Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

This morning I was surveying my jumbled bedroom--tattery quilts, improvised window coverings, listing shelving-- and thought: I just need to get rid of all of my stuff. I then immediately thought: and then I can get all new, better stuff, that I will keep nice and take care of forever! Then I laughed out loud and my husband thought, probably, "she's a loonie." So today I've been thinking about stuff. I have a ton of it and I don't like to throw any of it away, but if you sat me in an empty room with a notebook and forced me to write down everything I own I probably would draw a complete blank: uhhh, lots of books? There's something in the socio-cultural air right at this moment-- a post-recession urge to purge. Our voracious appetite for cheap credit for cheap crap got us into this economic mess-- maybe craftmanship, quality and austerity can pull us from the mire. Can you live in a smaller house? Get rid of your car? Quit your job? Have no-impact? Quick, hold...

*So I published this post last night, as is, and today it was bothering me-- and I realized that I need to contextualize it a little better. I haven't read the comments yet, just so you know.* Morning-After-Contextualization: I have been reading and thinking a lot about human evolution. I find the vision of an ancestral environment very moving-- up until 10,000 years ago or so when humans developed culture, language, institutions, religion. I'm intrigued especially by the traits that we usually wouldn't call biological- the cultural, the religious, the familial. Recently I've read a really stupid book -- Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters -- that completely ignores culture as an impetus for behavior-- and a really wonderful book -- A Natural History of Parenting -- that will inspire you and blow your mind. Both illuminate the surprising evolutionary roots of common human stuff. Trends, choices, behaviors can be seen through that lens in a fascinating way. Re-se...

I try to get out of the door by 7-- leaving the wailing baby and grumpy toddler behind with my long-suffering mate. It's not exactly cold in the morning, not yet, but the air is wet, fresh. My body feels ill-jointed, like a marionette, and I take my first few arthritic steps out of the garage and onto the dirt road. The neighbor's giant wood-chipper truck is already on and warming up, puffing out diesel fumes, and four guys pull up in their pimped trucks, in their orange shirts. They leave their cars, pile together into the chipper, and go to work. I am shy to jog by them, so I say good morning and walk until I'm out of sight. Things smell rich-- the flower-smell from the white ginger, the toxic burnt-plastic smell from the rubbish burning pit, the cut grass, the everygreen cat smell, the grassy horses. I start to run -- stomp, stomp, stomp-- and remind myself that not to fight each jarring step but relax into it, let the movement massage my muscles and bones. Running feels...

It's a tiny island, and people feel strongly about things. The place is so beautiful, so fruitful, so productive-- the history is fraught with racial blow-ups and slow simmers but ribboned with intermarriages and cross-cultural pot-melting-- and there is nowhere on earth like it. People born here either want to stay here forever, or run for the hills of the mainland. People on the mainland fantasize about the crashing waves and tropical breezes and long to move here finally. And then do, and find it provincial, stubborn and unaccommodating. But no denying the shocking fertility of the earth, with our passionfruit vines coiling up the electrical wires, and the unique-- sacred-- diversity of the reefs. There was even a shark in the baby pond recently, along with the usual endangered seals, endangered turtles, rare octopuses, leaping black crabs, revolting sea slugs, and las vegas show-girl lobsters. So today at playgroup Skyla said, "did you hear they're trying to turn all o...

It’s a beautiful hot and clear morning. We decided to head to the beach with RJ’s big foam noodle and a slick boogie board to crash in the waves. I set up camp in the shade of a palm tree with baby while Matt took RJ to the water. I noticed some music—the un-chick, un-chick of inexpert ukuleles—from a nearby pavilion. I pointed my toes along with the beat—the singing was loud and earnest. I was feeling a bit antsy and lonely and thought—what the heck. What’s the purpose of music, anyway? To create a little community, to participate in something. So I picked up baby and walked over to listen. It wasn’t a sing-along. It was church-on-the-beach. I’ve seen the signs along the road, “Come Worship With Us!” It reminds me of the Simpsons joke about the godless showiness of nature. I’m sure it cuts down on A/C bills. The pastor looked like a model in a catalogue—Carribean black skin, with a goldenrod silk short-sleeved shirt and brown pants, leather sandals. He shook my hand...

