My Letter to Riki

September 27, 2025

Dear Riki,

As we draw near the 10^th year of your passing, I want to tell you how we’re doing, because I remember that you called me every day to check on me. I know that you check on your children every day, too, even now. Today would have been your 44^th birthday.

First of all, we miss you so deeply. We remember your sense of humor, your devotion to your three babies, your talents in the kitchen, your ability to draw people to you, your friendliness to everyone you met, your high vibrations, and your empathy toward others.

Your children are doing well. Korbin is moving up the ladder at Walmart, and he continues to cook at Coyotes, because that’s where his friends work. He loves cars, and he plays in Pokémon tournaments. Shawn is a wonderful daddy to his little girl, Nova. He is thriving at work as an HVAC expert, and he’s supervising a crew, too. He is going through a rough patch, and he tells me every time we talk, that he misses you dearly, and he wishes you were here to give him advice. Nova is thriving and seems to be a happy little girl.

Sam is in school and doing well. Her lowest grade is an A-. She is a wonderful mother to the happiest little boy I’ve ever met. His name is Finn.

I know you’d be the best grandmother for these babies. Finn loves to talk to the big portrait I have of you in my living room. He senses that you are his grandmother and that you are special.

As you know, we went through some terrible times last year, but we came through it, because we are strong. All of my GC friends were there to support us during the whole time. Your children have your strength. I see you in them every day. They learned how to be strong from you, and that is what has carried them through the tragedy of losing you, of watching their own daddy struggle with addictions, and through having a “grandpa” who only hurt them all with his deceit and selfishness. Oh, how I wish you were here to ease their pain. Please go to them in their dreams. That would help a great deal.

I know your friends miss you desperately, too! They continue to celebrate your birthday, and none of the Village misses your children’s big events, like graduations, birthdays, births, and the like. I still have some of your recorded voice, so I listen to that every now and again. I continue to ask why a wonderful young mother would be taken from her children in at the prime of her life and at the serious developmental stages of her children? You were the heart and soul of your family and of your friend group, the Village. That’s why they called you, “Mama Bear.”

Your Brother will likely light a fire in your memory tonight. The children and I will go out to dinner and reflect on your legacy.

Finally, I think of you every day. I ask for your guidance of your children. I love you, dearly, Riki, and I hope you are resting in Power!

Love Mom.

The Meaning of Safety in Common Spaces

I work at a university as a teacher of intercultural learning and development. That means I work with students to learn about their own cultures so that they are better prepared to understand other cultures. You see, we want to graduate students who are globally marketable and are able to think past their own identities.

I have developed many workshops over the years to address such learning outcomes. One of the developmental workshops/classes is called Safe Zone. It was developed by Anthropologist, Dr. Susan Allen, among others, originally to address sexual minorities, and then began to include intersectional identities deemed, “Not in the mainstream.” That was back in the 1970s, and we continue this important work of building allies today.

With the recent focus on inequities across all social constructs, there remains a focus to help institutions build community, foster a sense of belonging for all, and address emotional well-being. As I continue to say, it’s a life-long journey. When one asks me, “How long with this take?” My favorite answer is, “A life time.”

I have a class called, History of Exclusion, Implicit Bias, Aggression, and Language. I present this here as a way for us to think about the environments that we build in order to exclude, which is the opposite of building community. Here is a quick primer:

Justification:

As with any intercultural learning processes, all students , no matter who you are, must understand and internalize the benefits of being globally aware, confident and competent. This learning is not a “check box,” nor is it a “once and done” process.

The goal is for a us to move toward “allyship,” with historically excluded groups with “Authentic Allyship.” For example:

“Performance Allyship,” i.e. extrinsically motivated and tends not to be sustainable. Rather is tends to be “a means to an end.”
“Authentic Allyship,” intrinsically motivated and tends to promote positive and sustainable change in systemic exclusion.

If we are asking ourselves and teaching our children to function in a global society, we must model that same “self and other” awareness. Here’s a way to begin:

Learn about your own identity and the characteristics that make up your culture.
Learn about the identities of others and what about those identities that make up their cultures.
Internalize how this understanding contributes to cohesion and the equitable representation of multiple identities in the class (room), in community, and in societal settings.

Intended Outcomes: Participants in this practice internalize their personal journey in Authentic Allyship with persons who identify with populations not part of a dominant. Practitioners of allyship understand how their own stories influence how they view the “other.” Practitioners of allyship find common ground to learn the stories of “others” and build relationships. Ultimately, practitioners of allyship advance the concepts of “Community, Belonging, and Emotional Well-being” for all.

As you look for readings, look for key words in the following topics.

Topics Covered:

History of the exclusionary acts that contribute to racism and other “-ism” constructs
Understanding Implicit biases and its effects in building relationships
Understanding different types of aggressions: how do they affect the relationship between the aggressor and their “targets,” including:
- Micro-invalidations
- Micro-insults
- Micro-assaults
Understanding the language that further “minoritizes” and separates one group from another.

Again, we promote: “Community, Belonging, and Emotional Well-being”

This is what I want for us:

Thank you for reading.

Our Granddaughter, a Wonderfully, Gifted Soul!

