Buon Compleanno!

1937 was a year of milestones for history. The golden gate bridge opened. Roosevelt entered the oval office for his second term. Snow White opens as the first animated feature-length film. Italy joined the Axis Powers. And Amelia Earhart flew from Oakland to Honolulu.

In that year, this little girl was born in North Carolina to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother who had met and fallen in love in Panama. She would grow up in the deep south--Montgomery, Alabama in an era of segregation and racism only to find her passion for diversity and cultures in the exotic places she lived and traveled.

She married a Yankee, lived for a decade in Japan and Italy. Adopted a German son and a Vietnamese daughter, and raised them in Hawaii's melting pot.

Today this little girl in the photo turned 70 years old. I'm half her age and haven't a tenth of her energy. Today I watched her outswim, outshop and overall outlast me as I whimpered off tonite to take a nap.



My mother is the kind of woman who rejected the rules and followed her husband to a war zone. Who rounded up sick Vietnamese war orphans and took them to the American military hospitals for care. Who made headlines in Hawaii when she won the war for civil service spouses to retain their COLA who were married to military.

My mom is part samurai, part Genghis Kahn, part Energizer bunny. And I get the feeling even at 70 she's just getting started.