Yesterday I spent the afternoon with Valerie, my dad's cousin who was also Auntie Rose's daughter and has thus basically filled Auntie Rose's Birth Week "slot" since her passing in 2020—I've done something with Valerie three years in a row now, totalling four when counting 2018, when she joined Auntie Rose and me for the Bellevue Botanical Garden.

It's been fun folding Valerie into this tradition, and getting enough years into it that it doesn't feel so much like I'm only including her as a means of honoring her mother. Auntie Rose meant a great deal to me, and like any and all mothers, she also wasn't perfect—and although I have tended to see Valerie only during my Birth Week every year, it's still been illuminating to get the very different perspective of a person who was her daughter.

There's something interesting, I find, that Valerie has in common with Uncle David, who bears no relation to Valerie whatsoever otherwise—he was Mom's older brother. The thing they have in common, though, is how they are the spitting image of their same-sex parent, and yet wildly different in character and personality. I don't mean morally, per se; in both cases I think some strong values were indeed passed on. It's just, Uncle David looks remarkably like Grandpa Minor did, and yet is a completely different person; Valerie looks remarkably like Auntie Rose and yet is a completely different person.

The two of them are also far less conservative than their parents were, actually. A key difference is that, unlike Uncle David, Valerie can be surprisingly foul mouthed. This rather amuses me. (To clarify, I have heard Uncle David swear. He just does it more sparingly.)

Anyway, going to Bainbridge Island was Valerie's idea when I told her "Hidden Gems" was this year's theme. She actually found multiple spots to check out: the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial; Haleets Rock with its ancient petroglyphs; "Frog Rock," painted thus since 1971; and a last-minute suggestion of hers, a plaque at the pickleball founder's site.

I was all good with all of this, especially the idea of finding lesser known points of interest on Bainbridge Island, which I have spent years telling people is rather dull: if you want to take a ride on the Washington State Ferries for their own sake, go to Bremerton instead, as that crossing is an hour rather than half an hour, and the destination on the other side is at least slightly more interesting.

But, here is the clarification: Bainbridge Island is dull if you cross on the ferry by foot, without a car. Bremerton isn't super exciting either but at least there's an actual town there. Not so much with Bainbridge, which is basically the ferry terminal, a public facility for storing bicycles (which looked pretty new actually; I don't know that I had ever seen it before); and that's it. v Visiting by car, as it turns out, is a different story. As is typically the case in just about any rural area.

Our first stop was the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, which is about a five-mile drive around Eagle Harbor, making it all of about half a mile across the harbor to the south, as the crow flies, from the ferry terminal. It was apparently dedicated in 2011, and I don't think I did anything on Bainbridge but drive through since before then, so this memorial may be 12 years old now, but it was new to me. It was new to Valerie too: she told me she had never come to explore Bainbridge Island before either.

In fact, a big reason she suggested this was because, when I first emailed her about my Birth Week, she thought she was going to be in Port Townsend, which puts her already on the Olympic Peninsula. This was sort of a way for us to meet in the middle.

Something changed in the meantime, though, and it turned out she would be at home in Bellevue after all. My first suggestions, actually, had been to find something to do on the Eastside, for that very reason. But, we made this plan and we stuck to it; Valerie was thus driving over from the east, across the 520 Bridge and through the Arboretum, which basically placed my condo along the way to the Seattle ferry terminal. She picked me up and we rode the ferry across together. In fact, this was one of the times her mom did come up: seemingly out of instinct, she wound up walking laps around the outside upper deck of the ferry, and I just followed along beside her. When I finally asked her about it, she said it was what her mom used to do, so she does it too, if she's ever on the ferry without her apparently disobedient dogs.

So then, after reaching the other side, we drove straight to the Japanese American Exclusion Museum, which I hesitate to say is "cool" given the solemn nature of what it memorializes—but it really was. It has beautiful and thoughtful design, and really puts into perspective what Japanese Americans were put through in World War II, in this case apparently the first ones to be placed into internment camps.

