The Longest Shortest Time

Daughters Have Longest Shortest Times Too

When my sister-in-law Nana went to college, she came to the United States. But until then she’d lived in Sendai, the Japanese city hit hardest by the recent earthquake and tsunami. Her mother, Hiroko, still lives there. Since Friday, nobody really knew Hiroko’s whereabouts. I know that for Nana, her sister, and their families, this has been their longest shortest time.

Yesterday at 6 a.m. Nana got a surprise phone call from her mother saying she was alive and safe in her home, which was somehow spared by the tsunami because the nearby highway blocked the water. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Hiroko a couple times—most recently in January, when she cooked us a traditional Japanese New Year’s meal. We then took a walk in the cold to the Nature Center, to look at the injured birds of prey in outdoor cages. Turns out you don’t need to speak the same language to be weirded out by turkey vultures.

It breaks my heart that there’s nothing we can do at the moment to help Hiroko. Nothing we can send her, since the postal system is down. All we can do right now is give to the American Red Cross and let them do the helping for us. I know this message is out there everywhere you look, but if you haven’t already done so, please consider making a contribution. My SIL also wanted me to help spread the word that Wacoal, the Japanese lingerie company she works for, is donating 20% if its online sales to the relief effort.