Dear LeRoy,

The invitation arrived with this on the outside:

SHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

It's a SURPRISE
60th Birthday Party
for LeRoy!

Ooo, ooo, ooo.  I love a  good surprise!  

This was my next thought: "60?  Nahhhhhh. Fo' real kine?  Wooooow.  You no look dat ol'. 59, maybe, but 60, no can be. Nah, nah, no huhu,  I steh on'y joke.  Eh, 49 and holding, yeah?  You still my friend?"

[Translation from pidgin into standard English for the kotonks (mainland born):  "60?  No!  Can it be?  Wow. You hardly look your age.  59, perhaps, but certainly not 60. Don't get mad at me, I'm just kidding. How's about 49 and holding?  Are we still friends?"]

Inside, the invitation was explicit:

NO GIFTS PLEASE!!!

Instead, we asking everyone to design a
Memory Book page for LeRoy on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.
Any funny fishing, tennis, work, or other story
along with any pictures or artwork you want to
share would be greatly appreciated.  Feel free to 
Make as many pages as you wish & bring them to the party.
Thank you!
REMEMBER, IT'S A SURPRISE!!!

It dawned on me that your family is celebrating this because it is your kanreki birthday, a significant birthday among Hawai`i's Asian ethnicities. Since you are the first of our group to celebrate this climacteric event, I thought I'd enlighten the rest of us who follow as to kanreki's significance.  This comes straight from the book, FAMILY TRADITIONS IN HAWAII by Joan Clarke:

"In the lunar calendar, the passage of each of the five elements -- wood,fire, earth, metal and water -- with each of twelve animal years makes up a sixty year or sexagenary cycle.  The sixty-first birthday (sixtieth on a Western calendar) marks the beginning of an individual's second childhood.  It is an important event for many Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan and Korean families in Hawai`i, often commemorated with a large party or family gathering."

Ms. Clarke goes on to say that kan means cycle and reki means calendar.  Used to be, in the old days, 51 was regarded as the ordinary limit of life; 61 was remarkable, and 70, oh my, was to be an ancient -- pardon the expression -- old fut and rarely reached.  

Tomorrow,  you'll be entering your second childhood, kiddo!  You and grandson Kyle are now peers -- kids.  

>> Click here for our favorite picture of you two kids.

In thinking about how to do our page for your Memory Book, it occurred to us that while we have heard your many fishing tales, we've never gone fishing with you.  We've also never played tennis with you.  And we've never worked with you, either.  If you'll remember, you were so high security, you couldn't talk to us about your work, otherwise, you'd have to kill us and we didn't want that...

We've been together for most of the major holidays, so we have a huge history.  This journal of only a few months proves that...there you are at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and let's not forget, Kyle's Baby Lu`au last summer.  Where to begin?  Maybe better to summarize?

Words mean a lot to me.  So it seemed appropriate that our gift to you would involve words.  So today, in creating that page for your Memory Book, I searched the 'Net for friendship quotes.  There's a slew of them.  But you're a unique friend of many, many years, and tonight, we sat down together in front of the computer to whittle them down to just those with personal significance -- those that applied to you, us, and our long friendship.  

As we evaluated each quote, we thought of you with much fondness and Aloha and smiled.  Your smiling face kept coming to the fore, and yes, we felt very blessed to be your friend. 

We love you, LeRoy.  And, you go, baby boy!

past    the present    future

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