My Son, My Heart

Jen's having a little free-for-all fun this week. "Mystery Spin." As in you let her know you are playing and she emails you your topic.

I got a "free spin."

With so much latitude, it took me a couple of days to decide which way to go. That was a great thing, as it helped me think of topics I am interested in writing about now that summer is here and I have some free time.

But this post needed to be written. So, here it is.

Our Son graduated from high school a couple of weeks ago. We have two children and he is our youngest. A wonderful, yet bittersweet moment.

So, this post is for him. A bit of his past played out on the internets.
From the instant you were born, you brought a sense of humor to our world. So full of life and grabbing each moment by the horns and riding it for all it was worth. I look at this photo of you during that first year and wish I could hold you as a baby one more time. But the memory is tactile and lives in my heart. All I have to do is close my eyes and it is there.

Your first word was b-ball. You would lean out from your stroller when we passed a basketball hoop or boys playing, and with wiggly, grabby fingers go, "b-ball, b-ball, b-ball."


We have a lot of stories about your forthrightness of speech. Some might say a lack of filter.

Like when you were in kindergarten and (admittedly) had the world's worst teacher (not a great start to your education). You did not hold back on letting her know how she could improve her skills and get that classroom up to par per your preschool experiences. Some of the phone calls I received from your teacher were for these kinds of remarks by you:

Why do you make us write five sentences when you haven't taught us what a sentence is?

When you make me correct all my mistakes, it makes me hate writing.

You know Ms B, you should try calling what we do activities instead of work. At least then we might at least have some hope it will be fun.
You have always had a big heart for your family. You might come off like a toughie from time to time, but underneath, your love for family always prevails. You love animals, especially dogs. Look out anyone who is abusive to an animal if you are around. You always protect the weak.

Your sense of adventure is immense. It tests the limits of my own ability to calm my fears as a mother. You love big waves and jumping off of things. Your zest for life and living it to the fullest is remarkable.

Life has thrown you a curve ball or two. Watching you learn to navigate this rough terrain and learn how to surmount obstacles has set me on a spiritual path of my own. As I learn how to let go and when, while learning also how to be there for you when you need me.

As you move from childhood to adulthood, I wish for you many things.

That you always appreciate the good times and know when to take a moment to swing through the trees with a smile.
That you have many, many more proud moments where you can celebrate your accomplishments.

That whatever obstacles life throws in your path, you work through to reach your goals.


That you are happy.

That you are always surrounded by people who love you.

Congratulations on your high school graduation Son. We love you. We are so proud. May each year of your life take you exactly where you need to be.

We will always support you, where ever your life takes you.

XOXOXOXOXO
Mom and Dad

For more mystery spins, head on over to Sprite's Keeper.

Broken

I went to book club last night. I've been in my book club for about ten years, more or less. The book we read last month was Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos.

I liked this book a lot. A debut novel, there were places where it was difficult to keep my suspension of disbelief. Sometimes things tied up too conveniently. There were required stretches. However, despite this, it was a book that grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and had my full attention.

I liked the old lady who recognized the life in the objects of her home.

I loved the parts that dealt with the zen moment when creation takes over and the mind's chatter surceases.

But I mostly related to the theme of picking up the pieces of broken lives; of putting them back together in ways that would hardly have been imagined before the rents and tears and smashing of all that was.

It reminded me of one of my favorite posts of all time.

Here are a few excerpts from the book...

The more she worked, the more she became familiar with a kind of magic which only happened when she let go. For years her mind had looked like a legal pad, lined and occupied carefully with written numbers, to do lists.....this was the kind of inner noise she struggled to eliminate...only when she was quiet inside, when her mind was a large empty room instead of many cluttered ones, only then did the magic happen.

The broken are not always gathered together of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. We speak of senseless tragedies, but really: is there really any other kind? Mothers and wives disappear without a trace. Children are killed. Madmen ravage the world, leaving wounds immeasurably deep and endlessly mourned. Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view.

