Busy Sunday

Sunday morning I made a batch of apple and banana pancakes for breakfast and served it up with lots of maple syrup. After breakfast, Ayumi, Saori, Joshua and I went for a walk in downtown Decatur. It felt really familiar and Saori nailed the comparison to Clayton in St. Louis: an affluent small city with a midcentury main street. It was cute, quaint boutiques, small nice restaurants, bohemian cafes, Starbucks, and trinket shops.

We stopped into a cooking store and Joshua wanted to touch everything, but after a few warnings from Mommy kept his hands diligently to himself. For everything he saw, he asked “What is THAT?!?” I was going to buy some beer there, but Blue laws prohibit alcohol sales before 12:30 on Sundays.

12:30 strikes me as quite specific and arbitrary, which means it is probably a compromise, but I wish I understood better who was negotiating for which position.

After our stroll, we returned home and got ready for church. They go to a Christian church most of the time, but about once a month or so, they go to a fellowship service in Japanese with other members of the Japanese American community.

I was expecting that loading the kids up would be a big, lengthy ordeal, but Tim and Ayumi made it look easy and pretty fast. Joshua is nearly three, and he wears slip-on crocs that he can put on by himself. When we go outside, he wants to go run and play, but he will obediently go to the car door and wait for us pick him up and put him in his car seat. The three point harness is only tricky the first time you try to buckle him in.

As for seven month old Penny, they buckle her into her carrier in the house, and then it looks like it's a simple connection to the car seat dock in the car. When I asked Tim if the amount of time it takes for getting the kids into the car increases arithmetically or exponentially, he said “simple question; exponentially.”

Anyway, it was a surprisingly small turnout at the fellowship service. Apparently, many of the Japanese students from the university attend, and they had all gone back home at the end of the semester. So there were a few families like Tim’s where one partner was Japanese, but there were also Japanese women there, a younger woman and a much older woman who apparently had an amazing life story, but I have not had the chance yet to get it from Saori or Ayumi, who adores her.

We took turns reading from the Bible in English and Japanese, depending, and then sang a few traditional Christmas hymns and songs. My good German buddy Handel put in an appareance or two, although Tim and I sang our songs in English in contrast to the Japanese sung by the rest of the congregation. Because this was such an intimate gathering, they went around the room and talked about what Christmas meant to us personally. I talked about family.

Also in attendence was a curious older man with long grey hair in a ponytail and black leather drawstring shoes which he made himeself. Apparetly, he lived abroad for a long time, including in Japan, and now makes a living selling celtic inspired leather crafts. Apparently, there is a Scottish tartan museum in South Carolina (or maybe it was North Carolina) which sells his wares at the gift shop and online. (Aside- It looks like a lot of Scot-Irish settled in this part of the country as well- I kept coming across many Scottish names on street signs.) Anyway, he was super chatty and really interested in Saori and I so we had to politely but firmly excuse ourselves to go back with Tim and Ayumi.

That night, Tim treated us BBQ from Fox brothers, one of the best BBQ spots in Atlanta, and we got traditional BBQ chicken and pulled pork, plus fried pickles and Texas fries, which are french fries topped with shredded brisket, barbecue sauce, melted cheese, and topped with sliced jalepenos. It was so good. I make a decent pulled pork in the pressure cooker, but it’s nothing in comparison. To my shame, I think I mostly responded in grunts the entire meal.

Before dinner, we played Munchkin, a tongue in cheek board game which has a lot of obvious and not so obvious riffs on fantasy games and the cutlure. You could pick races like elves or dwarves, equip weapons like A Really Big Rock (two hands) and armor like Spikey Knees. Saori came perilously close to winning, but we had to call the game early to go pick up the BBQ.