Eternal Womb of the Hawaiin Night

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dear Feed Store Zealots:

Last night a monsoon threatened to inundate the work site upstairs. The upper deck has been turned into a construction zone for the addition with sawhorses supporting plywood work benches, drywall, boxes of what not, you know the drill. Only half the space is covered by the roof extension, so Matt had attached a 20x40 silver tarp to the roof, suspended over a temporary raised railing at the eastern end and dropping two stories over the side, to the ground below, tied down with free weights.
The rain came so suddenly and quickly it filled the tarp, breaking the stand-off holding the center up so the daily rains would run off, theoretically. Well, it was a swimming pool for the stars now, and it took all four of us wahine’s to hold it up from underneath, empty the water, and set up a new prop. Meanwhile the rain was coming down harder and harder, sounding like millions of drums, forcing us to shout to each other, even as we stood but a foot or two away.
Prop in place, tarp resettled, the women went back downstairs and I settled in for the cigarette I had come up there for. In the length of time to get halfway through my smoke, the clouds suddenly parted, and the moon, just past full, peered through the masses of grey, igniting them from behind like a spotlight. That fast, the squall was over. Unbelievable.
I’ve been in places before where the locals would say, “Don’t like the weather? Wait 15 minutes and it will change.” Well, in Hilo, you’ve got about 30 seconds between one weather event and the next: now it’s hot and muggy, now it’s misting. Pouring rain now, brilliant sunshine within minutes.
I had just received the phone message from my girlfriend in Chico that my cats had disappeared the day I left for Santa Cruz. I heard the sad tones in her voice and knew the cats were gone, after a week trying to settle them in. My cats’ safety while I was gone was one of my main concerns about coming over here. It would have been too expensive to kennel them both, and flying them over would have meant not only the expense but two months in quarantine at the airport. Clearly not workable options. Having them stay at Katie’s property was the only solution that seemed even remotely realistic.
Now, I know many of you would have (and did say) just shot them and been done with it. But, Lorenzo, my 5 year old Himalayan male was like a child: Sophia called him ‘brother’. He would sneak under the covers at night, tickling with his long fur, and snuggle the entire length of his body against mine, sometimes with his head on my upper arm like a pillow. He would refuse to leave my bed whenever I was ill, and crawl into my lap when I was sad. We’d found him at the Chico Farmer’s Market years back, a tiny ball of mottle white fur and light tan points, he fit in the palm of my hand.
The day we brought him home, never intending to get a kitten but there we were, he immediately skittered across the wood floors and lodged himself under the torn box spring cover in the guest room for hours, a huddled shivering ball of terror.
Days later he delighted us with his antics, climbing the wooden clothes rack sitting in the sunny living room like a drunken acrobat. He was always very playful, never scratching or clawing, and tolerated Sophie’s torturous play with aplomb. We would play ‘Kitty Bowling’ sometimes, rolling him into a little ball and sliding him down the long hallway into a triangular target of soft toys and stuffed animals, making us laugh insanely as he tried to slow his slide, paws scrabbling for a hold, tail whipping around, only to crash into the obstacle.
I can’t bring myself to tell Sophie. Fortunately, she has two new kitties of her own at her dad’s house, so hopefully she won’t be too sad.
I, however, suddenly aware of all I had left behind in coming here, broke down in stifled sobs, not wanting to be heard by the women and kids in the house. Fat tears, hot tears, gushing like the monsoon, almost frightening in their intensity. Wrenching dismay at the sacrifice of my two feline charges, the abandonment of my daughter, the loss of my home, my job, my lover, my self-esteem. Is this why I had come all this way, to lose everything I thought was mine, and for what?
Playing at being grandma to little brown skinned babies who could not decide whether I was ‘aunty’, ‘tutu’, ‘grandma’, intimate family terms for a total stranger. Living with virtual strangers, my son treading the DMZ between me and his Hawaiian family: he who has become more Hawaiian than Haole, his post-modern neo-Hawaiian fiancé and her lesbian sister and girlfriend, their children for whom haole’s are unwelcome strangers who come and go with such rapidity… Why had I come? Why had I left? What was the use of flying over here only to be oddly alone in a sea of people?
I grabbed a flashlight, a smoke, and slid outside to walk on the soaking ground down the long winding driveway shrouded in undulating shadows as the moon slid westward above me. And just like the squall, my tears suddenly stopped, my face wet, eyes swollen. I had reached the road and stood in the full moonlight softened by shredded clouds, now relieved of their loads, reflected in the puddles still dappled by last minute raindrops.
A 10acre pasture stretched out to the north, studded here and there by skyscraping eucalyptus rustling in the warming breeze. Other than the sound of the leaves and the quieting chirps of the Coqui frogs (who by the way sing in a 2-octave span that sounds like they’re hawking French fries in downtown Paris – ‘Pommes Frites? Pommes Frites?’ [pome-FREET]) it was eerily quiet after the deluge and madness of the sudden drenching rain just 5 minutes ago.
I came here to see differently, think differently, feel differently. I do, too, but not how I thought I might. Instead, feeling the same way but about different things. Loneliness, a sense of isolation, of uselessness, of despair so completely out of place in Paradise. Of getting old and losing my place in the book of life. What page was that, damn, but I’ve read the same paragraph three times and I don’t remember a word of it until I start over. And then remembering the words gliding by but unattached to any meaning or relevance. Remembering what I have ‘forgotten wrong’ as my brother Rick so hilariously mis-spoke last summer. Where is my mind? Where is my heart? Where is my place in this world?
Starting back the way I came, beneath the soaring eucalyptus, I was startled suddenly at their utter beauty in the darkness, their dripping bark gleaming like slickened phallus thrusting branches into the warm, eternal womb of the Hawaiian night. Dawn, my daughter-in-law, calls them ‘Rainbow Eucalyptus’. I thought it was because of their wood, used for furniture, flooring, or chipped into mulch for the gardens. But it is clearly because of the coloration of their bark: long, narrow strips like the runs in stockings ranging from pale green to dark blue, pale haole skin tone to dark mahogany – the color of the children when they come back from the beach, their dark skin sunburned to an impossible hue – layers of colors blending into one another or juxtaposed like an impressionist’s canvas.
Bewitched, I move slowly along the narrow driveway, turning my flashlight to one tree after another, each so gorgeous in the nighttime, I feel stupid for not noticing them before. I vow to come back soon with paints and brushes to try to capture their beauty, feeling defeated before I even start, for their beauty is for me this moment, this very moment of rain-soaked moonlight and grief that rises as suddenly as the daily storms that blow down from the north or in from the east.
Returning to the house, lights winking in the dark, children giggling as aunty Kale’e tickles them gently, Hawaiian pop on the radio, I realize I am homesick for … meaning, purpose, not place.
Searching, searching, I send love and a reminder to nurture one another, like the rain and the sea and the rich volcanic soil nurtures the spirit of these islands, alive with possibility, even when we are blinded by our inner storms,


Celeste