My grandfather, my father side, was, what you would call, a self-made man. He was an Air Force mechanic at WWII. After returning from the war, he started a small engineering workshop in Osaka, and expanded it to a mechatronics manufacturing company.

He was an austere man, people said. He was stern, forbidding, and critical. He was all about practicality. Those are the terms my relatives used to describe his character.

“But he changed after you were born.” my father’s cousin, Misa, once told me.

“He used to be very rigid. I’m sorry to say this, but honestly I was afraid of him. But since you were born, he has changed completely. He became much gentler and more lenient. He totally doted on you.”

Back then, I didn’t know if that was true. Grandfather has always been a difficult person. He was kind to me, but I sensed that everyone else in the family was rather scared of him. As he was the head of the family, he behaved like a king in the house. Although I was too young to verbalize it, I didn’t quite like that. So I have never really felt a strong affection towards him. He passed away when I was 19 years old.

16 year later, my grandmother passed away. As I was sorting out her personal possessions after her funeral, I found hundreds of photos in her drawer, mostly in envelopes. Those pictures were from family gatherings, business functions and social events over the past several decades. I bought some new albums and tried to put them in some order.

Among those snapshots, I found a thin album. It had several photos of me with my grandparents. One looked from a family lunch, perhaps for my birthday. There was a message written on the back of the album. I recognized my mom’s handwriting.

“Thank you very much for your coming to our lunch last week. I’m sending you some photos. No need to return this album as we have copies. Hope to see you again soon.”

In those photos, my grandparents were smiling, looking at me eating. I flipped one of the photos and noticed there was another message written on its back.

“Chiyo looks very healthy and strong.”

Those wiggly writings must be my grandfather’s. I looked at the back of another photo. It had some notes too. Every photo had a caption on its back!

“Chiyo is eating a lot.” “She seems to be very clever.” “I’m looking forward to seeing her in the years to come.”

(For the record, in every photo, I just appeared to be an average clumsy kid who seemed far from being clever or healthy or strong. I was shocked to see how love lead you to make such a poor judgement.)

I found myself laughing and crying at the same time looking at those photos and reading those comments.

“He loved you so much.” I remembered Misa’s remark.