Zibby is joined by author Yukiko Tominaga to discuss SEE: LOSS. SEE ALSO: LOVE., a tender and honest debut novel about a Japanese widow raising her son in San Francisco with the help of her Jewish mother-in-law—which Yukiko reveals is inspired by her own mother-in-law. She talks about the San Francisco parenting community, the difference between Japanese and Jewish customs, and the universal nature of family and love. She also shares her best advice for aspiring authors—and details of her next project.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Yukiko. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss See Also, Love, which is, by the way, a fabulous, fabulous title.

Oh my gosh. I was like, yes, I have to read this book. 

Yukiko: Oh, thank you, Zibby. 

Zibby: Okay. Tell listeners what your book is about, please. 

Yukiko: Yes. So it's about a kyoko, a Japanese woman who raised a child alone in the U. S. after she lost her husband and we follow her, uh, both her son's growth from 18 months old to 15 years old, and as well as Kyoko's growth as a mother and a woman.

And I said she's alone to raise her child in a familiar country, but, uh, because She has to depend on other people and so people help her, most notably her Jewish mother in law who never gives up to love her even though when Kyoko lost faith in love. And, uh, yes, and for me, it's a love letter to San Francisco parents community and love letter to Aboobie, the mud bingo.

Zibby: Do you know that this whole time until right this minute, and I read it first over the Christmas holidays and all that. And then I, you know, skimmed it again just to refresh my memory. And until now, I did not realize it was a novel. I thought this whole time it was a memoir. I don't know why. Yeah. So, okay.

I'm like rethinking the whole thing. Not that it makes it better or worse. Just, I thought this was your story, but it's obviously not. Oh, well, so much for being a close reader. 

Yukiko: Yeah. 

Zibby: Yeah, it says a novel right here on the cover. So, yeah. Anyway. 

Yukiko: It can be a novel, it can be a short story, but the above character is really my mother-in-Law, except she's probably 10 times more funny and direct than what I can do in the book.

I wish I could capture, I think I captured her. But I wish I know exactly what she says in live. I just imagine this is how she's gonna react. This is how she's gonna react if it's in the this situation and that situation and But I really wanted to capture her, because one day, is it okay to talk?

Zibby: Uh, yeah, it's okay to talk.

This is your stage. We have, you know, this is designed for you to talk about your book, and people discover it, and find out what's great about it, and you, and all of that. 

Yukiko: Yeah, I didn't want to interrupt you. 

Zibby: No, no, talk, talk, talk. 

Yukiko: Okay, but one year, she was visiting us. She's in Massachusetts. 

But, uh, every spring she comes to visit for pass over time. And so she was, she was with us in San Francisco one year, um, the pass over time. So she's cooking and she was teaching me how to make chicken soup and every step and then a little tricks that she does and, and this is like every year we do. And I realized that one day this is all gonna be gone, you know, one thing that we are all guaranteed is to die one day that you know we cannot avoid and as powerful as she is time will come and then I start to tear up for a while she was explaining cooking and I thought, I have to capture her some way, otherwise, how would I remember her?

So um, yeah, that's one of the reason why I wanted to, uh, wanted to write. 

Zibby: Aww. That's so nice. Is she still alive now? 

Yukiko: Oh yes, yes. She's very much alive and then, uh, I have a event in Boston and the publisher was very nice. I said, I don't know much people in Boston. I'm not sure if it's worth doing, like, no, no, your family in Boston, they would want to come.

So let's do it. And so I told Bobby, I'm coming to Boston for the book and she's all prepared. She said, I think I should do visit the bookstore before you come to introduce myself. Like, sure, do that. And then today she wrote me a text and said, I think I'm gonna do the nail polish before your book event and then I have no idea what's the relationship between book event and the nail polish, but I'm sure.

And I said, why don't you paint orange? Because that's the book cover. And she's like, that's a good idea.

Zibby: Have you gone through loss? Like I'm sorry now that I don't know about you thinking that I knew your entire life. So in the book. Let me say it like this. In the book, the husband dies early on, and so the mother and her son are left in the care, essentially, of the mother in law who takes over in that family and having to navigate the landscape of loss, but also the landscape of another culture and Japanese culture versus Jewish culture and what the meaning of family is and closeness and all that.

So, you know, does any of this dovetail with your own life or not at all? And this is totally fiction. 

Yukiko: Yeah, it's, uh, loosely based on what I experienced or the things that I felt. So things that I thought it was amazing how expression are different, uh, for us in Japanese culture and in Jewish culture. And then I thought it was so beautiful that I have to keep it somewhere because.

Expression is different, but the, what we want to deliver is the same thing. Um, yeah. Interesting. 

