Spending that day with the Suzuki's had a profound effect on me, but I could not articulate what it was for quite some time. Nonetheless, I revised our green tea website to feature Mr. Suzuki by translating his essay on organic farming into English and posted it with the hope that somebody out there might pick up and sense something from it. Before long, inquiries began flooding in. Most of the inquirers, however, wanted to know immediately our "wholesale terms" without even tasting the actual tea, without even bothering themselves to introduce who they were.... Oh yes,"speed" is the key,"figures" speak for all.... Then, one exceptional email came in in the spring of 2002. It was from Ms. Vicki Lee of TeaRebel in Arizona, stating that she had drunk the tea, liked it very much, and wished to distribute it in the U.S.

I intuitively felt that Jiro-san's tea would be properly introduced and distributed through her hands. So I began concentrating my energy on communicating with her to identify our common ground and shared goals, virtually ignoring all other inquiries, as they were simply not enticing compared to hers.

Around that time, I was about to take a maternity leave. It was a blessed byproduct of my slow "reconciliation process" perhaps not so much with my own roots but mostly with myself. After returning to Japan in 1993, I remarried to a Japanese man, built a duplex to live with my own parents (!), and decided to have another child after having been terrified of going through it again for ten years.

When the year 2002 was nearing its end, I received an official postcard from Jiro-san, announcing that he would not be sending out New Year's greeting cards for the coming year due to a "death in his family." I thought it was one of his old parents. If so, it must have been a peaceful natural death.

I began working fulltime again the next spring. There were a number of projects that I felt I needed to catch up with or follow up on; green tea was one of them. When I received an order from TeaRebel, I used it as an excuse to visit Jiro-san. I told him how much people appreciated his tea and asked him a number of technical questions as part of my "due diligence." He kindly answered each question with a smile as he prepared a cardboard-box full of green tea packets for me. Then, he told me that his wife had died the previous year. I did not know what to say to him and only muttered,"I was simply assuming that your folks would pass away in order of age... I am very sorry."

While I was loading my car, Jiro-san picked some persimmons that were growing in his front yard. "They are not attractive looking but taste good. Take some home for your family if you like," he said. I partook of them. They were good as he said but somewhat sad. Actually, it was very sad to think that when that persimmon tree bore fruits the year before, Mrs. Suzuki was still alive. The world should know that even an organic tea farmer could die of stroke without enjoying longevity...

Later that year, my partner and I sent the Suzuki's a Christmas card along with our original music CD in hopes of expressing our belated condolences. We weren't quite sure whether or not that was an appropriate thing to do. For one thing, the lyrics were all written in English. To our relief, we received a thank-you letter from Jiro-san saying that on the evening he received the package, he and his family put a CD player in the middle of their living room and listened to the music together. He wrote, "We were able to have a truly relaxing, healing time for the first time in many months. Thank you so much."

I was grateful to be able to communicate with the Suzuki's in this way. I wished to be a part of his extended family by supporting his organic farm. In reality, it was he who first "comforted" me. It was like remembering sitting in grandpa's lap.... I know if I relaxed and lightened up a little, I could find that place of complete security all around me and within me, but part of me still resists surrendering into it....