This morning was a particularly chaotic preschool co-op: it was pouring and blustery when we got to the park, so all the kids sat shivering on the broken picnic bench under the pavilion (this time the nails were facing DOWN again, as they should be, not up waiting to shish-kabob a toddler). The project was potato stamps: the moms fussed, the paint dribbled and soaked through the paper, the kids--an unusually young group today-- poked stubby fingers into greasy paint mounds, moms swatted painted hands away from fussy tops and tiny jeans. Knives and potato halves abounded, and the kids broke rank relatively quickly, barricading each other into the tube slide and brandishing twigs. I've noticed an inverse correlation with Parental Fussiness and Kid Engagement with these projects. After I rolled up the printed paper with all the potato halves and paint smears inside and mashed the scroll into the garbage (art is transient, kids,) I was chatting with some of the other moms. The topic wa...

There is a whole foods on Maui. Living on Kauai, I spend a lot of my transplant small-talk time keening with people over retail that exists elsewhere and not here. Most frequently mentioned: Target, Ross, Old Navy and especially Trader Joe's. A close runner up? Whole Foods. Well, I went to the beloved Whole Foods on Maui. I warned my kid that she was going to have to be so patient because this shopping trip was going to take FOREVER. And it did. I savored every second of it. I walked up and down every aisle, looked at every thing on the shelves, admired the bulk bins and the saintly edenic cosmetics and the gourmet prepared food (take something fancy. Stuff it with something else fancy. Voila.) I found about 6 things I wanted to lug home with me (for one, sunscreen decorated with cute Eric Carle drawings and with big reassuring letters: "Contains No Bad Stuff." Just like The Hitchhiker's Guide: "don't panic.") And spent $100 on my wee basket-full. Hah! r...

I was at the beach yesterday, sitting out my kid's nap in the car, reading my novel. Two muscle-bound guys sat on the guard rail in front of me in the shade, smoking and drinking 6-packs and talking colorful story. "And then I had trow the barstool, it wen ricochet lie dat off his head!" or "He had hit me but I buss him up, I say to him 'ho, das the end of your boxing career!'" One guy was in a longsleeved neon orange shirt with a pencil line beard around his jawline and sleek sunglasses. The other guy was shirtless. And that guy-- there was something funny about him. For one, he was obviously the beta dog. He kissed up: "you see, das why we friends! Cuz we nice guys, but you nevah mess wid us! We the same!" And during one of his swashbuckling adventure stories ("Deze guys had come corner me in da batroom an den...!") the other guy lowered his glasses and ogled a passing 16 year old Filipina in a thong, without even a pretense of payi...

I worked for a couple of years as a bookkeeper for a small company. I loved the way the numbers lined up, decimals all in a tidy line down my screen. I loved balancing the ebb-and-flow accounts down to the cent and the zen-like tranquility that came from reconciling a statement perfectly. So, even though now I just manage our family's money, I still am quite meticulous about keeping track of everything. And I've always preened a bit about our perfect credit scores and debt-free lifestyle. But recently, to my embarrassment, I realized that we are --ever so slightly-- living beyond our means. Not extravagantly, not obviously. Just enough to make me feel financially arthritic-- joints dangerously creaking on themselves rather than swinging easily along. Eating just a couple of hundred extra calories a day gets you 10 pounds heavier at the end of the year, but who has the self control to cut back just a little? Nobody. Similarly, a financial crash diet is in order. A money-habit pu...

So in a little while, Kauai will be banning plastic grocery bags because they are pointless litter and choke sea creatures and befoul our lovely island, littering highways and beaches and clogging our already maxed-out dump and reveal our moral decrepitude and innate slovenliness. Every store offers righteous little reusable cloth ones to replace the plastic ones. The cloth grocery bags offer a new vision of the future-- where we'll all recycle, shop at farmer's markets, apply sunscreen, and pay our bills on time. The other day I was driving down the main highway and I saw something tangled in the guard on the right. It was a cloth grocery bag. Old chucking-bags-out-of-vehicles habits must be hard to break.