Look now. Look at what you value, what you hold dear....Look then at the faces and bodies of the people you love. The explicit beauty that comes not from smoothness of skin or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience that has left its mark...You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful. If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces; rough, and random and no two alike.

Travel Tip Thursday: Favorite Beach Rerun

I spent yesterday at one of our favorite beaches. We go there when we need quiet and isolation. When we need the sun to melt time into mercury, leaving its shimmer as it penetrates ocean, sand, and reef. A place where a turn of the head can change the view from wind whipped kite surfers to a kaleidoscope of parachutes twirling and dropping through the sky scape. A little more turn towards the mountains and you can watch twin engine planes towing gliders and letting them loose to swing back and forth across the horizon, a graceful pendulum dance back to earth.

Yesterday on our walk out to the point, we passed 10 Hawaiian sea turtles feeding on the reef right on shore.

Where is this beach that rarely a tourist ventures to? Follow this link back to a previous travel tip if you are new or don't remember.

Play along and linkup your own travel tip, favorite staycation spot, or whatever makes you feel like it's your day off.

Random Tuesday: Random Guide to Some Local Humor

So last week's random came in on Wednesday, today it is on Monday. But you are ahead of me over there so it is closer to Tuesday where you live. And I need to get something up to make up for the depressing nature of the last post. Hope you all have an easy sense of humor. I've provided vocab guides for local language. Have fun.

Random conversation heard going up the Koko Head trail on the weekend…

Mainlanders’ vocab guide:

Hapa = half haole, half Asian or Polynesian. The term “half” can be used loosely

Haole = Caucasian

A group of college students:

Filipino Male: What do you call a Filipino who has 10 black dogs?

Hapa local female: Full?

Filipino Male: He’s GOT the dogs.

Hapa female: I don’t know.

Filipino male: Vegetarian.

Hapa female: Oh, that’s bad.

Haole female: I don’t get it.

Filipino Male: The dogs are alive, so he didn’t eat them.

Haole female: I still don’t get it.

* * * * *

And now for a favorite local comedian shtick

Vocab guide:

Tita = a tough local girl

Poi dog = mixed breed mutt

Okole = ass /butt

Trow blows = fist fight

Blahla = big fat belly-hanging beer drinking bully of local descent

Mahalo = thank-you


For more Random, head on over to The Unmom's.... on Tuesday.

Spin Cycle: Bondage....I mean Bonds

The Spin Cycle this week is bonds. As in family bonds, the bonds that link members of family together.

Holy canolli.

So much of my life has been unbloggable these last 9 months, but I suppose one aspect is semi-bloggable. My mom. Mostly because she has never even learned to turn on a computer.

Circa 1960’s

My mom is the funniest mom on the block. Friends love to come to our house because my mom is a hoot. She can burp the ABC’s and talk like Donald Duck. She spends three hours every afternoon in the kitchen and makes scrumptious dinners. She is bigger than life and sings and dances around the house in her apron.

She has a dark side that appears now and then. We can see it coming. Her eyes flash, her upper lip hardens. We learn that no amount of ass kissing will prevent the storms, so my sisters and I learn to weather them as best we can. Usually that means watching television and pretending we don’t hear the escalation of emotions.

Circa early 1970’s

Three daughters hitting adolescence triggers my mom’s mood swings more often, or perhaps it is just her own hormonal changes. My father comes home later and later. My mom’s drinking increases. So does her depression. Her doctor gives her Valium and she combines these with vodka and beer.

Her journeys into nightly hell storms often evolve into suicide threats. At first it gets the reaction she is looking for, but eventually she and all of us realize nothing we say or do will really make her happy. She threatens suicide so often that when she finally downs an entire bottle of Valium one night, no one believes her until it is almost too late. My older sister and my dad rush her up the coast to the nearest hospital and leave my little sister and me alone. We were 9 and 12.

