do you think humanity is connected?
Back in the 1970s, a woman from a Native American tribe wrote a letter to my Oma to ask about her life and requested mementos from Japan in exchange for mementos from her tribe and she sent photos of herself and of her way of life, she sent feathers and beaded accessories, a flute she’d carved, she sent turquoise jewellery, she sent a tape with birdsong and with the music she knew how to play, and a bouquet of different pressed flowers. She also sent a dress and shoes for my Oma to wear and a few drawings of how to get done up and dressed in the clothes she’d sent.
As my Oma tells it, she received the package, saw the things, and thought to herself “this woman has sent me her finest” so she sent back a full kimono and all of our accessories, pearls from the sea, a shamisen, crafts that she had made, jars of the makeup we’d use, dried fish, lacquer, a perfume, pressed cherry blossoms, photos of the mountains, and photographs and mementos of Japan. She drew a diagram of how to get done up, took a photo of herself wearing the things that the woman had sent her, wrote “you and I are not too dissimilar!” on the back of the photo, and sent it off. She received a reply with another photo of the woman in our kimono with “You’re right! You and I are very similar!” written on the back of the photograph.
