It's a Small World

Quite a lot of years ago we took part in a Lions' exchange one summer, accepting for two weeks in our home a 16-year-old Japanese girl named Tomoko Mori. Tomoko was a shy delight and we readily shared our lives with her for those interesting two weeks. I am not sure who learned more, her or us, but the experience was great.

There was the day we learned of my aunt's death and took the family plus Tomoko to Oakville for the funeral. Tomoko wondered if we didn't love Aunt Reta because we weren't weeping and wailing, and I assured her this was not the case. We just weren't really close. I've often wondered what grieving was like in Japan. Another day we went to a very special concert in the middle of the Grand River at Brantford. A lot of fill had been temporarily put in the river, enough to build on to the existing islands so that 50,000 people could bring lawn chairs and hear the Boston Pops Orchestra, directed by Arthur Fiedler one special Sunday afternoon. It was one of those life memory things--you know, the kind you'll never forget. And Tomoko was there with us.

For the first week or so Tomoko was very shy, always polite, enjoying a laugh, loving to play with our children, trying to speak English, but she remained very private. Eventually circumstances called for her to reach out. Take the day she was suntanning by our pool and got a sunburn. As I smoothed on suntan lotion I realized that brown-skinned people can burn just as we whities. Then came the day Tomoko quietly took me from the kitchen to the upstairs bathroom. Her frightened look told me something was wrong and when I got there I saw that the toilet was plugged. She was very shy about the fact that she had tried to flush feminine products down the toilet. Not to worry, I said, and we quickly solved the problem, earning her trust along the way.

Eventually our Japanese guest asked to cook for us. We said, of course, and she made a wonderful dish which, she explained, traditionally was served with a raw egg broken in the dish and the mixture put in with it. We said we'd love to try it and we did, earning points once again. Here is Tomoko eating her portion in a very relaxed pose:


All too soon it was time for us to take our guest to Port Dover and her next host home. She dressed formally in her beautiful Japanese costume and posed in front of the fireplace. We were enthralled.


I felt like a mother losing her child when we delivered Tomoko to her hosts. I knew they would look after her well, but I reciprocated her fierce hug as we said, "Good-bye." We never saw her again. We wrote for a year or two, she sent us gifts, I sent her books about the English poet Wordsworth as she was majoring in English at university, and then we never heard from her again. I don't know what happened and that fact saddens me. Maybe she'll see my blog and we'll connect again. It's a small world after all.