Well -- a cheap flight I wanted, a cheap flight I got. 3 seats/6 seats/3 seats, all across the plane, and every one full. As most of you know, I am not a large person, but my hips were broader than the aisles, and I had to walk sideways. I had to sit with my shoulders scrunched together. The perfect opportunity for 6 hours with The Seatmate from Hell, but I lucked out. My seatmate was a wonderful woman from Santa Cruz, wonderfully funny, in the life so she had tons of hilarious tales to tell, and she kept me laughing the whole flight. I might have watched Apollo 13, but the screen was several miles away and the sound non-existent, so we chortled away instead. Turns out, she and her family own my favorite Santa Cruz restaurant, so over big pink drinks in Honolulu (YES! WITH AN UMBRELLA) I got a free-drink card to bring to Santa Cruz with me next time.
Honolulu. Not even at my destination yet, and already fighting tears. There in front of me was a big fat Chinese Ringneck Dove, waddling mindlessly next to my foot (these are NOT the rocket scientists of the bird world!). Then his cousins, several bluish Zebra Doves. I thought of my last days in Honolulu, lying at Ala Moana beach -- my then-husband would sprinkle bread crumbs on me and I'd have a whole flock of zebras all over my tummy & chest, and they would eventually go to sleep on me, quite happy. I even saw a bulbul -- a beautiful bird, but rather a scourge (imported of course). There were flowers everywhere, leis, I smelled everything. Everyone was wearing the right kind of clothes, and speaking the right language.
Then Hilo. My son, David, and his lady, Arlene, and her daughter, Johnna, met me at the Hilo's very "country" airport. I got beautiful, fragrant leis from them. I was supposed to follow my son in his silver truck to my cousin's house way out in Kaimu, in my little rented Geo. I was petrified -- 1st time in 13 YEARS I had touched a car other than my own, plus a huge & strange place. A few cars got between us, but I dutifully kept the silver truck in sight. Then he turned off on a smaller road, and I thought, "How odd..." but kept following. Then another side road and another. Suddenly the truck pulled into a private drive & I realized.... this was a woman! So I did a quick "U" and desperately tried to backtrack. Of course I didn't remember how we'd come, happily looking at ixora, poinciana, and birds of paradise, instead of paying attention. Within minutes I was desperately lost, on some deadend forest industrial road, backtracked again nearly in tears, and suddenly a truck pulled up alongside and a woman said, "Excuse me?" I stopped, and she said, "Are you in trouble? Do you need something? You seemed to be following me?" -- it was the woman in the truck. I told her what happened, and that I had no idea where I was or what to do, and .... she led me ALL THE WAY BACK to where I needed to be (where my son was patiently waiting). And I thought, I'd forgotten how island people are. Bless that lady, whoever she is.
I had dinaguan (DON'T ASK!!!) and manapua (sweet riceflour bun with pork stuffing), and descended on my cousin's home.
I had agonized with him, 4 years ago, when the lava gradually approached his newly-bought home, burned the houses next to him, and crawled slowly but inexorably to within 6 feet of his door. But never, never did I understand the way I did when I laid eyes on all that lumpy black glass where there was once a beach, and neighbors. Off to my right the lava continuously hit the ocean, creating an eNORmous cloud of steam, 24 hours a day. Here and there my cousin Tom had planted baby coco palms and ti plants in the lava, hastening the start of nature's reclamation. A sad, funny touch -- a "No Parking" sign sticking up from the lava. Yeah, right.
A quick catch-up with my cousin & Aunt Mary, and her caretaker Richard, and then off to bed to recover from the trip. I'm the sort who can't sleep away from home, but the plumerias out the window a few feet from my head, the tuberoses in my leis, the sound of ocean, all lulled me to sleep.
It was a very nice beginning!
It was so good to see my cousin & aunt again. Maria was a legend in her time. A nutty, unconfined, wildly buxom blonde. I always wished I'd been HER child, life with her was a running party. When I was a baby, she sang at Coco Joe's, as "Flaming Mame", in a tight red satin dress. Now she's lost most of her memory, has diabetes, and has trouble getting around, but that defiant sense of humor is still there.
With the heat, we spent a lot of time on the lanai in the evenings. She was always very -- enthusiastic -- about male persons, and that hasn't changed, so Cousin Tom's had trouble keeping caretakers for her. But the current one, Richard, has handled her with great aplomb, even taking her to art classes where she could sketch nude men. She complains bitterly of the evenings when they just have "some ugly woman" there. I was regaled with her sketch books, in which there were charming -- uh -- exaggerations, and I was reduced to inane, Miss-Marple responses like, "Oh how invigorating that class must have been." I sure hope I'm that gutsy when I get old. (I sure hope I get old!)
