely no training– I love capturing images in my own garden and around town. Point and shoot! I was shocked when I opened up the jpg image of the new cover of SECRET KEEPERS to find they’d selected a photo I sent them. Those boot “planters” are still on my front porch. I’ve made even more of them—from all sorts of recycled boots—and I take a boot planter to every bookstore when I do signings and readings. I have more about the “cover story” of SECRET KEEPERS on my blog—as well as pictures of all the boot plants I’ve given to bookstores, and raffled off to readers. It’s been fun! I call it—in jest of course!—my Bootylicious Book Tour.

More on the Elizabeth Saunders Home

Also from today’s Japan Times is this article on Demian Akhan, who was adopted from the Elizabeth Saunders Home.

My New Hero

Nepalese Kamal Lamichhane is my new hero.  He didn’t start school until he was 11, and now he’s engaged in advanced studies at the prestigious University of Tokyo   He recently presented a on the economic impact of educating the disabled. And he’s blind.