Mahalo, Ola, Pono, Aina, Ono, Piko, Pau....I hear Hawaiian words all the time. And mostly from non-Hawaiians. But I only hear the same handful of words over and over--the Hawaiian-word pool that we can pick from is limited. There are some Hawaiian words that Haole imposters, like myself, always feel free to bandy about. Aloha is one of those words we've beaten into submission-- especially pronounced, "Hello-hah." Because it is un-American to pronounce a word from a non-English language correctly, "Hello-hah" lets you make a limp-wristed effort but without having to fully commit to a non-English word. Win-win. Malama is another one we say a lot-- and we use it to suggest, like finger-wagging school marms, that others could be taking better care of things. Malama Aina, Malama Kai, Malama Pono, Malama ola-- don't forget to pick up after your doggies, people. Don't mess up the ocean, be righteous and eat more vegetables! And Kokua-- you better cooperate! Adv...

I took my kids to the May Day concert at Island school the other day. The school is private, expensive, lofty. The auditorium was bright and clean, and all the parents were in their aloha best-- matching aloha print shirts and dresses for the whole family, and lots of folks yoked with leis in mounds on their shoulders. May day is lei day in Hawaii, after all. I was curious about the crowd-- who sends their kids to this school? Rich or frightened parents, I suppose-- jittery overpaid transplants, anxious underpaid locals, everybody gnawing their nails about our state's 3.5 day school week and shelling out more than I paid for graduate school from preschool onward. We got there half an hour early and the bleachers were already full of proud parents and grandparents-- we found a spot on the last row in the far corner. Soon after we sat down and started our I-spy game, two Mexican ladies walked over. Real, genuine Mexicanas, with that rich accent, and wide Indian cheekbones! Yes, Hawa...

I just realized that it's been four years this month since I moved to Hawaii. And-- notice the long silence since my last post? There's a couple of reasons (excuses) for that. Life is busy-- I just had a new baby, my older kid stopped napping, and my full-time gig as a kid-chaser has become more brain consuming. Maybe I just don't have time. But there's another reason why I don't have much to say on this blog. I started it up as a way to salve the growing pains I experienced from transplanting here. My hackles were up-- listening for slurs against me and against my new home. And I had that clear-eyed view of things that tourists and newcomers have: this compared with that, home vs. away. I laugh to see the line of tourist cars pulled helter skelter off the road, taking pictures of weedy flowers and branchy trees-- stuff that they have at home but that they never SEE. When you're traveling, touring, or transplanting-- the strangeness and beauty of things come in...

Today I was driving through our little town, and my 2 year old in the back seat starting keening: "The ice cream store! It's GONE!!!" She's right. It is. Windows blacked out, fresh-cone-smell gone. So is the little video store-- run by 90 pound Filipina Auntie Chris, talking 100 miles an hour, and Angelica her daughter-clone, giggling over her homework next to the paper-pile counter. My kid's favorite thing was rearranging all the faded video-cases on the shelves, lining them up into "snakes" across the floor. The big planned development on the main road has been put on permanent hold. The vacant lot is surrounded by 20 foot high plywood and black-netting wall. The tall grass is growing out from under the fence and the wind tattered the black sheets-- it's very Halloween scarecrow. And that's the view from the otherwise very quaint and charming main drag-- sit on the old-west style porch and gaze at... a wall of black rags. Hmm. Things are not lo...

Recently Kauai announced its plans to get on the no-more-plastic-bags bandwagon. Starting next year, we'll all have to remember our reusable bags. Or what? Maybe pay a nickel for one of the biodegradable ones, or a couple dollars for a canvas one. Three cheers! Every time we go to the beach seems like we're chasing people's plastic bags as they blow across the water to go choke a honu or ensnare a seal. Most of the stores around have started selling little reusable polyester bags, to get us all into practice. I have a little collection: Sueoka's, Long's, Big Save, even a Costco and an imported Trader Joes, from grandma. A friend was telling me that Home Depot's are the best-- super double reinforced, ribbed, double buckled, made in the USA, and infused with man-pheremones. I mentioned that I loved how the stores give you a discount when you bring your own bag. My friend looked at me blankly. --Where. Yes! I insisted-- everywhere does. Sueokas, Big Save, five or...