Zibby: Well, you have a passage that I wanted to read, if that's okay. Can I read a moment? Okay. So this is one of the scenes in the beginning. Hello. Hello. Hello. There are so many sections I can write, read, but anyway, let me read this because this is sort of how we open up, how you open up with what happens.

Alex is the son, the husband is Levi, and you've just found out that Levi has, has had this horrific accident where he's been fixing a car, you think, and the car has crushed his chest and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the gray hauled hallway continued as far as I could see. Then a cold metal door appeared in front of me, room four.

I opened the door and in the corner of the room, I saw a body covered with a white sheet. Except for the bruise on his left eyelid, he looked in good condition. He might have been sleeping, I thought. With my ring finger, I touched his cheek. He was cold. It was not the coldness that sinks into your bones, and not the coldness that children bring after coming back in from a snowball fight.

It was a coldness I could never warm. I haven't found the words to describe this sensation, yet when I think about that moment, my now empty finger feels the chill. So powerful. Tell me about writing that, that scene in that moment. 

Yukiko: I clearly remember writing that scene. I think for multiple times, I tried to explain the sensation of coldness.

And I, I still cannot explain what is like, so I have to rely on almost like a physical thing that was the cruelest I can tell what feels like. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not making sense. I still cannot explain. 

Zibby: You're making sense. It's, it's hard to explain. It's like beyond our comprehension that this happens in our world, right?

That, you know, all of that. Well, here, let me read another section also, because I have like 20 pages dog eared here, but let me read about this funny thing about how you describe Alex. Alex was born with the look. of a famous Japanese boxer who later became a slapstick comedian. His face red and beaten, his body bruised.

When I pressed him to my breast to feed, he could barely open his eyes, his eyelids still swollen like an alien, no whites to his eyes. He's here, he's in my arms, I shouted to my mother in Japan over the telephone. He is as red as a baboon's butt and looks like guts. Ishi Matsu. Mother, he is here with me.

And when I hold my finger under his nose, I can feel the air coming out. He is alive. My mother laughed or cried or both and said, he sounds adorable. Yes, though it doesn't make any sense. Why does it need to make sense? My mother said, tell me about that. And that feeling of, you know, does love even make sense?

Yukiko: Yes. I think all my chapters That is like a question I'm always asking a lot between husband and wife or between child, between, uh, mother's daughter or between strangers, between Mother-in-Law. It's a forever fascinating topic for me and probably I will always questioning about love and I still question like, how is it possible that you.

Care someone so much, especially child, the love for child doesn't make sense to me. Cause things that happen to you many times, you can tolerate like a pain for yourself. It's painful, but you can deal with, I think, but when something happened to your child, it's all so unbearable. And sometimes we want to fix sometimes.

We wait, but it's still, you know, enduring and then it happens for me happen immediately right after I had a child and before that it was just a concept, even I felt there's something moving in my womb. In the stomach, it doesn't quite click the something is it's something I didn't even think someone and inside and I'm just like, and I thought of like, that's impossible.

That's impossible. Something can grow in, in the stomach and the um, but immediately you see, um, AI becomes a world of, for you and. Does it make sense? 

Zibby: Yes, it makes sense. Yes! You don't have to worry. I'm following along. Everything you're saying is making sense. It's okay. 

Yukiko: I'm always worried that it doesn't make sense.

Zibby: No! Don't worry. 

Yukiko: When I, when I write, I can make so much edits. 

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Yukiko: So many edits. And to clarify what I'm trying to deliver, when I speak, I'm always questioning, does it make sense? Does it? 

Zibby: Well, you know, you don't have to worry here. Tell me about becoming a writer and how you honed that craft. 

Yukiko: Yes. 

So many years ago, I thought about the same thing when I was talking about Bobby.

We, it's clear we all die. And what will be, The thing that I want to do if my life only is like another month to live. I'm like, ah, I wish to write, I wish to write fictions. And then also I thought what will be the hardest thing. As, uh, English as a second language learner to do. And then I thought, if I can write in English, that seems the most challenging thing.

And if I can do that, maybe, uh, raising a child alone is not as hard as I think it will be. So then I started writing, um, first a few books were just horrible, but, um, I had a lot of fun. And this is. And, and I was writing and then I. My grammar is horrible, still horrible. So I found someone on Craigslist who can do the copyediting.

Like, oh, this person looks good, let's do it. And then he was, you know, I paid and he was fixing and he asked, why do you write? And like, I don't know, and I explained the same thing. And, uh, our friendship just continued and then he told me, why don't you try to go to a school? And then I didn't know there's a school, creative writing, which you learn or train yourself to write.

And so, but since then I never stopped. And then along the way, there's always someone who believed in me. And, uh, let's start with the person who copy edited and turn out he was horrible copy editor because I catch my own mistakes. So a few years into our friendship, I, Hey, I realized you don't catch all the typos.

