Hawaii for Idiots

Friday, October 30, 2009
Aloha, Feed Store Zealots!
This morning came earlier than expected as sunshine finally graced our ohana (“Home”). From the upper deck I can see the ocean, facing east, and the strange mist that rises from the active volcano, Kilauaea, to the south. Magpies and doves sound off from the towering mango trees as an insomniac koki frog chirps from the underbrush.
I have been assigned the task of animal upkeep, which is fine. Two cats, one gorgeous Siberian half-breed named “Haole Boy”, which means “White Boy”, 7 hens, and a miserable 4month old sow in a metal pen out back. The penned hog was dropped off by a brother-in-law who did not have room for it anymore. A male is due in a few days to join her. She stands now in several inches of unavoidable perma-muck and I am appalled at this disgusting situation. Today I will rake excess hay from the chickens for her to at least rest upon: it is one thing to raise an animal for food, another to leave her in a 4x6 cage with no place to rest, nothing to occupy her intelligence or nourish her soul. How could one ever eat such a being? What would there be in such a creature to feed you? Meat? Suffering? I think not.
Yesterday I finally began to understand why I came here. Something that had been asleep slowly woke. It rained hard all night and was only somewhat diminished by mid-afternoon. Greyness and damp surrounded us as son Matt and I drove north to Hilo proper, talking privately at last about family issues and the daily grind of family life. He shook his head at the story of the legal battle brewing between his adopted father and I, and I wondered at how this young man had grown so wise and settled in a strange land.
The dialect of the Islands, “Pidgin”, and the slight upward-turning drawl of the locals, are very easy to pick up, and once in place, difficult to lose. Mothers will chastise their young, “not to talk pidgin: it makes you sound ignorant.” But it’s something like ebonics: if black kids in the city speak like white people they are brutalized by their friends. But white society presses their tongues to lose the cadence of the streets in favor of classic American-ese. Hawaiian children have also their own language of lilting and strangely drawn out or suddenly halting vowels and softened consonants. “Haole”, sounds like “Howlee”, and means oddly enough, not just ‘white’, but ‘ghost’. “Hawaii” is actually pronounced, Ha-VA-(stop)-ee. Soft, halting, evocative. Like the Hawaiians themselves.
I mention this because my speech is beginning to change slowly, even as I wrestle against it. I don’t want to sound like some stupid haole woman trying to be Hawaiian. Matt says, “It’s OK. It makes it easier for the locals to accept you. At least you’re trying to be here, and not looking down on them.” I feel foolish, but understand. It’s kind of like swearing around some people but not others. It’s like learning to accept “nigger” from your friends, but not say it yourself, except when it does really fit. And sometimes it does.
I am not here to become Hawaiian. I am here to become a better haole. To gentle my Irish nature, remember how to live in peace with family, neighbors and the Earth itself. To feel the rain on my skin without resorting to the purported protection of an umbrella. To live in a house of 6 women and 2 men sharing one bathroom without rancor. To sit with my grandson Adam by a fire (Ahi, just like the red-fleshed tuna we enjoy) of wood scraps under the South Pacific sky wondering “if the ‘ahi’ will eat the ‘ohia’ (wood) all gone.”
Yesterday I remembered why I came here: for love and acceptance and peace among relative strangers. I was beginning to find it amongst my Feed Store clan, with the Carlisle’s and the Stevens. But it seemed as if I was already on an island in a sea of suppressed resentment and fear. It felt like I could not be myself, but had to press myself into a mold not of my making. The history of the Fellowship struggle, of the poisonous competition between Bruce Helft and myself nipping at my heels like Bea with her cattle. I felt enslaved to the short past of my existence in Oregon House so that a trip to the grocery store or post office became a mine field of looks and gestures designed to erode my confidence and sense of safety, of belonging.
When I got off the plane in Hilo, the local security guards smiled warmly, their smiles broadening as I smiled in return to the point of silly grins as if we were long-lost friends who were so very glad to see each other, yet constrained by circumstance from hugging our greetings. On the Islands everyone is ‘cousin’, ‘sistah’, ‘bruddah’, or ‘auntie’. “We are family,” they say, and mean, with their eyes and flashing white smiles. It only takes the slightest genuine smile to generate absolute warmth and hospitality.
At San Francisco International it was mayhem as the Hawaiian Airlines crew tried to accommodate each and every passenger checking in. They were so intent on being helpful that they ended up swamping the desk, clogging the doorways with baggage still to be checked, while passengers tried to navigate the self-help computer screens with the somewhat less-than-helpful assistance of the crew. It was typical of Hawaiians to be so steeped in Aloha as to be inefficient.
Finally, a young man, whose one bag (which would have fit the contents of all three of my pieces of luggage: pity the handler who has to haul that, I thought) was just 4 pounds overweight, became testy and critical of the woman in charge of check-in.
“Your customer service is utterly ludicrous,” he snarled.
“Sir, I am only trying to be helpful,” said the woman.
“Well, you’re not. You barked at me, and you are not being helpful at all. This is anarchy!”
I’m thinking:
You idiot! Don’t you know what is about to happen to you? I do. They will put a little mark on your ticket that means, ‘Give dis bruddah da shit, Cuz.” So now, everywhere you go on the islands you will have a hard time. You will go through security checks tree times. Your luggage will be the last off the plane. Your food will be cold, and maybe even contain bodily fluids. The smiles you see will be fake and will really mean, ‘Stupid Haole, go home.’ You will hate Hawaii, and will never want to come back here. You will not have Aloha.
But, uncharacteristically, I hold my tongue, because I don’t like him either, and I feel sorry for his pregnant wife who will experience the subtly hostile indifference aimed at her husband. Locals will sense her unease, even as they revere her femininity and expectant motherhood, making her a minor goddess on this Island of matriarchs. If she defers to him, she also will be lost. If she is strong and gets him under control, and learns to smile first and ask second, she may atone for her husband’s rudeness. They have a chance of happiness here if she can muster her maternal confidence.
But she does not. She is meek. She thinks he knows best. She is all of 25, married to a pompous asshole, 6 months pregnant.
Now the crew is asking him what country he is from. I cannot help it, but laugh out loud.
They are in for it.
There is no counter word for Aloha. But it’s there, nonetheless. It’s there.
Today, I practice my Aloha.

Love, Breath, Peace,

Celeste