"Haole to you, too" T-shirt S-----, one of the local ladies who runs the playgroups I take my kid to, jokingly grills newcomers on their level of haole-ness. One mom-- the one who missed last time because she was getting some furniture and some Royal palm trees delivered to her house-- she's the ultimate haole. S---- introduces her to everybody as "my haole friend!" And then S---- gives every white mom there an impromptu "haole" rating. And her first question is "do you cook rice in a rice cooker?" If yes, it's a mark in your favor-- you might be less haole than you think! Me she points to and says, "you-- you're not haole. You're too country to be haole." My friend -- no rice pot, cooks the stuff on the stove, will never eat canned meat-- gets a "uh oh! You're pretty haole." It's a funny display-- embarassing to some transplants who would rather ignore all the racial tensions that dent and ding their l...

Way back when I first moved to the Big Island, I was walking past a storefront when a flier for the Miss Aloha Nui pageant caught my eye. It was a call for entries in a beauty pageant, with a photo of an enormous and lovely beauty queen, waving, her arms tapering to small graceful fingers. The flier listed the qualifications for entrants: - Must be female - Must weigh at least 200 pounds - Must be at least 18 years of age - Must be a current resident of Hawaii A few days after the contest, the winner rides in the Aloha Week parade on the main street of Waimea, with the hula halaus dancing on flatbed trucks and highstepping all-haole marching bands. The first year we watched the parade, the winner laughed and cooed "Aloha! Aloha!" to all of us sitting on the curb-- her subjects. She was fantastic-- she filled the whole car and blew kisses and her friends and admirers ran up to her and gave her kisses as she went. The next year the winner was a quietly dignified queen, staring ...

The other day I drove past a "We Buy Gold and Silver" place, just as a woman was walking out. She was crying, pulling herself together, wiping her eyes on her naked wrists.

Sometimes I feel like my relationships are racially nuetral. And then sometimes I'm reminded that there's probably no such thing. The other day a playgroup mom, Kahea, brought a whole mountain of hand-crafted goodie bags for the kids-- left over from her daughter's one-year luau. These were amazing-- filled with handmade chinese pretzels -- cripsy litle whisps of deep fried goodness, in intricate many-petaled flower shapes. She laughed and said it took her and her sister and mom hours standing over the hot oil with special pretzel irons to finish the hundreds for the party and the gift bags. I said, "Wow, I can't believe you guys did all that by hand!" Another mom, Bee, said, "Well, we don't have anything better to do!" I was confused. Is Bee related to Kahea? Did she help with the luau too? Then I realized. She was speaking as a Local person to a non-Local person. When I said, "you guys" I meant Kahea and her family. What Bee heard w...

I've mentioned before that where the Big Island was all walls and barriers, Kauai is open corridors and accessible guideposts. Our favorite spots on the Big Island were unvisited, practically inaccessible, and we only learned about them after years of quiet and humble observation. But here, nearly every beach is clearly identified in ubiquitous guidebooks, and the vast swaths of public land are crisscrossed with neatly marked trails. It's pleasant-- I feel like less of an intruder. I don't have to work so hard to go someplace new. It's also sad-- where the Big Island is still keeping her secrets, Kauai has been thoroughly colonized and marked by the outsider's use. Who else would need all that interpretation of the landscape? But there are still mysteries. And there is something urgently itchy about the unexplored territories on the island-- people's favorite fishing spots and family-secret hunting trails-- plain on a map but unnoticed unless you know what you...

I ran into an aqcuaintance in the Costco eatery the other day (finest 1$ dining on island!) and she invited me to come learn a hula with her church group for their upcoming luau. I really want to learn hula-- those slow-moving women of all sizes, eyes following their hands, the steady rocking rhythm, back and forth. But I've been too shy to just call a halau and sign up. So I was eager to give it a try last night. On the way there I had the weirdest sensation that I should just turn around and go home. But I felt obligated-- I had told this girl I was coming, she'd asked me several times. I didn't have anywhere else to be-- no legitimate excuse for turning around. So obligation and guilt won out over my intuition. Will I never learn? I got there and a large group of people were preparing food. I saw my aqcuaintance--Meghan-- she seemed to be in the middle of high-level negotiations about the state of the chopped onions for the lomi lomi salmon. I sauntered up to on...

