“Sounds like he’s always been a brewer.”
“There was a time I hoped he might be a chemist or a pharmacist,” she says. “But I’m enormously proud of his beermaking. Oh, look at this!”
She hands me a photo of a young white couple walking on a fallen tree that extends partially over a river. The young woman is wearing a belted dress with short puffed sleeves and Mary Janes with heels, her arms held out as she tries to keep her balance. Behind her, the young man wears a suit with a loosened tie. He has one hand in his pocket. Both are laughing and not looking directly at the camera.
“This is exactly what I was looking for,” I say.
“Those are David’s parents,” Yōko says, holding up a second photo. It’s the same couple, but in this one, the young woman is sitting on the log with the young man standing beside her. “This is their official engagement photo. That one was taken afterward.”
“It’s perfect.”
By the time we finish the first box, it’s nearly lunchtime. The only other photo I found was one of David’s grandfather as a chubby-legged baby, sitting in the bed of a Radio Flyer wagon.
“Let’s take a break and eat,” Yōko suggests.
In the kitchen, she strains the soup base into storage jars as the ramen is boiling. I watch as she pours some of the soup into bowls and adds the boiled noodles. She uses the ramen water to hydrate a bit of dried mushrooms. From the fridge, she cuts slices from a roll of pork belly and halves the eggs, which have soft and creamy yolks inside. She arranges the meat, eggs, and mushrooms on top of the noodles, along with some green onions and small mounds of red seasoning. As the finishing touch, she adds small sheets of nori, which I recognize from eating sushi. Compared to the ramen packets I’ve eaten in my day, this lunch is positively gourmet.
Yōko hands me a pair of chopsticks and a flat-bottomed soupspoon like they provide in sushi restaurants. I watch as she stirs all the ingredients into the soup. She pinches a portion of noodles and folds it into the bowl of the soupspoon, then dips the spoon into the broth. I mimic her as best I can. My first bite is like no ramen I’ve ever tasted.
“Wow, this is amazing,” I say. “I don’t think I can ever go back to instant.”
She laughs. “I’ll give you my recipe. It’s Mason’s favorite.”
“I’d love that. Thank you.”
After we clean up the kitchen, we return to the sunroom and dig into the next box. This time we find a photo of Mason’s dad as a little boy sitting on a shaggy pony at a carnival. In one of my stacks, I find a random shot of a collie-type dog standing alone in the grass.
“Oh, that was David’s childhood dog, Angus,” Yōko says as I add the photo to the keeper pile. “They grew up together.”
She hands me an image of four teenage white girls holding hands on a beach. Two are wearing swimsuits with skirted bottoms while the others wear two-piece suits with high-waisted boy shorts, all of them smiling as the waves lap at their ankles. “I think this is David’s mother and her friends. Maybe at Euclid Beach.”
When we exhaust the Brown family boxes, Mason’s mom opens a third box, this one filled with her family photos. The first picture is an unsmiling little girl around Maisie’s age with blunt bangs and cheek-length hair, wearing a kimono and standing on the steps of a shrine.
“That’s me when I was three years old at the Shichi-Go-San festival,” Yōko says. “My memory is vague because I was so young, but my mother said I was upset because I wanted to stay home and play. Not even the lure of candy could make me crack a smile.”
She picks up the next photo and her face softens with love. This one is clearly from around the time she met David. He is young and lean, wearing a white button-down shirt. She’s a straight-up hottie. His arm is draped around her shoulders, and they’re looking at each other as if no one is watching. She touches her husband’s face.
“When I met him … Well, I wouldn’t call it love at first sight, because I had a Japanese boyfriend and my sisters had crushes on David, but there was so much to love about him,” she says. “It was the early seventies and I wanted to be a liberated woman—which is what they called feminists back then—and he was supportive of the movement when many men were not. He asked me to marry him, but I had conditions. I would not Americanize my name like a 1940s war bride. Our children would learn to speak Japanese. And I did not want to be a housewife.”
“Obviously, he agreed to all of that.”
She laughs. “He didn’t have a choice.”
“Well, he could have married one of your sisters,” I say, which cracks her up. “I hope this isn’t too forward of a question, but why didn’t you give your kids Japanese names?”
“When I was pregnant with Owen, we had so many discussions about names,” she says. “Ultimately, we decided that our children would probably be othered, but it didn’t have to be because of their names. Forty-four years later, I’m not completely certain that was the right choice.”
Yōko looks reflective but then shakes her head. “You do the best you can and hope it turns out okay.”
She reaches into the box and takes out a color photo of three children sitting in-line on a wooden toboggan with a curved nose. It’s an action shot, caught on their way down a toboggan chute. Their mouths are open wide—caught mid-scream—but their expressions are pure delight.
“Mason, Laurel, and Owen,” she says. “A photographer from one of the local papers took it for an article about the toboggan run. I’m sure with a little digital magic, this could be made into a black-and-white photo to match the others.”
“Definitely.”
I dip into the box and find a photo of Mason as a little boy, wearing a scouting uniform. He’s not quite as round as Russell, but his hair is sticking straight up, and his sash is almost completely covered with badges. A laugh escapes me.
“What’s funny?” Yōko asks, craning her neck to look at the picture.
I explain.
“Oh yes,” she says, laughing. “Even though that movie came out when they were adults, Owen and Laurel called him Russell for the longest time. You probably shouldn’t hang that in the taproom, though. Wouldn’t want to embarrass him.”
“I won’t,” I say. “I’d like to frame it and put it on his nightstand, though.”
“I have a frame that will fit. And I have one more photo for you.” She rummages through the box, then brings out the image of an elderly Japanese woman. Her face is deeply lined with wrinkles and her white hair is pulled up into a bun near the crown of her head. Strapped to her back is a round-faced baby. “This is my grandmother, and this baby is me.”
“Oh, this is beautiful. All of the photos are so meaningful, and Mason is going to love them,” I say. “Thank you for taking the time to do this with me.”
“Thank you for holding my son’s heart in such steady hands.” Before the moment has the chance to get mushy, Yōko places her palm on my knee and uses me for leverage as she stands. “Before you go, let me get you that ramen recipe.”