Time...Discipline's Gift....

     Time is discipline's gift, not her thief.
     In no way do I mean to condemn all of what today's fast pace brings.  It is astounding to me to reflect on electronic communication.  The Internet is the structure on which we weave a world wide web of communication--of connectedness.  Friends...family...passions....all of them may grow and blossom where our pace and distance might kill them.

    Yet, I do not want to lose connection with my past that has borne my present, and made conceivable my future.  Handwriting has been a gift I mourn, when it is not celebrated.

    Naohiko Fukada.  Dad's pen pal dating back to World War II.  An unlikely pair.  An aspiring psychologist.  A teenager who aspired to study linguistics.  Study of accounting prevailed--a lifetime passion for world languages ensued.

   During the 1960s, long before the advent of the Internet, I remember well the sense of excitement when a letter came from Naohiko.  The letters were not frequent.  So, the arrival of his letters was celebrated all the more.  Before we could share in his thoughts, we had  to wait for Dad to translate them.  Translating from Japanese to English--from any foreign language to English--was not a word-for-word translation.  It required time.  Dedication.  A keen ear.

    In recent years, I contacted Naohiko via e-mail message to seek a Japanese language birthday/anniversary greeting from him.  I sat in awe as I sent the message to him with the touch of a finger.  I got shivers up my spine to read his words.  I was moved by the love put into the words.  They were not a grammarian's "perfect" words, and sentences.  His message conveyed what "perfect" words could never.

    The arrival of his package--his carefully wrapped package--cast a spell of reverence on me.  The 21st- century Patty would have ripped the package open to see what Naohiko had written.  Yet, the 1960s' little girl  stood in deep appreciation for the time and care Naohiko had taken to honor his lifelong pen pal and wife.

    I treasure handwriting.  Not a second grader's cursive manuscript worksheet.  I treasure the individual mark imprinted on paper.  In one letter...in one word...in one sentence, a lifetime treasury of love, and care--be it family, or friend is encapsulated--rekindled--if time permits.

   [Though brief, a keen ear may hear the beauty of an 88-year-old Japanese man, who profiles his life. Google Chrome enables translation of these characters.  Yet, untranslated, it does not seem that beauty is lost.  It may be just different.]
http://www.fukadanaohiko.jp/cgi/diary.cgi