This morning we took a short trek up to Lawai to visit the International Peace Center's openhouse. It was so clear and bright that all the heavy cloud leis were gone from the mountains, and we could see their green rumpled skirts all around us. It's easy to forget to see them-- everything was bright today. The center is back in a little residential neighborhood. A flock of pretty goats graze the grass out front, and a cheerful greeter in a straw hat and designer sandals showed us to some lawn chairs with a serene view and gave us some jasmine tea and Manju--Japanese pastries. We joked under our breath that the red dot on top was the mind altering drugs. Our greeter said to sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings for a moment while the previous tour finished up the orientation. The view from our lawnchairs was lovely--a long grassy mound in front of an imposing rock wall. Matt wondered, "oh no, the site of a heiau?" Sure enough, yes. A particularly powerful one, in th...

So as a basically uninformed observer, Happy 50 years of Statehood, Hawaii! You were a chain of connected sisters in the family of Polynesia, and then you were discovered by the West, and everything changed almost instantly. Chiefs got gun-powder weapons, fought brutal battles. You became your own Kingdom-- you were a hub of the Pacific, with sudden wealth from whalers and traders and sudden death and misery from disease and consumer culture. Your people struggled and changed-- newcomers poured in to work, to live, to make gobs of money, to punish you for your sins, to learn your ways. Whalers got Hawaiian tattoos, Hawaiians wore missionary clothes and toppled their gods. Old taboos were discarded, new ones were stamped on your faces. Hawaiians poured away from the islands and scattered across the world-- marrying Indians in the Northwest, educating freed slaves in the East, and criss-crossing the continents on whalers. Most changed, learned new languages, never came home, and left tra...

So, what does your husband do? Really? What kind of degree do you need for that? How much does he make? Wow? Can you live on that? And how much is rent? Seriously, for THIS PLACE? How much would it cost to buy? How many bedrooms? Kids, did you hear that?! That's how much our house is worth! And how much do you spend on groceries? Wow. You guys have a car? Two? How much did you pay for that truck? Amazing. Wow, good thing we live in Idaho, eh honey? Well, nice to meet you!

Can't stand 'em, but Hawaii can't live without 'em. They harass monk seals, they drive erratically while trying to take pictures out of their car windows, they drive up costs and walk around in public places with nothing but their sunburns. But I have to admit, I kind of like 'em. As individuals, that is. I love chatting with the relaxed tourist parents at the beach park as our sandy toddlers chase or ignore each other-- like the grandpa from Minnesota with his grandson-- or the hip and happening parents from Seattle with their adopted Chinese daughter and expensive camera (and no doubt highly frequented blog). But my favorite thing-- and this is a confession-- is being helpful. My pulse quickens when a goofy red chevy convertible with four adults in hats and sunglasses slows down next to me on my walk and rolls down the window. Yes, I can tell you exactly how to get to the airport! The other day I was walking home from the grocery store and overheard a young sunbur...

Uncle Ron is retired and now works dawn to dusk every day driving his little CAT up and down our dirt road. He has colonized the wild hillside with ti plants and tropical flowers for a friend who does flower arrangements for the hotels. He has planted dozens of papaya trees up and down the road-- and tiny hot hawaiian chili pepper plants, and enormously bushy basils. He has buckets of eggplants, green onions, a huge asperagus patch, and a wall of bitter melon behind his house. His cousin catches wild chickens, fattens them up for a couple of weeks in pens, and then eats 'em. Ron even carved a path up the steep hillside and built a pen for his geese and ducks where they honk and hiss and lay huge eggs. Sweet potato carpets all around the pen, and the greenest longbeans you've ever seen climb all the way over it. His longan, mango, avocado, coconut, noni, guava and lychee trees are all fruiting, and the lovely bunches of bananas are all narrow and green. In the winter he had c...

