The Lotus and the Rose by Alessandra Gordon ’05
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Alessandra Gordon ’05
My parents met at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo, at opposite ends of its beloved 1960s lobby bar. By the end of the evening, they would share a single bar stool; four days later, she called him at midnight to wish him a happy birthday from the disco. I like to imagine my mother’s Old Fashioned and its orange peel glimmering like a disco ball across their faces the night they met. My mother, Japanese and native to the city, was living with her sister at the time; my father, blue-eyed and the second of four children from Atascadero, California, had yet to root in any one place and found home in his transience. She had ink black hair that perched woven at her shoulders and eyes that held onto everything. He, on the other hand, showed her how to let go. It was three years of letter writing across oceans, cultivating love and shared imag inations, and a few visits to Anchorage, Alaska, where my father was finding a career in
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Left side photo by Aran Goyoaga / Photos in right side column by Ben Lindbloom
