Newspaper reporters need a crash course in anthropology

So I sent in a version of my father's life to the Chronicle editorial obituaries department. The reporter who called me to verify was completely flummoxed. "Who are the full siblings? What's a hanai daughter? Who is this Rosemary and why is she among the wives?"

She said "we don't use dialect" when I explained what hanai means (it's a Hawaiian term for a kind of adoption, much more inclusive than "adopted" or "step," though I think maybe my dad officially adopted Ch'asca, and I totally missed the opportunity to change hanai into adopted: I think it's going in as step). She questioned the number of grandchildren, which I had never counted, but it's six, actually, which seems funny to me, but there it is. There they are. So then she refused to list Rosemary among the survivors because she didn't have a sexual relationship with my father.

I said "I can hardly believe I'm talking to a San Francisco newspaper." The hospital didn't have any problem with my family: why should the newspaper?

("It's a news article, not an advertisement," she said, and I said, "You're writing about a real man and his real family. But I'm not arguing with you, just trying to explain.")

I told her we make no distinctions about blood or marriage or association in my family, that we are constituted as I said we were. But no.

On other fronts, I went to get my science fiction teeth today but some roots were fused to the upper jaw bone so I have to go to an oral surgeon to have them removed properly, which makes the whole procedure that much more expensive.

I wish I could make things all better for my kids: a thick letter of acceptance for the one, and freedom from pain for the other.

But the plum blossoms are blooming and if I would get myself outside to go stand under them and cry for beauty's sake I would be much better.