Fukuda's Chalkboard:
Life Experience as Education?

Lynne K. Fukuda
cayosmonkey@yahoo.com
Instructor, Institute of Biology, Hawaii Pacific University

My schooling was never anything near normal. I never went to normal school or what everyone would call traditional school with a curriculum for any length of time. It is not uncommon now to meet home-schooled children or hear of how home-schooled children participate with traditionally schooled children, but in my time, people would look at me strangely if I were not in school.

"Honey, why aren't you in school?" was the dreaded question. I could almost feel truant officers watching me in the shadows while I answered back. In my mind, truant officers were like policemen who would put bad children in jail and feed them only bread and water.

"We just moved... I will be in the local school soon," I would answer. After the interrogation I would hang my head in shame. I felt like a social outcast, too old for preschool, and yet too young to be a school dropout. I would dig my heels into the ground, staring at my shiny red shoes and my white lacy socks. I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth by somehow digging myself into a deep hole in the ground. My younger sister was spared the humiliation since she was still an infant and was of preschool age when we finally stopped our travels and settled into a neighborhood for a while.

"Mummy, why can't I just go to school like everyone else?" I would ask her in dismay after those dreaded incidents. My world felt gray and a funny unhappy feeling would sink into my stomach.

My mother would turn her beautiful face towards me, the perfect socialite, the model body, with the presence of an actress. She was oblivious to my distress. I knew she would laugh off my fears just as she laughed off her own most of her life.

"We move too much...and you are very lucky...it's not common to see the world as you do. It's much better that I take you when you're still little and can catch up with school. Many children would really envy you. You get enough of an education by traveling with me," she would answer. I often wondered why I could not be as cool and collected as the beautiful stranger who was my own mother. Instead, I was shy and lacked much self-esteem. I was plagued by fears and a mouth that would button itself in the most critical moments.

My mother did not understand. Her nurse kept her out of school in her childhood because she was a sickly child. Her own mother was bed-ridden. Both of her parents were educators and managed to teach her at home. And so my poor mother was deprived of a normal education as I was. She never knew the joys of going to school in her early childhood years. I sincerely believed that she looked down on a traditional education.

"Why must a school force a child to conform, why does a child have to learn certain thing, and why must a child be humiliated for small things that matter very little in the end," I would hear her say to my father.

"Why can't I be like everyone else," I would ask on the verge of tears. The same conflict arose again and again. I was powerless to stop my mother's travels. It was like a disease that took hold of her. I saw her far-off look when her thoughts were galaxies away from the rest of us as she lived in the world she loved going from one dimension to the other like a soul who had lost her way in reincarnation. I often wondered how my own father managed, having only a part-time wife. I wondered if he ever dreaded coming back to a dark house, eating out, and not being with his children.

I was a conformist compared to my mother who was a slave to Wanderlust. My mother would toss her head like a mustang with its face in the wind. I was a homebody. I dreamt of getting married and having children even at age five. I was engaged to be married to my childhood sweetheart who held my hand every day that we walked home when I was in kindergarten and he was in first-grade. I just wanted to wear school clothes, carry my school bag and book, and walk to the local school with the other children. I wanted to cut my hair short like the other children and speak their school language of homework and exercises, of P.E. and school social events. I wanted to live in a home in a nice neighborhood with a white picket fence and have a pet dog.

It was never meant to be. Mummy was too much of a travel freak. She would get restless as soon as spring broke or when autumn winds appeared. She was like a migratory bird getting ready for her flight. I would see all the signs. Her sudden energetic happiness bubbling like champagne that was poured freshly into stemmed wine-cups. I saw the new clothes she bought, the shiny new suitcase that smelled like a new car, and her small supply of food that she only reserved for eating in hotel rooms when she did not want to leave the room at times. When I grew up, I felt the restlessness that she experienced, only to a smaller degree.

I would be in school for a while. My favorite and most permanent grade had been kindergarten. I was only taken out of school once during that year for two months. But all the rest of my grades had amounted to only five or six months of that year. I hardly got to know my teachers, I dreaded being with the other kids because I was teased for being "different". I never knew what was socially appropriate in school. Going to normal school became a negative experience because the teachers were often impatient with me. When I look back, I realize that they were simply frustrated in dealing with a child who was hyperactive, had attention problems (today I would probably be drugged and be labeled ADD), and ran away from school or was taken out of school repeatedly by a thoughtless, flighty young mother. The kids at school reacted to me because I was not "one of them" and soon would be gone. I did not understand the work they did nor the games they played. Then, there was the dreaded interview with the school principal.