There were also plaques noting the official apology issued by Congress in the eighties, under Ronald Reagan—a Republican, no less; no Republican president today would ever bother. And, not to detract from the horrors of what this group of people went through, but I immediately thought of how Black people and Indigenous people have never been given the same courtesy—by any Congress or President, Republican and Democrat alike. The idea that we have so much to be "proud" of as Americans is such a fucking farce.

Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent. I think both Valerie and I were impressed by the memorial. In fact, I could probably safely say that if you were to visit one place on Bainbridge Island, it should be the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. It's even located on, and demarcates, the path the Japanese Americans on Bainbridge Island walked to the ferry that shipped them across the water, through Seattle and then, first to an internment camp in California and then to one in Southern Idaho where they could be with family and neighbors from whom they had initially been separated. You can even walk to the end of that original ferry dock.

After the memorial, we tried to walk to Haleets Rock, which turned out to be a bust: Google Maps took us to private back roads that ended only in people's driveways. We could not find any simple instructions online as to how to get to this thing, which is apparently on the beach of the island's northeast shore. We tried several tacks, could not find any way to get there, and gave up.

So then we went to find "Frog Rock," which was far easier to find: it stands about five feet tall right on the corner of an intersection of a couple of highways. We just pulled over and got out to snap a few pictures of it.

Valerie texted it to her husband, Scott, who replied that she should not share it on her socials because it looked to him like the far-right subversive symbol Pepe the Frog. Scott was right that there are some clear visual similarities, but he was incorrect that the rock was painted as Pepe; I did some quick googling to determine this rock has been painted as a frog since 1971. I didn't think we should think twice about sharing our photos of it, and Valerie agreed.

Frog Rock was a quick stop, and by then it was nearly 1:00 and we were both very hungry—I had skipped breakfast in anticipation of it, as I really try to have only two meals a day on average. I had noted we had recently driven past a sign for a "Hidden Cove Park," but she suggested Fay Bainbridge Park instead, which was also relatively nearby but on the water. (Turns out Hidden Cove Park is too, albeit on an inlet, whereas Fay Bainbridge Park faces Puget Sound Directly.

Once at the park, we used the bathrooms first, then settled on some logs on the beach, that being Valerie's suggestion over the picnic tables because the view would be better. She was right. She had made herself a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and commented that sandwich I brought myself, which was just cheese and veggie ham with tomato on a Costco bread roll, looked a lot better. I had made chai to bring in a thermos to share, in which she was happy to partake. She also brought two small slices of a torte she had already made from home, that being my "birthday dessert"—she even brought a candle to stick into it, which was a challenge to keep lit in the beach breeze.

She even took a short video of me blowing it out. She shot it vertically, which is a crime against proper aspect ratios, but I guess I'll forgive her.

We sat there, shooting the shit on the logs on the beach, for quite a while. Based on my photo time stamps, we were there nearly an hour and a half. The sun had come out, it was neither cold nor hot, we were comfortable in light jackets, the sea water was calm and reflecting the blue sku—it was a truly beautiful scene. We talked a lot about TV shows we're watching, and she asked for recommendations of both shows and movies to watch while she's in Port Townsend (where Uncle Imre still lives, and Valerie and Scott own the house next door). It was the kind of pleasant afternoon you really enjoy as it's happening, and kind of wish it could just keep going.

But, then Valerie needed to use the bathroom again, and we decided it was time to go. We wound up back to the ferry terminal in time to take the 3:55 ferry back to Seattle. That still gave us another hour or so, counting the wait as well as the crossing and then the drive back to my place from the Seattle waterfront, to hang out. It was nearly 5:00 when I got home, and I then had even more photos to process, and then two more Birth Week blog posts to catch up on. After that, Shobhit and I spent some time catching up on TV: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and the final two episodes of season two of Perry Mason, all on HBO Max.

And now, with this entry posted, I am finally caught up! For now, anyway.

[posted 9:14 am]