the o.g.

talking to my big sis about our parents, we're both struck by the facets of a disintegrating personality that prove to be most resilient. in our mom's case, it's her connections with family. in our dad's case, it's concern for money and status. the japanese word for grandfather is ojihchan (altho my middle dtr's japanese prof @ tcu let her know that "chan" is a very rustic idiom -- a polite way of saying, "um, you know you're descended from stupid peasants"). when my big sis wrote to let me know how obsessed our dad remains with his money, i couldn't help writing back, "he's got his mind on his money, got his money on his mind -- he's the oji."

i got a little bit of insight into how he got that way last summer, when my dad was still somewhat lucid and he told me about the time his family got evicted from my grandfather's flower shop, where they also lived. he talked about watching his father holding onto the knob to their front door trying to keep the landlord's people out, and how they ripped it from his hand and pushed their way inside. i imagine that throughout his life, my dad figured that if he was an important person with lots of money, no one would ever be able to rip the knob to his front door out of his hand and throw him and his family out onto the street.