"Don't you really care about your daughter's education...she will never catch up with her studies," they all said sternly. I felt as if I were being scolded instead of my poor, clueless mother.

When I saw a star, I would say, "Dear Star, I wish I could live in a normal home with a normal mother, in a normal town, and go to a normal school." The star would twinkle back in reply as if to say, "Sorry, little one...I am too far away."

It was all in vain. My days were spent in pensiones (small hotels in Italy) in Rome and in small family-run hotels in Paris. The hotel staff became our extended family. The pretty, young Parisian receptionist whose wardrobe consisted of three wigs, and a few pretty outfits, would greet us, each time surprising us with a different color of hair. She cooed to my baby sister, and played girlish games with me when she was not busy. The cook in the hotel would come out of the kitchen to personally take our orders.

And when we arrived a bit too late, the hotel owner would be at the door eagerly awaiting us and remind us that we were much past our curfew. I recall, with great fondness, the hotel manager who greeted me coldly as a child. Many years later, when I was grown, a terrorist took down our plane (we were not on it); the manager came anxiously to greet us at the door. The hotel maid told us days later, that the manager had waited worriedly for the three days we were delayed. From that time on, he spoke to me, for I was no longer a small, troublesome child, and smiled benevolently when we laughed too loud. He greeted us warmly when we returned on our yearly migration, and wept quietly when we parted. We mourned when we heard many years later that he had passed on and he had considered the hotel staff and our family as his very own. We never knew that each night, he went home to an empty house, without family. In his cool, aloof way, he loved us. But like many Parisians without children, he did not care for the pounding of small feet on the wooden steps, or the gay outburst of laughter. Each year, he sent us a letter that confirmed our reservation, taken neither by cash deposit, not credit card nor by phone, that was addressed to Madame ___, Hawaii, Japan. Believing all the while that we came from the islands of the Pacific, which in his mind was occupied, by the great country of Japan. He could not understand that we were American Japanese with some European extraction from a part of the U.S. He only knew that each year, we safely made the long journey to our beloved lands in Europe.

When we are in Rome and feel suddenly lost, my mother and I will go to the location of our old hotel that was our home for many years like migratory birds that are still looking for the old piece of turf that has turned into a mini-mall or parking lot. We dine in that area that is dotted with small cafes and tratorias. We shop for shoes and clothes in the small boutiques, and buy small trinkets and gifts, feeling at last that we are visiting our beloved hometown. We never feel like tourists or visitors. We feel like people who left their beloved country behind. My heart aches each year when I remember how far I am from my true love. I have not gone back for the past fifteen years and know that it will be a certain shock to know that Europe has inevitably changed.

We lived in a time warp, in a dream-like state. Certainly, the streets were filled with very real people. As in all cities, the bustle, the crime, and the pollution became my physical environment. But in the days of the postwar era in Europe, when countries like Italy struggled in rebuilding, material goods were scarce, and poverty was common. But it was a gentile type of poverty, where frugality was much admired. I learned not to waste material things. I am still paranoid about the wastage of paper products. I worry about landfills and wonder why we are so materially rich. But the natives were kind and caring. I often felt like an orphan in the world, since my happy, Wander lusting mother was unaware of my needs. Friends and even strangers who marveled at exotic foreign children often gave us small gifts. We were like aliens from another dimension. Many Europeans had not seen oriental-looking children in their parts. Orientals were either geishas in Madame Butterfly, or models for Art Nouveau. Although my mother's family was European, my sister and I were of exotic coloring and strangers would ask to touch our faultless skin, and to feel our thicker hair. Sometimes they would pinch our cheeks, or kiss us and call us angels. At times, in the countryside of Europe, admirers and curious onlookers would follow us as if we were celebrities. Old women would pinch our cheeks and kiss us as if blessing us with their love, fatherly strangers would shower us with admiration, and small children would welcome us with smiles that I never received in my school back home. We were never objects of hatred or discrimination. Even if the people we met spoke not a single word of English, we spoke with our hearts and made many friends. When we were lost or ill, complete strangers would assist us, not one but three or four, like guardian angels smiling with goodwill.

