Evelynne Watanabe Matsumoto

Outside, the Maytag
wringer-washer chugged with diapers
to be hung on a rope line

from cedar to pine.
Inside, you could see out
through bat and board cracks

after the war and Relocation Camps
your family had come from,
you but a child holding my hand

afraid to let go
when the buzzing began
coiled on a rock.

You ran as fast as you could drag me
down a trail you don’t quite remember
sixty-five years later.

* * *

Robbin and I had the pleasure of coffee Sunday morning with Evelynne Watanabe Matsumoto and family. Evelynne babysat my sister and I, and initiated contact from Southern California a couple of years ago. Her letters have been delightful rememberances of her time in Exeter before heading off to UCLA to become a teacher, marry and raise a family. She told me that the $250 she saved from babysitting paid two years tuition in those days.