I noticed a brightly painted sign on the side of the road: Mana Ohana, community owned, community grown. Vivid papayas, cheery pinapples and luscious mangoes crowded out the cheerful text: local produce, locally grown, organic! I was intrigued, so I followed the signs to a huge old restaurant space. As soon as we walked in a haole woman jumped up and shook our hands, and launched into an energetic monologue about the virtues of the fruit stand, of vegetarian, GMO free lifestyle, her many community projects, and how we too could become a part of the coop for only $500, or equivalent labor! As she talked she filled up the back of a name card with a list of all of her projects: Malama kauai Kohala Center saveourseed gmofreekauai activatekauai iwikupuna.com KKCR 90.9 Wed 7-9 9-11 11-8 Kauaiworld.com kane i ono uma islandbreath.org Her blue eyes were shining as she talked about her triumphs with protecting Hawaiian gravesites from developers and sending a charter for indigenous rights to th...

We went on an adventure-- traveling across continents (N America and Europe) and oceans (Pacific and Atlantic). I took my toddler to Big Important European cities and also to no-name American rural Edens. In the course of 6 weeks of traveling we saw important sites, heard a hundred different languages, used dozens of public bathrooms, and crossed paths with thousands of people with lives and worldviews all radically from us. Rosie learned how to say, Bonjour, Au Revoir, Merci, Pardon Moi, WC, and "I live in Hawaii." And now we're home. Getting off the airplane the passengers underwent a transformation: they turned from a group of tired strangers into a mob of giddy tourists. We transformed too-- we shed our traveler skin and became-- just ourselves again. At home. Coming back, I noticed the vividness of the shiny dark green leaves, the bright reds and pinks and rainbow oranges of the flowers along the freeway, the dense golden light. And somehow my malihini-meter has been...

It was our 6th anniversary last night and we indulged ourselves. For the first time in Rosie's 25 months of life, we left her with a babysitter and went out to dinner. It was sort of, totally, SPECTACULAR. Roy's Prix Fix tasting and Hawaiian menus. I can't really describe it, so here's my tone-poem, free-association, modern dance interpretation of the evening's partakings: snappy limu seeweed gelatinous sprigs, caramel sauce on meaty ravioli, crispy wontons with ponzu, flaky fish , sesame oil and chili edamame, filet mignon melting onto wasabi mashed potatoes, crisp fried lotus root salad, misoyaki butterfish, asperagus and mac nut crusted white fish, chocolate lava souffle and four delicate little scoops of tropical sorbets with tiny fruit cubes on top, all sworled with elegant dabs of flavorful reductions and sauces on wide plates, low lighting and the sharp awareness of a rare event combined to make a singularly ROMANTIC evening. Roymantic? Har har. I found myse...

Today we went to the beach with the playground to wear Rosie out a little bit (sun, slides, sand and surf, dude. It'll wipe anybody out.) We've only lived here since October-- that's, what, 7 months? We ran into four separate families that we know. And as the months go by, the island is only going to get smaller. Living here is my first experience with having to make a community work. Knowing that we're going to be here for a long time, with these same people, in these same situations, over and over-- makes me approach problems slightly differently than I've needed to before. My first example: the librarian is an SOB. He's notorious. Every parent on the island knows of him, and stays away from his library because he is so rude and HATES children. Every time we go to the library (every Friday, 11:30) he tells Rosie to "be quiet or get out!" This is especially annoying when she's saying things like, "Rosie! Loves! Libwawy!" I'm sorry, i...

This letter was published in The Garden Island Newspaper on April 8, 2009: Color blindness is wonderful When someone asks, “Are you haole?” I respond, “Why what I did?” When someone says, “What comes after two?” I respond, “Tree.” I now say “da” instead of “the” and always great people with a friendly “howzit.” I legally changed my name from James to “Kimo.” President Obama says there is not a White American or an Asian American or a Black America, there is only the United States of America. Color blindness sure is a wonderful thing, or should I say “ting?” James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa’a Any guesses-- is this tongue in cheek? Is this a joke? It couldn't be-- could it-- for REAL? If it is... how is saying "ting" and "da" colorblindness? And what's the opposite of color blindness anyway-- colorseeingness? And since when is blindness of any sort a virtue? How about color-seeing-but-it-doesn't-adversely-effect-my-behavior-or-thoughts-ness?