Deprived of a normal life and normal schooling, I did however manage to have an education. I learned about art and culture by virtually living in various museums. We wandered in them, taking in the beauty but not hearing the explanations. We ate in their cafes and sat on the chairs and watching young artists create copies. In my youthful naiveté, I used my own imagination to explain the art pieces. I saw the angels sing, I saw the Greek gods storm in anger, and I saw Van Gogh in pain. When I saw plays or heard music, I saw images in my mind. The spring rites, the storms, the beauty of nature, the devastating steppes swept across my forehead and across my closed eyes. I told myself stories to keep the images alive. My sister and I told each other stories before going to sleep and I began to make little books with sketches. I wrote scripts for my dolls and created plays. When my mother gave me money to spend, I would work out my math problems in my head, buying small trinkets, and haggling for craft items. I would also shop for food with the budget I received when I was only six or seven years old. I was flooded daily by vivid colors. The market stalls were filled with fruits and vegetables, the butcher with body parts of animals, and the baker with artistic creations that tasted as beautiful as they looked. When we dined outside, I learned proper table manners and learned to enjoy good food. I received my culinary education in this way. I lived in historical places. Rome, with its ruins was a history book. Out of the ruins of the ancient Romans, buildings, homes, and shops arose. Almost every building in Rome was in a gentle, carefree state of decay, whether it be from the last war, or from the turn of the century, or several hundred years. Some places were thousands of years old. Every street was filled with a chapel or cathedral, a priest within who was always ready to help those in need. I sat with my semi-atheistic mother who admired the artwork. I would however, be in the pews deep in prayer like an old Italian woman. I believed in God and in saints. They were at times, more real to me than living people. The old women dressed in black, which knelt and wept at the priest's feet taught me compassion and forgiveness. The cathedrals with the brooding arches and the Latin service taught me about hope in spite of deprivation. Every church became home to me in the entire world. I felt as though I truly belonged if I belonged nowhere else.

The ancient Romans, the gladiators, and the dead Popes who were mummified and preserved in glass cases were still alive with all the rest. I studied the gruesome relics of saints, and marveled at the preservation of the Popes. Life and death were all the same. The living danced on the streets with the dead. The ghosts on ancients walked among the living, following the same paths on the cobble stone road that twisted and winded around the ancient monuments. The laughter and the cries of the ancients echoed in the quiet ruins speaking to the living with their wisdom. The last World War had only added a bit of rubble to the ruins. The Romans began again the great task to rebuild. Their passion, their hunger for living, and their sunny outlook carried them as it had for centuries past. The living people were the people in the marble sculptures and in the oil paintings. Roman gods would be sweeping the streets; Saint Mary would be carrying her baby in her arms, smiling her maternal smile. Small angels with soft brown curls and large blue eyes would giggle, striking us with love. We met many people who only showed us kindness. We were surrounded by goodness and joy. And yet we knew that when we returned to home base, this would disappear as if it was a dream.

I dreaded my travels as I was pulled by my wrists like a travel bag by an overeager wanderer. And yet, I dread the journey home, when I would have to attend a school where I would be teased and excluded by teachers and students alike. The plants in our garden would have died, my cat would have wandered off to find a new master, and I would have to make new friends because the ones I left behind would have soon forgotten me and formed new friendships with other children. It was also a daunting task to catch up with my studies although I did manage to become an honor student in high school and made many wonderful friends.

As an adult, I realize how fortunate I was to have such a wanderlusting parent. As an educator, I realize even more how valuable life experiences in different cultures and exposure to museums, music, and historical places can be to a child and even to an adult. Schools have study-abroad programs, which produce students who return home enriched and enlightened. Some children are home-schooled to reap the advantages of a more flexible education. And now with the advent of distance education, a child does not have to physically attend a school in the case of illness or due to large distances from schools (a hundred to few hundred miles from school). I feel grateful that I was able to live abroad for stretches of time even if it meant sacrificing my early schooling (and a bit of my normal life). I feel more tolerant and enlightened when I meet people of different cultures. When I meet Europeans, we find each other in a crowd and connect. When I meet students from different parts of the world, I have a story to share with them, and many fond memories of my travels in their lands. I did not care for the social scene of high school so I graduated early with two classmates and went on to college successfully. When I entered college, I found a school I truly loved and I did not feel like an outcast, but just one of many unique individuals who enriched the institution. And with thousands of other students of many cultures, I felt at last, at home. I was free in college to express my creative passions. I was free to be myself, strange and anti-social, misfit that I may be. My school certainly doesn't have a white picket fence around it or a dog, but it has a beautiful garden. And it is truly home sweet home, because I cry when I have to move out of the dorms to go back home.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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