Always you hear the chirk-chirk of the geckos. It brought tears to my eyes, I'd missed them so much. We consider them lucky, and they're ferocious bug-warriors. And cute. There was a little teensy one, smaller than my thumb, and a hugely fat pair mated on the outside of the dining room window, during dinner. How rude! During dinner! :) Before I left the islands, I had 3 primary house geckos -- Spice Rack, Curtain Rod, and Toilet. Spice Rack was so fat he could no longer run, and I don't know how he caught his bugs except perhaps to bomb them with his droppings. Toilet was very tiny, and had to have a more vulnerable and exposed territory, but he was really cute.
Maria & I chatted amiably, whether or not it was a moment when she remembered me. I reminded her of the time we'd stolen chicks from a highschool farm fair, and smuggled them out in our ample bosoms (Maria could have hidden a CALIFORNIA CONDOR in HERS), and as we passed the guard our chests began to perform wild, unexplainable antics. We marched cooly out, as if EVERYone's bosoms leapt about in that manner, and the guard hadn't the guts to stop us. Maria was the master of cool.
We drove her around the Kalapana, Opihikao, and Kaimu districts. I picked & ate a guava from a roadside bush. Everywhere orchid farms, papaya farms, dense jungle. I saw spider lilies, African tulips, lilikoi, kukui, bouganvillea in EVery color, pride of Barbados, an endless list of beautiful things. We checked out a nearby hula retreat. Maria loved the outing.
But as often as not, she didn't remember me, just knew I was some nice woman who loved her and belonged in some way. We became very attached to each other very quickly, and each night she would call, "TOM! Tell that nice girl to come downstairs and kiss me goodnight!" And of course I did.
And then just star watching across the lava flats. Tom has maybe 16 cats of all sorts, about 6 of which consider the upper lanai their turf. An adolescent orange tiger, Tigger, immediately decided I was HIS human, and was my constant love-sponge companion. Tom would put Hawai'ian music on the stereo (YES!!!!) and Richard and Tom's foster son, Gabe, would make endless margueritas out of fresh, fat, sweet island limes. I sat there feeling faintly guilty about all the programmers slaving away in cold banks, but not guilty enough to get up off my okole. My temperature soared several times, but I figured it was only the heat, and ignored it, and munched away on my pear-guava. Easy to ignore a lot of nuisances in such an environment.
I happily ignored all the tasks I'd laid out for myself, and went easily to sleep. And thus ended my 2nd night in Kaimu.
[Tonight, standing on my lanai in the moonlight, I watched a plane pass overhead. Sometimes we get the equivalent of "Kona winds," and the planes have to pass over my home. This always made me fight tears, I always imagined they were going to Hawai'i. But tonight, it just gave me happy memories of the lovely days I just had.]
There in Kaimu, in the Puna district, I was certainly in the land of Madame Pele. Pele is our volcano goddess, and pretty much supreme over all our other entities. Being in the heart of her land, I understood better than I ever had, why she is thought supreme.
Tom's house came within 6 feet of being wiped out, about 4 years ago. I communicated with him at the time, but never, never understood what he'd gone thru till I saw it. Where there was a beach right outside his front door, there is now a city-block or more of lava. Looking like an oddly-black fudge, and operating like a pancake griddle in the blazing sun. A jaunty and silly note is a "No Parking" sign sticking incongruously out of the new lava. Continuously, the lava hit the ocean a few miles from our house, and there was a non-stop cloud-creation going up into the sky, all of the time. Awesome.
My son and I visited with his father, Don, and Don's wife, Claire. MAJOR HACIENDA! Like you see in the movies, the ultimate sybaritic island life. Beautiful home, beautiful music, and outrageously good meal prepared by Claire. Fresh, fat, perfect, tree-ripened avocados -- I remember when I lived in Hilo, and we would all show up with grocery bags full of them, trying to give them away to coworkers. Sigh. Don showed me the pictures he'd taken during Tom's near inundation, and there are no words to describe the spectacle. They got toasted and partied like crazy (what else to do?) and there were pictures of them throwing rum and beer into the advancing lava, and the ensuing explosions. There were pictures of his neighbors' homes going up in flames, from the very start to the terrible finish. What days those must have been! I never really understood.