Sunday morning, the choir stood in front of the congregation. The organ started up a four part hymn, and we sang along in four part harmony, reading out of our programs: Softly Blew the Breezes By Paul Carus and R.B. Bode Softly blew the breezes On that glorious morn In Lumbini's Garden Where the Lord was born. From the earth sprang flowers Birds in warbles sang While through earth and heaven Strains of music rang. Gods and men and angels All for worship came Glory to Lord Buddha Glory to his name. Organs and hymn harmony, folded chairs, and meandering talks by aged ministers are not the sole providence of protestant Christianity. At least in Hawaii, the sects of Buddhism that were imported with the Japanese plantation workers have morphed into something with plenty in common with the Baptist or Episcopalean churches down the road. George Tanabe gives a wonderful description of this Hawaiian Buddhism in his article, " Shaka Buddha ." Sunday was Hanamatsuri, Buddha's b...

We went to the Punana Leo Preschool fundraiser today-- I had seen the signs for it flapping around town. They are handpainted in bright primary colors, on squares of white fabric, inviting one and all for a full day of music and talk story. I've been thinking that the Hawaiian immersion preschool would be a good choice for my kid next year, and so I wanted to come and get a feel for the school community. We got there and realized we drove the wrong vehicle. The parking lot of the war memorial hall was full of trucks-- and foolish us, we came in our dusty little sedan. But no matter. In we go, retrieve our kalua pig and cabbage bowls, and peer around at the crowd. It made me nostalgic for our life on the Big Island-- big uncles and grandpas cuddling sleeping babies and swatting at hyper toddlers, skinny portuguese grandmas with gold necklaces and their sensuous micronesian granddaughters in bright haltertops. The lights flicked on and off and we moved into a beautiful theater. The l...

I recently took a pottery class-- once a week for five weeks I got to spend an hour or so thwacking cold wet clay down onto a plaster slab, kneading it into a cyclone, and thumping it down onto a wheel. Elbow cocked to hip, setting it spinning, and then praying, bracing, holding the slick hard lumpy mound. It spins and throbs and pushes against my hands, but I have to hold still-- bracing against the hard mass of clay-- without shoving or jerking-- just holding. Try to find true north, try to float above the pull of gravity-- that's holding still against this thing. One hand pulls up slowly, one hand pushes down and out and after a few lip-biting climbs and descents-- suddenly the thing is centered. Then I put one finger on the still piko of the mound-- and push down into that navel. The lump opens suddenly into a pot. And then draw the walls up, flare them out, pull them in. It becomes recognizable as a Thing. Every time is like a miracle. Even if they are all tiny and off-kilter!...

We got to the Kauai Veteran's Hall at 11:00, and peeked in at the crowded dining hall. The round tables, decorated with giant pomelos and mini snickers bars, were already mostly filled up. The band was doing sound checks on a low stage, and a group of ladies were taking registration fees and doing the sign-in by the door. We hovered and hesitated outside the door. Matt looked for a familiar face, and hemmed and hawed-- should we go in? Should we pay $20 a piece for a buffet lunch? Or should we join the society? I handed him the checkbook and took Rosie to run around outside, and left Matt to decide whether he wanted to go to this Hawaii United Okinawa Association annual New Years Meeting. He's a quarter Okinawan, Rosie's an eighth. I'm none Okinawan. I figured I'd leave it up to him to define his ethnicity as he pleases. When an acquaintance of Matt's from work drove up, we were finally swept in. I had to laugh-- in a room with 200 people in it, all were Okinawa...

So local people who make an effort to enunciate carefully and speak "standard English" are accused by of being "haolefied." In other words, acting like a haole. In other words, acting stuck up. Their poetic pidgin-speaking friends roll their eyes and resent or pity them. And being a mainland haole I naturally have a standard dull TV announcer accent. The way that I talk, without thinking, all the time, even when I'm mad or half-asleep, or jabbering to an infant, sounds like I'm putting on airs. It's a quandary. I sound pompous if I just talk like myself. But I don't want to be condescending or ridiculous with an affected pidgin accent. Last week after playgroup I walked with one of the other moms over to the library. Our cute kids gamboled around each other, darted into the street in front of speeding rental convertibles, got hissed at by the irate vampire librarian. We chatted about local elementary schools, about potty training, about baby talk-- ...