Blog Ipsa Loquitur

Published on under I’m not crying you’re crying

Kathryn Tolbert in the Washington Post: He searched for his Japanese birth mother. He found her — and the restaurant she had named after him.

It began with a heart attack in the Pentagon parking lot in pre-dawn darkness. Air Force Col. Bruce Hollywood was on his way to work and found himself on the ground, thinking: “This is where it ends.” It took that heart attack in 2005 for Hollywood to set out to find his birth mother, something his adoptive mother, who had passed away, had repeatedly encouraged him to do. Before that, he said, he never felt something was missing. His adoption was not something he had reflected on much.

I’m not giving anything away here, because the headline spoils the ending, but this part toward the end is unbearably cute.

On that first visit, she didn’t want to let him out of her sight. When he went for a run, he came back and found her frantic with worry. The next morning, he snuck downstairs at 5 a.m. to go running, only to find her waiting, dressed in a track suit. Okay, he thought, I’ll go for a walk. She said, no, you run. And she rode a bicycle behind him. That became their morning ritual during the visit.

I mean, come on. ​