Theo Nakagawa-Reed
Obaachan
grandparent of Theodore
Contact
4linked records
31mentions
3questions
2021–2026saved
What the account says about Obaachan
35 records, oldest first2021
Apr 17
2024
Jan 7
birthdays
jan 27 dad
jan 30 kofi
feb 11 maren
apr 12 obaachan
may 16 aunt colleen
jul 19 dez
aug 30 jiichan
sep 3 mom
oct 2 priya
nov 9 hana
dec 14 lu
mine mar 22. miso "june 1" (made up by the shelter)
Nov 9
Hana is 23 today. called her at lunch her time. she got the job at the animal h…
…ospital, the real one with the surgery suite, not the clinic in the strip mall, and she starts the first week of december. she was eating a burrito in her car and crying a little and telling me about a dog named Kevin.
I'm so proud of her I don't know where to put it. she's the one who stayed. I left at eighteen and…
Dec 11
xmas, budget 150 total, not going home this year (flights are 600+)
mom: the heron print framed. frame from the thrift store, cut a new mat
dad: wool socks
hana: drawing of her dog-patients wall? ask for photos. + the hot sauce she likes from the co-op
obaachan + jiichan: a drawing of their persimmon tree from the photo on my phone. ink. mail by the 14th
dez: knife sharpening gift cer…
Dec 25
christmas here. didn't go home, the flights were over six hundred and december…
…was already built out of portrait money.
video call at ten their time. everyone at mom and dad's except Jiichan, who has been in the hospital since sunday with pneumonia. they say he's responding to the antibiotics. Obaachan held the phone too close so I mostly talked to her forehead. she had on the brooch. Hana car…
2025
Jan 1
2025
- a real savings number: 1,500 by december (have 240)
- one personal project finished, not started. FINISHED
- call Obaachan + Jiichan every sunday
- go home at least once
- stop saying yes to "exposure"
- learn to true a wheel without Ines standing there
- floss
Jan 5
Jiichan went home from the hospital on friday. twelve days. mom says he's weak…
…and annoyed, which she takes as a good sign. he's sleeping in the recliner because the bed is too flat for his chest.
called at eleven. Obaachan answered and said he was resting and then I heard him say something and she said "he wants to know if you have heat." I said yes, radiators. she relayed it. a pause. "he wa…
Feb 2
sunday call. he came to the phone himself, which he hasn't since christmas.
"ah, Theo." are you eating. yes. is it cold. yes, very. then he asked how many radiators I have in the apartment. I said three. he said "count again." I walked around with the phone. living room, bedroom, kitchen. and the bathroom, the little one under the window that I hang the towel on. four. I said four. he made th…
Feb 9
Jiichan died this morning.
mom called at 6:50 my time. I knew before I picked up because she never calls before noon. he went back into the hospital wednesday. it was the pneumonia again and then his heart. she and Obaachan were with him. she said it was quiet. she said he asked what day it was and Obaachan told him sunday and he said "then The…
Feb 14
what I'm going to say tomorrow. read it slow. look at Obaachan once.
My grandfather, Tadashi Nakagawa, counted things. He counted the persimmons on the tree behind the house every October and wrote the number on the calendar in the kitchen. He counted the steps from his front door to the mailbox, which was forty-one, and he told me that number so many times that I counted them myself t…
Feb 16
Sacramento. sunday night, in my old room, with the glow stars still on the ceil…
…ing. the funeral was yesterday. I want to get the week down before it turns into a story I tell.
tuesday. Hana picked me up at the airport and we didn't say anything until the freeway and then she said "he asked for you" and I said "I know, mom told me" and she said "no, before that. all week. he kept asking if you…
Feb 17
things Obaachan said this week
- she met him at a picnic for the church in 1961. he was fixing someone's car radio in the parking lot instead of eating. she brought him a plate and he said thank you without looking up, and she took the plate back. "then he looked up."
