My father’s shoulders

By Grace Acosta, Special to Town Crier

Because one of his shoulders drooped well below the other, my father looked liked a walking teeter-totter. It was as if some light, invisible child sat atop his left shoulder while an equally invisible, heavy child sat opposite, ready to slide right off my father’s rotator cuff, weighing down the right side a good 3 or 4 inches.

I imagine my father once had straight shoulders, but that was before he had spent long years in farm labor. I have no idea how many crates of produce he hoisted onto his right shoulder over his lifetime, not to mention how heavy those vegetables were, but by the time I was old enough to notice, I could see that one side of his body sloped downward.

My father came to America from Japan. His own father had been paralyzed by a sudden heart attack, so my father was sent heartbreakingly far from home to earn a living. He left behind his ailing father – who reportedly wept openly on the day my dad departed – his mother and a younger brother and sister. He had had an older brother, who died while serving in the Japanese army. That loss, coupled with my grandfather’s convalescence, placed the burden of family breadwinner on my father’s young, thin, still-squared shoulders. He was 14 years old.

When I was 14, I was in a Catholic school uniform, headed toward a college education. I read prodigiously, played volleyball and earned straight As despite watching lots of TV – programs like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Kung Fu.” I was also overweight – I remember eating a lot of taco-flavored Doritos.

When my own son was 14, he was enrolled in public school, oblivious to his future, but presuming an eventual college degree because most of the kids around here do. He played video games, watched ESPN on cable and ate sophisticated junk food: whole grain chips and vitamin-enriched, flavored water.

Neither of us spent our teen years stooping over to pick broccoli, then throwing the ravished plant into a pickup truck that we trailed behind. Neither of us had to learn a foreign language without benefit of formal instruction. We both had guaranteed food, clothing and shelter, though by the time I was 14, I was working a part-time job and buying my own clothes. Our needs were provided for, and at age 14, neither of us was virtually alone in the adult world.

By the time I was able to appreciate fully the difficulty of my father’s early life, I was raising my own brood and my father had assumed the role of doting grandparent.

When my daughter was a baby, he would often hoist her over his left shoulder, crooning Japanese folk songs in her ear and promising that one day he would take her to McDonald’s. The weight of her fragile head, resting atop his erect shoulder, somehow balanced out his teeter-totter frame, and I like to think that the invisible, heavy child sliding off the other end was actually safe and comfortable.

Acosta is a Los Altos resident. You can contact her at noshoesplease@sbcglobal.net.