First off I want to welcome everyone to Thanksgiving week, hooray we made it!  I can’t believe we only have a little over a month till 2016!  Is it me or does it feel like yesterday we were ringing in 2015??  There’s been a lot of ups and downs this year that I’ll get into in a later post but overall a very good year with a lot of growth.  I’ve been thinking about this post for the past few weeks with Thanksgiving and family gatherings on the horizon.  With the prevalence of online dating in the world we live in today, have you ever wondered how your parents and even your grandparents met?  Well, my curiosity in how older generations, specifically my mom’s parents started to pique my interest. Unfortunately, I never had the privilege of meeting my grandfathers from both sides of the family.  I had only heard stories that my parents would tell me about them and their upbringings.

So I asked my mom about how her parents met each other.  Here is a little background on when grandma met grandpa.  My grandma was a nurse in Honolulu while my grandpa owned a jewelry store with his father.  My grandma’s watch broke one day and so she took it into my grandpa’s store for repair.  My mom says it wasn’t love at first sight but that her grandfather thought she was a good catch and played matchmaker.  They were really young (grandma was 19, grandpa was 24) when they got married, which was a lot more common back in those days.  They then went on to have 3 kids (a boy, a girl – my mom, and another boy) with the same sex birth order as my family.

I asked my mom to describe what kind of man her father was.  Here is what she said:  He was a kind, gentle man who carried a Bible and taught Sunday school as a youngster.  He would speak with a loud voice but didn’t hurt a soul.  He was very proud of being Japanese and when the first Toyota appeared, he bought one.  He loved his children and helped my mother run a neighborhood grocery store in LA.  He would have loved to have seen all his grandchildren before he died of a heartattack at a very young age of 53.

The one thing that really stood out to me about what my mom said about her father was that if he was alive, he would have spoiled his grandchildren not with material things but with love.  That really resonated with me because it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do when/if I ever have a family.  I want to be able to spoil them with my love, my affection and all the things that money can’t buy.  With that being said, here is my letter to you ojiisan (grandpa in Japanese).

Dear Grandpa,

It’s been 48 years since you passed and even though we never met I wanted to write you this letter because I miss you. My mom, your only daughter told me all about you and I feel some of the things she told me about you I see in myself.  She told me you were a very kind, gentle man that loved his family and would do anything for them.  I think I feel a connection to you because it sounds like my mother took after you and I definitely take after my mom.  I have these visions of how you would have been with us grandkids and how much we would have loved our grandpa time.  I just hope and wish one day, I can pass it down to my kids and spoil them with love the way I know you would have shown us.  Even though I may not outwardly show it, I’m very proud to be Japanese and wouldn’t want it any other way.  I’ll keep it short, but just wanted to say hi and hope you’re enjoying your time up in heaven.  I look forward to meeting you one day, love you gramps!

Your 2^nd youngest grandchild,

Kevin

Happy Thanksgiving week family and friends.  Remember to count your blessings and be grateful for all you have, not just on Thanksgiving but every day we live.  Love!

QOTP: “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward