I really took Mom's monastery connections for granted. It wasn't until I was in my twenties, standing on a train platform with a classmate, that I casually mentioned my summer vacations spent with Benedictine monks, Rinzai Buddhist nuns, and the odd artist who started with Mom at the Sisters of Notre Dame and later was reunited by accident at the local Zen center (fortunately we were Episcopalians back then, so no one at church seemed to be bothered). My classmate was shocked. That was Tuesday for Mom.

Nor was it at all out of character when, after retirement, Mom once called and said, "I have two Tesla coils here in the house, but I only need one, do you have room at your place?" Of course she did. This was the same lady who, one minute would be cooing over a lecture she'd been translating from the original Korean, and the next disparaging some poor opera singer's diction ("Who taught that man German? This Wagner recording is terrible, no one learns how to pronounce it correctly anymore.") Her interests frequently came out of left field, always with an academic bent, always judgmental of others who didn't get the details right (see my childhood education where she attempted to teach me piano and Latin).

She took me everywhere, to places most people would assume too boring for little kids. Let me assure you, watching old Japanese men beat their students with a maple rod is far more memorable than ten trips to Disney World. Because of this, I take my kids with me everywhere as well, and try to include them on all my mad science projects, even if some of it's over their head. They figure it out eventually.