- they married in 1962. the persimmon tree went in the week mom was born (1966).…
Mar 16
obaachan's in my old room now. same landline
Mar 22
27. worked ten to five, first properly busy saturday of the year, every bike in…
…south Minneapolis came out of a garage with two flat tires. Lu put a candle in a patch kit.
pho after with Dez and Priya. Priya gave me a book of Hasui's snow prints she found used. I didn't know anyone knew I wanted that.
mom called. Obaachan has moved in with them as of last weekend, into my room, which is funny,…
Jun 25
HANA'S HERE july 3-9!!
in: thurs 7/3, SMF -> MSP lands 4:35pm, terminal 1. I pick her up (car has no AC, warn her)
out: wed 7/9, 10:20am
she gets the bed, I take the camping pad
plan:
- 4th: fireworks from the Stone Arch side w/ Dez + Priya, bring the blanket
- sat: lake day, cedar, then the walleye place? or tacos
- sun: I work 10-5, can't…
Jul 6
Hana's been here since thursday. she's asleep in my bed with Miso on her feet,…
…traitor. I'm on the camping pad in the living room writing by the bay window.
the 4th: fireworks from the river with Dez and Priya. Hana and Dez argued for an hour about whether a burrito is a sandwich and are now best friends. Priya whispered "she's you but she finishes her sentences."
yesterday the lake. she swam…
Aug 30
he would have been 89 today.
called Obaachan. she'd made his breakfast and put it in front of the picture and then eaten it herself "so it wouldn't be wasted, he hated waste." she said the tree has a hundred and sixty this year. she counted.
the claim paid yesterday, 380. I'd asked for 880. five hundred deductible. so the insurance company and t…
Dec 14
going HOME. sat 12/20 to sun 12/28. first time since february.
gifts (budget 200):
- mom: the map print from the Pilcrow book, signed, + coffee (Loon)
- dad: the 2000 piece jigsaw of old radios + coffee (Chickadee)
- hana: a framed drawing of her cat Udon
- obaachan: the 41 steps zine, and I'll read it to her. + new brush pens, she's started doing his sunday painting
pack: sketch…
Dec 21
home. got in yesterday afternoon. sixty degrees and everyone in jackets.
dad met me at the door without the cane, on purpose, standing very straight. he walked me to the car and back to show me. mom rolled her eyes behind him and then hugged me so hard my glasses went sideways.
the house is different. Obaachan's in my old room, so I'm on the fold-out in the den with the humming fish tank.…
Dec 27
Obaachan's ozoni. she made it early bc I leave tomorrow and "you cannot start a…
…year without it, so you will start it now." written at her elbow, she measures nothing, these are my guesses
this is the Kansai kind her mother made (her family was from Wakayama too): WHITE miso broth, ROUND mochi, not grilled. Jiichan's family did the same. dad's side would have clear broth, she says, "if they had…
Dec 27
last night here. flying back tomorrow at noon. writing in the den with the fish.
the week. I want all of it.
Obaachan gets up at five and I've been getting up with her, which nobody asked me to do. she sweeps the patio in the dark, the same strokes, and then she makes tea and sits at the kitchen table and paints. she started in the spring. his brushes, his ink stone, the cheap newsprint not the g…
2026
Jan 1
made the ozoni. first thing, before coffee, like she said. the mochi was the fr…
…ozen kind from the grocery on Nicollet and the carrots were supposed to be plum blossoms and are circles with regrets. the broth was right though. I knew it was right because the kitchen smelled like her kitchen.
put the first bowl in front of the persimmons, since that's where he is in this apartment. stood there.…
Feb 9
one year.
called Obaachan at seven her time. she'd already been to the temple. she said the priest got his age wrong and she corrected him in the middle of the chanting.
I used the paper today. one sheet. I've had it for ten years and him gone for one and I took it out of the flat file at noon and it's so heavy and soft it bar…
Mar 22
28.
I didn't want to do anything and they made me. pho, the four of us. Lu, Dez, Priya. they'd agreed beforehand that I wasn't allowed to look at the bill.