I drove home on the empty (deadend now) lava-jungle highway, and passed thru a low cloud [there is NO fog in the islands, but in funny conditions actual clouds will drop low]. The patches were somewhat larger than a human, and shaped like stereotype ghosts. They parted as I drove thru and reformed as I passed. I fancied for a moment they were Pele's minions. I liked to imagine that they were okay about me, perhaps even positive... silly idea, but oddly real at that moment. I had transgressed against Pele, so I suppose I felt a tad nervous -- in the morning, going down the highway, I saw... A LEHUA BUSH! Not the ohi'a lehua, which are everywhere there, but the beautiful and romantic valley lehua (calliandra) , with the fuller blossoms. I have 3 favorite flowers: ohi'a lehua for its character and strength, white ginger for its fragrance, and valley lehua for its beauty. It is said to be a minor offense to pick a lehua in the morning and that, if you do, it will rain. Well, after photographing it from every possible angle, I couldn't resist, and picked one. It rained all day! So I looked over my shoulder the rest of my stay. [I have the now-dry blossom sitting at my terminal, the screen draped in fragrant maile.]
[If you like, see the photos I took of the valley lehua].
Superstition is pervasive in Hawai'i. I always think of myself as not superstitious, but... there are "those" moments. I'm probably worst at New Years. We are such a polyglot culture, I run around like a chicken trying to satisfy ALL our superstitions. While the blackeye peas and cornbread are cooking, I'm sweeping the house with a pine-boughs broom, setting up my mochi cakes and tangerine (with leaf) in front of the ho-tei, and putting up my red, gold, black & white Chinese paper for that which I want in the coming year (I think "health" this year, yes?). All the family babies have their umbilical cords taken far out to sea, for the shark god. Pretty silly sounding, but somehow part of our life.
Tom has planted coco palms, ti plants, etc., in the lava crevices, to speed nature's reclamation of the land. My aunt was so unhappy at the idea that I would leave. So I bought a red ginger, a white ginger, and a red ti plant, and Tom and I chose a spot for them to be planted. I told Maria that I would always be there, now, part of their very earth. I'd like to think that I've developed some powerful mana in the last few months, and that it will indeed pervade their homestead.
I reverted almost totally primitive within the first hour of landing (lost my carefully acquired and groomed english totally!). Now somehow I re-mold myself into a rational North American. Such a split spirit!
The Big Island being so huge, I had ample music listening time as I drove. Our music has advanced phenomenally over the past years. From atrocities such as "Little Brown Gal" and "Moon of Manakura", we have advanced to rich, authentic pieces such as Ku'u Hoa and Ka Ua Kea. I developed a liking for a youngster, Sistah Robi Kahakalau, who has a gentle, smokey voice, soft as tradewinds. I always envied the powerful falsettos of the singers popular in my youth, but was always a soft, smokey type myself. Eight years as a gospel soprano in a rockin' inner-ghetto church gave me much more power and volume than before, but loud is still not my metier, so I relate to Sistah Robi.
It's great to buy music in Hawai'i, you just sing at the clerk, and she starts singing with you, and you forget the whole commercial transaction in the fun of the moment. That happened with a breakfast hostess, too -- there's a beautiful song they kept playing, "I know you're looking down on me from heaven," reminded me so much of Dominick and brought tears to my eyes. I thought it was Hawai'ian because it's so sentimental and romanticized, but it turned out to be... Mariah Carey! So the hostess and I are talking about it, and she starts singing it, and everyone sings along, and then she goes into Minnie Ripperton... a very island experience. We all sing, from birth; when it's too hot to be indoors at night (or when it's not), we all sit on the back porch and sing the old songs. I ended up laughing at one of the new songs, Ka 'Opae, because to an outsider it surely sounds like an ode to cow pies. I like cow pies, they're infinitely varied, I even did a photo essay on them once (with a hilarious side photo of me taking the photos), but... an ODE to them??? Anyway, with my son David's help, I came home with an armload of island music (and Mariah Carey!).
On my last day I did an odd thing -- I bought an ukulele. What possessed me, I don't know. While other children were learning uke, I was learning hula, and know squat about the uke. At least I had the sense not to buy the nearby and gorgeous Kamaka (the Stradivarius of ukuleles), and settled for a cheap one till I'm sure whether I can learn. I stunned myself by finding I still knew how to tune one, and the cheap-o sounded okay, so home it went with me. When my bags arrived, they had BASHED THE HELL out of my uke suitcase, and right where the uke was. Getting home had to stop right there, while I opened the bag & checked, but miraculously all was well. First thing I discovered was I had to cut all my left-hand nails -- still, I have a terrible problem with squashing more than one string -- sort of thought I'd pick it up instantly and start strumming away, but this is much harder than I thought. I can sort of pinkle away at C & G7, but that's it so far.
