A Story for a Story
How writing my book brought new and old friends into my life
Oh, the amazing people I have met this year! For me, Christmastime is always a time to gather with family and friends, some I only get to see once a year. But imagine my surprise when The Kindness of Color has taken me back to connections made decades ago!
On the October pilgrimage to the Poston incarceration camp, I wore a red button POSTON '85 from the first pilgrimage my mother, father, aunt and their friends attended in 1985. I thought if I wear the button, someone would say, "I was there too" or "My grandparents/parents went to that too." Most just said, "What's Poston '85?"
I just kept wearing my red metal button to remember my parent’s official pilgrimage to the Poston incarceration camp. We had been to Poston as part of a family vacation years earlier, but they joined over 275 former incarcerees on the 1985 pilgrimage initiated by the Poston Community Baptist Church, the American Baptist Church, and the Colorado River Indian Tribe (CRIT). Former residents of the incarceration camp came from six states and Canada to revisit the desolate desert that was home, 1942-45.
On the last day of the 2022 pilgrimage, our group of 250 pilgrims met on the campus of La Pera Elementary School. As I was leaving, I met Wilma, and thanked her for coming on her Saturday day off to host us at her school. A third grade teacher at La Pera Elementary School, Wilma saw my red button and said, "Poston '85! I was there!"
Wilma is Native Hopi and was just a young girl in 1985, but she was at the 1985 pilgrimage! I couldn’t believe it! In fact, her mother, Maxine Polacca Morris, had the original idea for that first pilgrimage. As I had to catch the group bus, she said they would both be at the banquet I was speaking at that night. We could talk more later that night.
What a joy it was to meet Maxine and hear her story. She was just 7 years old when she left Northeast Arizona with her family and relocated to the CRIT reservation. She remembers taking a bus through Winslow, Prescott, and eventually Parker AZ. They had no idea where they were going and when they got to Parker, it was 114 degrees! It was so hot and they didn’t have much water… It was SO hot!
The bus stopped at Poston Incarceration Camp 2 - the Japanese Americans had left, so there were many empty barracks. The authorities told them “Take Your Pick.” She remembers all the kids running around the barracks - imagine a 100 ft.long barrack for each family! Her parents and 3 siblings had a whole barrack and with a few possessions they brought, the barrack felt really empty. Maxine remembers the showers without any privacy, so they took showers at night. “That was our beginning,” she said.
Maxine’s story of not knowing where they were going, the extreme heat of the desert, the rugged barracks, and the lack of privacy of the showers sounded just like the experience of the Japanese Americans just 3 years before.
She finished school in Poston/Parker, attended Jr. College in Oklahoma, and Arizona State. Later, she worked as a Nursing Assistant and a Teacher, raising her family back in Poston.
Maxine’s idea for that first pilgrimage in 1985 was a true kindness in hospitality to those who once came to Poston as outsiders and aliens. She told me how the American Baptist leaders had come from Valley Forge, PA to visit them and they were brainstorming different events that the small rural church could invite their community to. As she sat in the meeting, she got an idea - “I wonder if the Japanese would want to come back..”
For that first 1985 pilgrimage,the women of the church cooked meals for all 275 pilgrims. Maxine remembers cooking fry bread all afternoon for their Japanese American guests. I told her how my mother raved about the delicious fry bread! When I asked her if she still made fry bread, she said with a laugh, “when I feel like it. But I make more tortillas now.”
I flipped through my iPhone photos, thinking I had stored my dad's pictures of that trip and I found them! And wouldn't you know! Among pictures of the events of the day, he had taken a picture of Maxine's mother and sister! We exchanged these pictures, decades later realizing our families had connected before!
I’m grateful for all I learned from Wilma and Maxine, my new Hopi friends. After all these years Kindness is...sharing hospitality!
Back home in Orange County, I was invited to share The Kindness of Color at Santa Ana Library. In organizing this event, I met Patricia Lopez, Adult Services Librarian, who said my last name sounded very familiar. In fact, it was REALLY familiar! She said as a young man, her father had worked for my father on our farm! Sadly, both of our fathers have passed so we couldn’t ask them but we put some clues together.
At first, I wasn't entirely sure that it was our farm her father had worked on, but as we pieced clues together, it became clear. Her father, Edoberto Aranda, spelled our last name Monemixo - that works phonetically with a Spanish accent and since my last name is pretty unusual, it was close enough! Patty asked if this sounded like my dad: My dad always told her father Edoberto to “save your earnings and help your family in Mexico - don’t spend it in the bars or nightclubs.” I had to laugh! That’s totally MY dad! My dad Tad also helped him complete the paperwork to bring his wife Juana Elena to Orange County from Mexico.
Another thing Edoberto said was his boss had a pretty daughter? Maybe that was me! Haha! Patty’s mother Juana Elena remembered a lot about my dad and I'm convinced our fathers were friends in the 1960s and 1970s! What a divine re-connection and delight to meet Patty and Juana Elena and share this connection with them!
Wilma and Maxine, Patty and Juana Elena, Daughters and Mothers…We are Sisters across the miles, across the decades forever! Kindness is...TRUSTED friendships that endure!
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