And like, Oh yeah, I'm not really a good copy editor. So why are you here? Like, but you keep running. And isn't that the point for my existence? And like, uh, I guess so. And I would still keep paying him. So I'm like, I guess it's kind of success. But he had a, I think he had an MS. So he told me one day, I, it's a miracle that I can still do this.

One day I won't be able to do. And then it was affecting his eyes. And, uh, as I was transitioning my career in the writing, uh, other people start supporting and stuff, and I noticed he was fading and, uh, I realized his disease was taking over him. Yeah. So sad. Yeah. So I don't know if he can read. He doesn't, uh, he doesn't email me back anymore.

Oh. And then I, yeah, I think it's a quite painful process because that was his whole life of writing and reading. And to lose that is, yeah, for him, it's a losing a big part of him, and it might be painful even to see my book or my progress. 

Zibby: I'm sure it's not painful. It's it's well, maybe physically painful, but I'm sure he is proud of how far you've come because of his coaching.

You know, people come into our lives for all sorts of crazy reasons, right? 

Yukiko: Yes. Yeah. So it's just keep continued and I think it's very much a luck that I had people around me. 

Zibby: Well, are you writing anything now? 

Yukiko: Uh, yes. Now it's a Japan, in Japan, I go back to my home country once a year or so, but in between I have a best friend and up in Tohoku where the tsunami hit in 2011 and, uh, she tells me so many interesting story and, uh, they're all related to, uh, Again, love and the incredible capacity of people who brings themselves for other people.

And, uh, so I wanted to write specifically that area after the tsunami hit a lot of volunteer from in, in, in Japan, they, they came to help and they stayed. Because there is something so beautiful, it doesn't exist in the city side, so they just stayed. And because of the new young people came in, a lot of love relationship was budding everywhere.

And then sometime it crosses, and everybody knows everybody, and then Kind of gossips like, Oh, did you hear so and so is dating with so and so like, Oh, I thought that one is dating with that one. Like, Oh, that's a month ago or And then it's a nicely a mixed Of people who lived there for a long time and who migrated Because many of the town are already kind of Aged and old.

They didn't know how to survive, almost, as a town. So the tsunami was tragedy, yet something new was born from that. And uh, so I want to capture the beauty part of it. 

Zibby: Amazing. 

Love it. 

Okay, what advice do you have for aspiring authors? 

Yukiko: But I think what worked for me the most is to find my own rhythm. There are many, many advices.

Some people write every day in the morning for two hours, or even you cannot write, write 10 pages every day, whatever. But it's to find. What works for you. I was writing the article before this meeting, but for me, if I tell myself I'm writing a story or the novel, I will crush by the pressure that I would never start if I say I'm writing novel.

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Yukiko: But if I say I'm just, uh, taking a note, uh, a little sketches here and there, so then I pile up a whole bunch of a document, sometimes one line, sometimes one word, sometimes one scene, and keep it somewhere, and when I am writing. If I don't have anything, then I will pull all the document and go through and whatever captures my eye and then I'll start working and then if it doesn't work, I will put back.

But eventually I realized they all become a story. It just needs a lot of time, some time to sit for a while. So that works for me. I can not tell myself, you are writing a story. I'm, I have to tell, I'm just capturing one scene of what I think is. Or telling or what I want to say, uh, can I tell you this beautiful thing happened to so and so for me and wow.

And then also, uh, that's a process, but one more thing is I write. So that I can feel there is a kindness in me. That's, uh, I think that's the biggest reason why I really like many times in the daily lives, I don't feel I'm a kind person or I'm a generous person, or I'm more moved by other people's generosity and kindness.

And then I always think, how can you do that? And I feel sometime I'm so stingy or. Oh, you know, the things I feel, but when I write, I can love everyone. Like, I really feel like I can live all the humanity in the world. And when I hit that kind of state, I know the story is working. So I rely on that feeling.

So maybe other people has a different kind of feeling that they can rely on. 

Zibby: I love that. Amazing. Well, thank you so much Yukiko. This was wonderful. The book was fabulous and I loved the characters who I thought were real. Because I thought they were.

Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your story and sharing this beautiful story of the love between mother in laws that often goes undiscussed, because so often people say that relationship is terrible, and yet here it is a work of art and beauty, and I think for anyone looking for a gift for a mother in law, this is a good, a good gift for that, and yeah, what a, what a unique viewpoint.

I forgot to even talk about your whole surfing career. Not you. Yuki, the character's whole surfing career later in life was also so fun to read about, and I was like, I did not see that coming. So, anyway, congratulations. Really beautiful. 

Yukiko: Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay. Thank you. Bye bye. 

Yukiko: Thank you. Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.