Hey Mom,
The last time I wrote you a letter, I was in my college dorm, missing home and missing you. We spoke on the phone every weekend, but you still insisted that letters mattered.
“Write me something in English,” you said. “I want to show my friends.”
I never did. I was too embarrassed.
Three decades later, your dream came true — a little too late, but I am finally writing to you in English.
Well, after you died, my life did not turn out the way you wanted. I had to continue our legacy instead — survival.
Your husband took control of your estate, and with it went whatever sense of home we had left. Your family asked me to choose a side.
I chose neither.
I stayed for a year after you were gone, trying to hold things together. When I was finally getting ready to return to college, I told everyone it was to finish my undergrad, but I knew I was not coming back — not to the same life.
Leaving Umi and Haru was the hardest part. By then, I had already stepped into your role while you were sick, and walking away from them felt like breaking something I could not repair. I carried that guilt back to college, where it followed me into everything. Our relationship has never fully recovered, though I am still trying.
When I returned, everything looked the same: the buildings, the Florida sun, friendly people moving across campus. Sure, classes were harder, and my English had slipped. The first few months were a nightmare just to keep up. Yet, I felt welcomed — I had found my place again.
Do you remember when I picked up music as my minor in my freshman year? After everything I had gone through before sixteen, I had let it go because life made it impossible to hold onto anything that felt like a dream. When I returned to it, it felt different — it felt like it finally belonged to me. Every time I visited you in the hospital, I brought recordings of my playing, and I still remember how proud you looked, how happy you were just to hear me play again.
After you died, music became my lifeline. A professor noticed me and pushed me forward. I followed that path, double-majored, and eventually made my way to graduate school while working as a teaching assistant.
Over time, that path became a career. I became a college teacher, secured my work visa, and built a life that finally felt stable — until it wasn’t.
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One day, I was told my green card would not be sponsored.
Everything collapsed again.
So I left. I packed everything into a U-Haul and drove to New York, starting over. There was nowhere to go back to. So I built a school.
One student at a time. One family at a time. Slowly, a studio. Then a community. Then a life.
Mama, I am a U.S. citizen now. I have a country to belong to.
I know you carried shame for being Zainichi and felt limited by how the world placed us.
You were wrong.
Everything I am came from you.
You gave me the ability to dream and the vision to keep going, even when it felt impossible.
I am living inside that now.
My students perform at Carnegie Hall. Some are accepted into Juilliard. They go places we never had access to.
And every time I see them, I see you.
That is what I never told you.
Love,
Sora