When one thinks of an 11 year old female, one, often, does not think, “old soul.” I find myself thinking that often, especially when she requested a weekend with “Grandma and Grandpa.” “Can we have a, sort of, special Thanksgiving dinner with just the three of us?” Of course I answered, “yes.” It was the following that surprised me. I suppose I was thinking a traditional U. S. American Thanksgiving meal with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie! So, I asked “Sammy” about her preferred menu. “Let’s have grilled beef steak, fried potatoes and asparagus. Also, I want root beer floats for dessert!” That’s easy!

We just had one full Saturday with her, so we wanted to make it special. We began the day with her requested breakfast of Honey Combs breakfast cereal. I checked the ingredients. Because of the name of the cereal, the consumer is led to believe that it has honey. The product lists its ingredients as: corn flour, sugar, whole grain oat flour, modified cornstarch, corn syrup, honey, salt, turmeric (color), wheat starch. We were feeling indulgent, so we allowed her to have this allegedly healthy breakfast food.

After breakfast, we made our way to thrift stores (her old soul showing) and the mall (her pre-teen soul showing). We followed that with lunch at an Asian themed fast food place having to do with a panda. We knew we’d have a healthful dinner, so we moved forward. Here she is by a colorful mural on a wall downtown. Getting both her face and that of the mural’s subject meant that I had to sacrifice a close-up.

She actually tired of the activity, so we went home for a relatively quiet afternoon to prepare for our feast.

Menu:

Grilled Rib-eye Steaks

Fried potatoes (we mixed bintje and red gold potatoes, thinly sliced)

Buttered asparagus

Sparkling apple juice (instead of wine since the guest of honor is 11 years old)

Root Beer Floats

Grandpas purchased the steaks at a specialty meat shop. He patted them dry and applied salt and pepper before landing them on the grill.

I sliced the potatoes (with skins) thinly and allowed them to sit in very hot water for 10 minutes. I patted the tubers dry before adding them to hot sunflower oil. Salt and pepper were applied along with a lid in order for the potatoes to steam for five to eight minutes. I removed the lid after eight minutes to allow the potatoes to brown. Once the potatoes began to brown, I added two pats of butter, which aided further in the even browning. By the way, I fried the potatoes in a carbon steel wok, which aids in easy stirring.

The asparagus were simply steamed with added butter and salt toward the end of cooking time.

Here we are:

Here’s the happy menu planner, ready to tear into her special meal.

Now, the root beer float has been a topic of discussion and debate. Do you add the ice cream first or the root beer? When you put the ice cream in the glass first, adding the root beer causes a great foaming! Grandpa insisted that we pour the root beer in the tall glasses, first! Then we added the ice cream. It worked! No foaming! Let me know your thoughts on this. No matter, they were wonderfully creamy and delicious with the soda’s hint of allspice, ginger, sarsaparilla, dandelion root, and vanilla bean. It foamed, but the foam never ran over the sides of the glass. A great treat!

By the way, the lovely dandelion, the featured image, was taken by Sammy while playing on her uncle’s farm. She has a great eye for taking pictures.

Thank you for reading.

Missing Riki on the Day of Her Birth

Today would have been our lovely Riki’s 38th birthday. As I had written of a year ago, we lost her to an untimely death because of a faulty medical diagnosis. We continue to hear her voice, and we see her ways reflected in her children, which is of great comfort.

Riki lived, loved, and worked intensely. Whatever she did, she did it well. Thinking back to her middle school days, she decided to be on the swim teach. She received medals for winning competitions. Once the season came to an end, she didn’t need to do it again. Then she played basketball. She was the lead point-maker for her team. Once the season ended, she did not feel the need to go back.

Riki did maintain her love of cooking and being with her “village” of friends. When I spoke at her funeral, I wanted to tell the story of her vivid dreams of driving a car. She was only 11 years old when she told me of the dream in which she was driving a car from the town of Ingalls to Montezuma (about 17 miles of road or 27.6 km). Along the side of the road was a raccoon. She stopped, and opened the door, through which the furry critter jumped in. As she drove along a little further, there stood a young fawn along the side of the road. She stopped, opened the door, and the little guy jumped in. Well, she had not driven but a few paces, and there was a big dog! Yes. He jumped in the car through the door that Riki had opened. By the time she had reached Montezuma, she carried eight animals in the car! Once she stopped, she let them out of the car, and they ran to safety. She loved that dream, and I loved hearing her story.

If we thought about what dreams meant, it would not be until well into her adult life that I began to understand. She gathered friends in much the same way she was gathering those four-legged creatures. Riki quickly made friends where ever she planted. Whether I visit her home town or the town where she and Jonathan raise their children, she made close friends, and they continue to love her to this day. Alas, I didn’t tell the story at her funeral. Perhaps I thought, in a split second, that it would have been a weird comparison. Perhaps not, though. My point would have been to describe a loving heart that beat inside her. I leave you with some images of her.

Riki could be called mischievous!

Here’s a goofy one of Riki and “the Village”.

More than anything, we know that she loved her family, and she loved her friends, deeply. She loved to have fun, and she continues to be an inspiration to each of us who knew her. Meanwhile, we continue to remember what she believed in. I leave you with a picture of her and our son, her brother, Stevie. He carries on the tradition of fabulous cooking and sharing his food with loved ones.

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope to talk to you soon.

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