More childhood memories: my father often traveled to other countries throughout my childhood.

My father traveled abroad fairly often on business. He was a petroleum engineer and later a chemical engineer working with sulfur and other chemicals, not just oil. He designed processing plants for petroleum and other chemicals.

His work sometimes required him to go abroad to be present for the start-up of a plant, or to trouble-shoot with processing plants that he had had a part in designing . . . or maybe that others in his companies had designed? Not sure about that. I should call my uncle and ask if he knows exactly what my father was doing on those trips, although I think I have a vague idea.

Anyway, his trips varied in length from a few days to a few months at a time. His departure was always a big deal when I was very small. We would all go to the airport to see him off in person.

In those days, "going to the airport" meant getting personal with the airplanes! We stood behind chainlink fences not far from the planes. He would walk out with others who were flying away and climb stairs that were wheeled to the side of the plane, just as we can still see on TV when presidents board and deplane "Airforce One."

I guess my mother must have felt a sense of loss whenever he left, but the rest of us thought it was exciting. I don't remember missing him in our daily lives, terrible as that sounds. Maybe it happened regularly enough that I took it for granted that he would be gone for awhile and then return.

As I got a little older, I remember even feeling that we kids had a bit more freedom and less stringent rules when he was gone. Mother would tell us, "I'll tell Daddy about that when he gets back!" if we were misbehaving.

He was the disciplinarian who sometimes spanked us if we needed it. I don't know if that type of spanking goes on in most families today. It was not physically painful but it was humiliating and dreaded -- and no doubt, dissuaded us from misbehaving similarly again. I did not experience it often, but one of my brothers did. My father had also been spanked often by his own father.

Anyway, that was not the main focus of his absences. Mostly, I just thought it was kind of neat and prestigious to say, "My father is in X country." I supposed he got some kind of pay bonus for being abroad.

Several times, the company sent my mother with him to various places. In that case, we would stay with our aunt, or our grandparents would come and stay with us. I only remember once that a woman stayed with us as a live-in childcare giver. We did not get attached to her at all; she served a purpose and that was it. Anyway, usually my father went alone to these different countries.

His homecoming was always exciting: he could bring me a doll from whatever country he had visited, and other gifts for the rest of us. Every time. He would also sometimes bring something to eat, such as yummy waffle cookies from Holland. And he would bring several rolls of film waiting to get developed.

Within a few days, he would have slides to show us. We would ceremoniously sit and watch all his slides as he narrated his travels with "show and tell" pictures to match the narrative. I remember few specifics at all . . . just the "drill," so to speak. Some of the photos and narrative would always seem boring to me, but some would be more interesting.

All those slides still exist in metal boxes in closets at my mother's place. I look forward to some time in the future when I can look at a lot of them again. I'm not sure when there will be an opportunity to do so, but surely sometime, somehow. I know my mother would not want to let them leave her house, and I don't anticipate having enough time to go there, so I'm not sure when this will happen or how or when. But sometime it will.

I've seen advertisements for devices that will help transfer slides to digital photo records. That's obviously what I should try to do sometime . . . put tother photo CDs for all of us who would be interested. Of course, there will be mysteries . . but he usually labeled his slides pretty well.

Anyway, back to the fact that he traveled abroad so often. Although the effect on me personally was minimal since we kids did not go along on those trips, our minds were opened nonetheless. As my doll collection grew, so did my conceptualization and curiosity about the big world out there. I have no doubt that this was why I determined from a young age that I would go abroad myself as soon as possible -- and why I later became an ESL teacher.

"Going abroad as soon as I could" first meant going to Mexico beginning the summer I was 17. I went several times over a 4-year period, (1) to a Christian mission in the mountains, (2) for academic purposes and (3) for personal visits to people I became close to on those original visits (Enrique and Ofelia).

I began my career as an ESL teacher at the age of 22 1/2, in January of 1980. Through this career, the "world" has come to me steadily over a nearly 29-year period. When my father was still alive, it made for good conversation with him to talk about my students, their homelands, their English abilities and so on.

When I went to teach English at a Japanese university (1990-93) with my young daughter in tow, my mother came to visit each of the three years I was there. The third year, my father came along.

Since I was teaching a high-level elective course in Tokyo every Saturday, and many of the students were engineers-to-be, I took my father along to class one Saturday while I was there.

Before his visit, he had been sending me articles of interest for my students over several months -- usually articles about Japan-U.S. professional exchanges, related political or economic topics, and other intercultural topics. My students had been reading these articles all fall and giving oral summaries of them. So, when he came to class, we had a round-table discussion of some of those articles with my father taking part.

All of this made for a very rich experience for all of us, both linguistically and interpersonally. As I think back on all that now, I am amazed all over again at how perceptive and participatory my father could be in my life despite his seemingly introverted tendencies.

This was an amazing and special experience overall! I mention it in this blog because after years of his traveling abroad for his work, this time, I was the one who was living abroad and working . . .and he came all the way to visit, and greatly enriched the whole experience for my daughter, myself and my students, not to mention my neighbors and my mother.

New horizons were opened up for us all through this meaningful visit. Since my mother had come alone the previous two years, she was well prepared to "take care of him" as needed while I was at work. She knew how to use all the appliances in my apartment, knew how to go shopping for food and knew people in the apartments.

OK, that was a deviation of the theme of my father's travels abroad. However, we had a couple of very interesting experiences that brought these two phenomena together. In his own travels to Japan for work purposes many years earlier, he had made friends with two different Japanese engineers that he had kept in contact with over the years. Or is it possible that one of them was the one who had traveled to his company in the U.S.?? Not sure about that.

Anyway, during my parents' visit with us in Japan, he reconnected with two of his own professional collagues. One lived north of Tokyo; the other lived south, in Yokohama. The one who lived north came to Tokyo and rendezvoused with us near the emperor's palace in the heart of Tokyo, a prime tourist attraction.

This was in pre-email days and pre-cell phone days, so meeting up with someone like that took careful planning! Anyway, he and I met with that man the same day that I took him with me to class. We took pictures of each other . . . and my father complimented the man on his camera.

The next week, back in my apartment in Chiba, my father received a package . . . a gift from the man of an identical camera for himself! He was quite amazed by the generosity!

Later on that same visit, when my parents, my daughter and I took a long day trip to Kamakura, we visited the other Japanese colleague in Yokohoma.

He and his wife had a young daughter, perhaps 6 or 7 years old. Their family was in a state of mourning because their 8-year-old daughter ahd recently been killed in a pedestrian-car accident. Despite the sad time they were experiencing, they were very gracious and hospitable to us all, serving us a nice meal in their home. I can't for the life of me think what the meal consisted of!

Anyway, all of these experiences whereby my father's earlier world travels and my own teaching abroad dovetailed brought home the fact that my life was greatly impacted by his foreign travels.

(Photo credit: This picture of the Great Buddha at Kamakura is one that I found on the Internet in this person's blog: http://www.mikesblender.com/indexblog75.htm)