As a child full of questions, I found a communication gap between me and my Issei grandparents, who spoke next to no English. My Japanese was little better. At the time, it was painful, frustrating and distancing, but as I get older, the memory of their mundane actions continues to reverberate with profound lessons.

You could set a metronome to the sound of Baachan washing the rice, “goshi, goshi, goshi,” scrubbing the grains firmly three times, giving the pot a quarter turn, and then scrubbing again – goshi, goshi, goshi.... Almost fifty years later, whenever I catch myself mentally plotting the most precise and efficient way to accomplish a task, I’m reminded of her silent lesson about moving through life without wasted motion.

Jiichan, my grandfather, was a man of few words. He certainly never took me on his knee to tell me he loved me. I just knew by the crinkles around his eyes. He didn’t have to tell me how much he loved nature. It was implicit in the silent companionship of our early morning walks through the strawberry fields, when our breath hung like clouds in front of our faces, and the frosty ground crunched beneath our feet. In the evening, he didn’t have to tell me how tired he was as he sipped his red jug wine out of a teacup while I stood behind his chair and pounded his aching shoulders with my child’s fists. He didn’t have to tell me if the crops had fetched a good price at market. He would just come home to scoop me into his pickup truck and take me to the store, where he’d pile a grocery cart with bottled shrimp cocktails and jello molds.

I guess I expected more from my Nisei dad. After all, we had no language barrier. But I never heard the much-hoped-for “good job,” or “I’m proud of you.” It took me many years to realize that “not bad” was praise and “pretty good” was high praise indeed. His unspoken message was not to settle for “good enough.” If an A- marred my usually perfect report card, Dad would merely grunt, “What happened?” Though crushed at the time, in retrospect, I realize that he was expressing his complete faith in my intelligence, and in my ability to live up to it. Dad taught me to love books not by reading to me, but by reading himself, and by collecting shelves of books which became my private lending library.

Internment, the draft, marriage and parenthood had forced Dad to shelve his dreams of being a writer. He never spoke of it. He just came home late at night from a demanding job and stayed up ’til the wee hours cramming tight lines of fluidly inked block capitals onto reams of onionskin paper. I didn’t know what he wrote. I only knew I felt awe and respect for this man who had the drive to meet his family obligations and still find time for his real love, writing.

In my own life, my politics and passions have often diametrically opposed my dad’s, to his frequent frustration, but neither of us doubt the source of my interest in creativity, social justice, and observation and analysis.

At times I’ve wished I’d grown up with a more verbal, less subtle heritage. Certainly, trying to read between the lines has led to occasional misunderstandings. But as I grow older, the silent lessons of my relatives grow more precious. My children never saw the close-knit Issei community in full swing. In order to give them a sense of what my forebears gave me, I’ve had to study the history, culture and religion of both Japan and Japanese Americans so that I can articulate to my children what my parents and grandparents never said out aloud.

But in the end, although I’ve talked myself blue in the face, I’m afraid actions speak louder than words. It’s tempting to look at my 23-year-old son with the same disapproval my dad once had for me. He’s a ’nineties version of the ‘sixties hippie I once was. But when I look beyond the tattoos and the flakiness, I see a straight back, a clear eye and a compassionate heart. As intermittently and selectively as he may apply them as yet, his core values are Nikkei through and through.