So here in the moonlight I sit, trying unsuccessfully to sing "Ku'u hoa maka onaona noho i ke huahiwi" in time to the fast music (I'll get it, really I will).
I was notified today that my mother died. Poignant timing. A few days ago in Hawai'i, I had put together a box of island goodies for her, all sorts of things -- dried mangoes, li hing mui (salted and spiced dried plums), lemon balls (similar), Atebara's potato chips (the best in the universe), Hawai'ian cookies, crazy stuff. To share with her lady friends, and give them wonderment at the odd things. And most of all, to allow her to boast that she had People, and was thought of. I guess it's arriving right now. It will be amongst her things when I go to pick them up. But I think I will go ahead and give the treats to her friends there, a last gift that she wasn't able to make herself.
My mother and I weren't close when she was sentient; she did things to me that she could have, and perhaps should have, gone to prison for. But when she became senile, my sister Malia & I were all she had, so we did what we could. And actually, she became kind of a sweet person when she could no longer remember who we were. I called her just a few days ago, and she sounded fine (tho she had no idea who I was), so this is a surprise. Close or not, this is a piece of my life that is irrevocably ended, and cannot be changed. A very sobering thought.
It's made me think more about family. Until I got sick, I thought there was all the time in the world for everything. Now I understand that that's not so. It makes me doubly glad that I spent time with my son, cousin, & aunt, face to face. What if my aunt had died and I hadn't gone to see her? I'm glad I'm up to date with who she is and what's happening.
In Hawai'i, family is chosen, by and large. Blood family is important, of course, but the word "family" encompasses much more than that. Our word for adopted family is "hanai" -- like my son saying, "I want you to meet my hanai mama." To be family requires no papers or formalities, you simply adopt one another. And then you are Family. Another thing we say is, "calabash family," or "calabash sister," etc. -- the meaning being that you share food out of the same calabash. (And we do.)
My trip gave me a chance to finally meet my son David's lady, Arlene. A wonderful, grounded, sensible woman with a good sense of humour. They have been together 6 years, and she is definitely now my hanai daughter. She has a daughter, Johnna, 11, whom I took to immediately, and I will greatly enjoy being her hanai gramma. So long I waited, to go there and meet her -- there was always... tomorrow.
My cousin Tom is a brave and impressive person. He's an activist for the rights of gay youths to have safe organizations to communicate and handle their feelings. He has received hate mail, threats, depradations in our major newspaper, but is uncompromising. This is in odd contrast to his family personality, which is mellow, laid-back, "whatevah!" as we say in Hawai'i. We communicate by E-mail, and that has brought us closer, but it was nothing like being together in person, sitting around and reminiscing and getting current with one another. I admire and love him very much, and being with him was a gift.
My aunt, "Flaming Mame" whom you've already been introduced to, is also very special. She was also an artist, and an extremely good one. Tom has gradually been retrieving and assembling her works, and for the first time in my life, I could see them together. As an early Christmas present for Tom and Maria, I chose to give them a pastel of hers that I had, of me when I was seven. In a way it was good to get it out of the house -- she was such a good artist that she had captured perfectly the withdrawal and hunted-animal look that I had at that time. But it's certainly a testimony to her skill. Tom hung it in her room, directly below a self-portrait that she'd done right at that same time, and they are awesome in combo. I still have a watercolor of hers that she did of our childhood summer home, on the north shore of Oahu, and I think I will keep that till it's time to go. I loved that place so much, and love the painting so much.
David and I had a chance to talk about my illness, and this was good. He'd been quite evasive for months, I guess not knowing how I was really feeling, or how to respond, so it was good to be together. We talked about my feelings about organ donation, cremation, etc., in a way we never had, and it cleared the air and clearly reduced a lot of his fear and awkwardness. These are icky things to talk about, but it's a lot better than getting whapped upside the head without expecting it. I don't believe in dwelling on such things, but they need to be said, once. Our comfort level is much greater now.
It seems that the only good that can come from loss is to understand what a crapshoot this life is, and to be sure to do and say the things you wish to, and to live, live, live, every precious wonderful moment, and to enjoy the hell out of your beloved friends and family, while you have them, and while they have you.
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