mid July already~ summer's mid way over~ already!

One day recently I went from Santa Cruz to the Apple store in Los Gatos. The parking lot I used, I had to walk through a building, and inside was this:

From the doorway, sitting there on the sink was a real, live, creamy colored duck.

There was this sign "Pete likes to visit from a distance, please don't touch..." 

I found out that he lives there~ in a spot in the back of the shop.

While I was there he turned around and pooped directly into the sink.
He doesn't always do that tho, I was told.

June 16th and 18th were Zen's and Sheon's birthdays. It was a trip, in our yard, when it was Zen's birthday I saw ONE white poppy, by Sheon's birthday there was a second one... I'd never seen white poppies before

For She-chan's birthday I did get to making a cheesecake, like the old days. 

         

I tried to put together a bird bath, cause birds kept flying around when I watered. But I've not seen a single birdie bathe. I've changed the location... hoping the birds indulge.

Deer chowed down on our tomato plants, and all the broccoli.

Since then, Taka's been working at adding more poles and doors around the garden area. It's looking so great~ I wish photos could do justice!

JUNE!! 2012~~

When I was in PA I stayed at Mom and Stepdad Frank's.

Outside their kitchen window one morning was this beautiful yellow bird, 

I don't see many yellow birds.

Birds, especially right now, are going to often remind me of Janet, who just died.

Once Janet came to Japan.

She didn't really like Japan, not the sitting on the floors, or whole cooked fish, and of course not the cockroaches. One night she and Mom had quite the time trying to kill a roach in their Ryokan (hotel) room. But she loved me, and the kids. And I loved she came once in the 20 + years I was there. 

This time was soon after Sheon-chan was born. TV crews were there videotaping us for news casts about how we'd given birth in a tipi in the bamboo filled hills near the town where we lived.

Janet died May 2nd and the service for her was Memorial Day weekend, the 26th of May. Taka and I could be there. (the post following this is a tribute made for Janet).

At Mom and Frank's after the service, some of the many family and friends came . 

Two of the six cousins we have could come, and their Mom, our Aunt Ann. 

It has been MANY years since being able to see them. 

I love them and am so grateful to them for being here at this time.

That's me next to my younger brother Carl too. Charlotte is next to him, she is about my age. Then Mom's half sister Aunt Ann, then Carolyn~ who is an art teacher. I gave Caroyln a book by SAITOH  GOROH-SAN from our home town Nishio-shio. I had told Carloyn about Goroh, 

I'm so glad I had one of my favorite books of his to give to her for her students.

At the house, after the service, some of Frank's family~

~Frank's "girls"~

While at Mom's, Taka got to play with one of his favorite friends, the dog Rosco.

Rosco is crazy about chasing down tennis balls.

He's pretty adorable.

And then I finally got a frizbee to play with Rosco with~ a happy face frizbee!

When Taka and I flew East, we left  Sheon and Yuriko to hold down the fort. 

I had written info about the garden for myself...and was showing her a couple of times, how to water everything.

The last time I showed her, she wrote out her own map. Hers is so much cuter!

While in PA, near the end of the trip I got to go hang out with High School 'mates getting together in NYC!

It's so awesome to find out about some of these guys, who I didn't make the time to get to know before. So many really, really cool people. 

I have almost never spent time in NYC. And where we stayed, it seems soccer was being played 24/7.
This photo, there's a cool Lion statue, which looked perfect with the soccer umpire in red, who had dreadlocks!

NYC, where I got to see a "DON'T HONK" sign for the first time. It's a $350. fine!

This sign was, like, "wow"!

 

And Jill, Michelle and I, with whom I'd driven up into NYC with, we happened to drive by the World Trade Center, the NEW one~ which they had really wanted to see it.

 Jill, Michelle and me~ thank you!!!!!

This is for Janet

This particular piece I am keeping for my blog~will be different from my others.

This is for my sister~

Our brother Carl played a beautiful song called "Coming Home" 

Janet has been a gift to so many of us!!

In March, 2007, I was in Pennsylvania, here at Janet's, with one of Janet's best friends Amie. 

Amie was my classmate, but she and Janet were SO alike!
Their friendship was one of the most special Janet had.

Amie wrote to me "...what she was like...  A wonderful  friend and mother when she could be. It makes me very sad I do not understand why the darkness was there so strong sometimes… and what it meant and I never will….but what I can remember is the light she brought to my life in a way that no one else could."

Mom, Janet and Amie could do their last hike all together less than a month before Janet died, April 2012. Mom says Janet was so full of joy.

The past 5 years since I moved back to the States from Japan~ I felt like Janet could die at any time. She told many of us, she cursed each morning she had to awaken to. 

Her liver took a terrible toll, and from two years ago or more, doctors told her there was little left of her liver. Yet Jan would indulge when she was able to anyway. About six weeks ago she broke her wrist. She was given painkillers, and unfortunately abused those as well. She went to bed May 1st, and couldn't awaken the next morning. Her body couldn't carry on. But her spirit does in us.

Janet was able to stay with Mom and Frank for the past six months, 

and their connecting was a blessed time. 

A good friend recently made this card for us.

Like she said, the hurt will get better.

This blog piece, I came back to it as regularly as I could during this month.

