These pictures captured a few moments in time back in 1964. Mamma's mother, Nettie Smith, had come to live with us for six months while we lived in Sakawa, a seaside village within the city of Odawara in Kanagawa prefecture. Now we were seeing Grandma off at the ship in Yokohama. We had seen Grandma aboard, getting her situated in her room, then pausing to take pictures on the deck. Grandma had purchased a collection of brightly colored paper streamers—red, blue, yellow, orange, and green. When we were once again standing below gazing up at her, she hurled a paper streamer out into the breeze. My father and I chased it down, giving it to Mamma, a fragile thread of paper binding mother and daughter together for these last moments before the paper streamer would grow taunt and then break, falling in sagging loops as the ship departed for the long journey home.

The little boy dressed in a tuxedo is me. The woman standing with Mamma was a fellow missionary friend, Lucille Johnson, and her daughter, Kristine—both holding onto the end of a paper streamer.