Priya's present is a print of my own bay window with a tiny Miso in it. Dez's is chili crisp. Lu's is a spoke wrench. Hana's box had a photograph I'd never seen: Jiic…
Mar 24
Odette called at eleven this morning. I was at the desk doing nothing, moving a…
…pencil around.
Pilcrow & Pine wants me to illustrate a picture book. a whole one. thirty-two pages. it's called Grandfather Heron Counts the Ice.
I made her say the title twice.
it's about a girl and her grandfather waiting every spring for the ice to go off a lake, and he writes the date in a notebook every year,…
Mar 31
last day of march. I want to write this one down whole, because I know I'll rou…
…nd it off later into "that rough month before the book."
on the first I had 212 dollars and a list. the list said: if one man pays me, I'm fine.
on the third the car died, and it wasn't the battery, it was the alternator, and it was 95 for the tow and 486 for the part. I walked to work in slush. Kettlebird paid 450…
Jun 28
JAPAN, april 2027. Obaachan turns 88 on april 12 and is taking some of Jiichan'…
…s ashes to Yuasa.
who: Obaachan, mom, dad, Hana, me. Kenta (the cousin) is meeting us in Wakayama
dates (mom's draft): leave SFO sat 4/3, home wed 4/14. Osaka 2 nights, Yuasa 5, Kyoto 3
my costs:
- flight MSP -> SFO -> KIX: ~1,350 round trip if I book by november
- rail + food + my share of rooms: ~900
- mom + dad ar…
Jun 30
Yuasa, which I've never seen, so it's built out of the soy sauce book: dark woo…
…den buildings, barrels taller than a person. Obaachan is walking ahead of me very fast, faster than she can, with a box wrapped in a furoshiki. every door we pass, someone bows to the box. I'm carrying everyone's passports and mine is a blank notebook, cloth spine, and the man at the gate opens it and says "you haven…
Jul 26
"Then practice."
Obaachan, when I said my kanji isn't good enough to write Jiichan's name on the box for Yuasa.
Aug 30
he'd be ninety today.
Obaachan had the whole family over for his breakfast. Hana put me on the laptop at the end of the table, so I had rice at nine in the morning in Minneapolis with seven people in Sacramento. Mateo was there. he's tall. he eats.
I showed them the kanji. I've been practicing his name every morning for a month on newspri…
Sep 8
Wanjiru says illustrators get a dedication too, on p2, under Liesl's. due w/ th…
…e final art.
tries:
- for Jiichan, who counted
- for Tadashi Nakagawa, 41 steps
- for my grandfather, who gave me the paper
- for Jiichan and Obaachan. he counted. she remembers the number
the last one. I think. ask Hana.
Sep 13
call Obaachan
Sep 15
call Obaachan
Oct 4
this week
- the lease, leaving early. then Gail
- Finchley application, my half, to Dez
- call Obaachan
- tabs for the car, they run out in about 3 weeks
- Miso's vet appointment is next week. pill 2 hrs before
- passport. the form's been printed since august
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Facts
| First name | Fumiko |
|---|---|
| Last name | Nakagawa |
| Nickname | Obaachan |
| Comments | landline only. sunday mornings her time |
Phones
- number: '9165550152' variant: Home
People
Theo Nakagawa-ReedObaachan is grandparent of Theo Nakagawa-Reed
Appears with
People linked to the same records.
Mom · 1 record Dad · 1 record Hana Nakagawa-Reed · 1 record Jiichan · 1 record Aunt Colleen · 1 record Miso · 1 record Dez · 1 record Priya · 1 record Jonah · 1 record Sam Haddad · 1 record Lu · 1 record Kofi · 1 recordQuestions
3
Questions whose supporting records include Obaachan or a record linked to them.
q001 what's my SSN q013 what address is printed on my license q014 I'm filling out the rental application for the Finchley place. Pull together what they'll ask for: full legal name, date of birth, where I've lived the last five years with dates, my current landlord and her phone, what I pay in rent, employer and income, my car, references and an emergency contact.