I have been adding to it, editing it, loving it.

I planned to until the end of May, after her memorial.

I do ask friends and family, please share your stories with us. And if you would so allow~ may I share them on as well? As you can see, stories such as the Memoriam Janet's AA sponsor, K~wrote at the end of this piece~ another very, very special sharing of the heart and times spent with Janet.

As we "fare thee well" 

to the gorgeous friend, daughter, sister, mother, and grandmother that Janet has been.

May '08, Jan's daughter Jessie, Jan and Mom.                               

                                                     
And Jan with her granddaughter, Jessie's daughter May  2010    

The day I heard from Mom that the date was decided for Janet's memorial, my husband Taka was outside digging on our property planting flowers~ (of all things! Janet loves flowers you know).

He found this wooden bird in the soil. Janet!!!

Hey~

J. Bird!!!

Make us think of you!!!!

Janet Louise Jackson

J.J.

The wooden bird sits in our new altar now

  .

About a week before Janet died, I finally found this plant I had been looking for.

It's an asparagus fern, it's a finer fern than what I kept finding around. 
But I wanted this particular one because of Janet, 
she had had one amazing asparagus fern in her bedroom when we were teenagers.
I wanted this~ hoping I could get it to grow like Janet always could...in an empty spot of our rental.

Mom and Janet always could grow indoor plants beuatifully. But indoor plants always died on me. 

                          


I was worried I might kill this pretty little delicate thing. But look~

  it's growing so much, I'm so excited. Since Janet died, I look at it so often, and think of her. The long branches reaching out...makes me feel like it's Janet reaching out to us~

From our past~

Me, Janet and our younger brother Carl were at Janet's home in 1999.

And with all of our kids, her one and my four~

She was my little sister. We were very close in age. We used to joke about how we were "twins" from November 4th until December 23rd, for eight weeks every year, we were the same age.

Jan looks worried about her dandilion~

1969 with baby Carl.

This is how so many of us love remembering Jan, outdoors, with that hair...laughing...

with those amazing legs!!! Yep, J-Bird

She loved flowers. 

When I was in fifth grade I even won an award at school for a book I wrote called: 

Janet and the Flower

 So many people know how very, very different Jan and I were. 

But we had this love for one another...the epitome of how sibling love can run deep.

We all wanted her here for ourselves, but we've known for some time now that for Jan, life on this earth was more than she could stand to deal with. Oh how she bitched about~ some things! Even when she bitched,  she bitched and we could laugh together over the bitchiness she felt. Yes, she has been a very, very special person in so many people's lives. And we all are remembering that!

JANET JACKSON

IN MEMORIAM

I am K~ and deeply aggrieved that I cannot be here to read this.  I was Janet’s AA sponsor for the past 6 months.  I met her when she stood in front of me at a meeting, and with that sardonic smile of hers, pointing at someone across the room, saying “that guy over there told me to ask you to be my sponsor”.  She seemed amused, cynical, slightly self-conscious, but somehow willing to take direction.  Of course I said yes.  Little did I realize that this would be one of the most challenging sponsees I would ever encounter.  The added coincidence and surprise came when I learned that her mother was the very Priscilla I had known a few years before from church.  I knew of the son and daughter somewhere out there, ‘missing in action’.  And here I was sponsoring her daughter.

Over the months of phone calls and driving Janet to meetings, I saw someone who was at once completely lost, and yet SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW willing to give this a shot.  There was someone kind and sweet hiding inside of a tough facade.  Sitting in my car as I dropped her off after many a meeting, at times when Janet would seem to be struggling harder and visibly angry or disturbed, I would often lean over, place my hand gently on her breastbone, and declare “I know who’s in there.  I see her.  I wish that you saw her too.  I see someone who has a glimmer of hope at times that this process might work.  And the reason I know that is that I ask you to call me every day and you DO.  You willingly get into my car and ride to meetings all the time.  I see that face of yours bloom into a smile from time to time and I know that you see it … the hope … the ‘thing’ … the possibility for joy that so many of us have found.”

In my little fledgling art business I saw the best of Janet.  She was an energetic, willing and very generous helper.  Janet was my volunteer assistant for the first craft show I ever participated in.  I was terrified, overwhelmed, and physically challenged with the amount of work involved.  She was ready to roll at 6:30am when I picked her up, bleary eyed from 2 hours of sleep, and she supported and encouraged me throughout the day all the way to unloading at the day’s end with multiple trips up the stairs at my home to store everything.  She smiled, she seemed to have fun, and I saw someone who recognized possibilities for herself.  It was sweet.  It was wonderful.  I called her the next morning especially to thank her for her generosity.

I will never know the hidden demons that ravaged the soul of this gentle, lost soul.  That she wasn’t up to the challenge some of the time made us all sad.  On the other hand, she apparently never made it quite this far, or opened her heart quite this much to the possibility of recovery.  And for this, I think we are all grateful.  For me … it was an honor.  This woman occupied a huge part of my heart, my thoughts, my efforts and my life for 6 months.  She will always own a special place in my life’s memories.  I am starting a sponsorship workshop for AA sponsors all over the area, and dedicating it to that sardonic, sweet sponsee I once had … Janet Jackson.

K~