My older sister leaves home at 17, which seems to makes things even worse. At 12, I am suddenly thrust into the role of talking my mom down. I take this role seriously and believe for years that if I find the right sentence, the right combination of words, an epiphany will occur and my mom will see the light. I am the one takes the gun from her when she comes into the living room twirling it around her index finger and explaining her plan to “blow her brains out all over the pier.” When she sits naked on the stairs with a pack of my dad’s double edged razor blades, scratching one half-heartedly along the smooth, pale and innocent inner surface of her arm, I am the one to get off the couch and take the razor blades away from her, despite her throwing them at me while I ascend the stairs. When she stands at the open front window naked for all the neighbors to see, smoking a cigarette, I am the one that wraps a robe around her and leads her away, while she curses her worst at me.

1975

My dad finally leaves my mom and is awarded custody of my sister and me.

My mom drinks and dials when her moods hit her, but she gets lost in a world of divorcee partying.

1976

My mom is diagnosed with breast cancer. In the fight of her life she gives up drinking. It becomes apparent that it wasn’t just the booze and pills; she still has mood swings, but her recovery time is much better and the arc of the swings much less.

1978

My grandmother dies. My mom inherits her parents’ home and savings, and also has the home my grandmother bought her after the divorce.

She quits her job and lives off the money. She sells her home and lives off that. She refinances her parents’ home and lives off that. This process takes four years and all the while I try and talk some financial sense into her. It is the proverbial train wreck. I am still too young and idealistic to accept that I cannot help her. But there it is.

1982

I move to Hawaii.

My mom loses her home and is penniless.

She goes back to school and gets her CNA.

She works for 25 years.

During the best of these years she visits us in Hawaii. She is a fun and funny grandma. She burps the ABC’s and talks like Donald Duck. My children bring all the neighborhood kids in to be entertained by Grandma. They love her and she loves them.

2007

My mom is 79 and living in a two bedroom townhouse that she really cannot afford. Although she gets social security and a partial pension from her divorce, she works to stay where she is.

Despite failing health.

Despite having long term health care insurance and a doctor who wants to sign her into long term health care.

She says she needs help “going through her things.”

So I go for a week and I learn my mom has become a hoarder. She was never neat, but this is beyond that.

I clear out over 80 phone books, dating back to the 1980’s.

I go through hundreds of small plastic bags with receipts and remnants of packaging. Like the cardboard package from a light bulb. I cannot throw out anything without looking because she also has plastic bags with important papers and mementos.

I spend a week and a bit of money. I make 8 trips to the dump. 10 trips to the Salvation Army.

While I am going through her things in the garage, my daughter comes out and tells me to please rescue them from Grandma.

Apparently the purging has brought out her fidgety worse. I come in to hear her wreaking psychological havoc on my son, her grandson.

I ask my mom for a copy of her long term health care insurance so we can get on the same page and figure out how to get her moved.

But she refuses and I go home.

2010

The bond continues. I’ll give her this. She has a lot of guzpah.

For more spins on family bonds, head on over to Sprite's Keeper.

Travel Tip Thursday: Cool Contest

We'll start touring Hawaii next week. The Travel Tip this week is to check out this contest at this hotel:
It's called the Surf and Sand Hotel and it is located in Laguna Beach California. I love the serendipity of the name. The mobile home park where I grew up in Malibu, the home I have been focusing on with the memoir writing.... The Surf and Sand.

Crazy cool name stuff. You can find more of that right here.

Link on up and play along.

Random Tuesday, Random (almost) Violence

I’m attending a workshop the first three days of June. Yesterday (first day) I had to go around the building, up the back stairs, through the main entrance on the 2nd floor, and take an elevator back down to the first floor. We were told the school where the workshop is being given was on “lock down.” The only lock downs I’ve been involved in had to do with riot like fights on campus involving over 100 students and car loads of young adults from a neighboring school, complete with pipes and chains. The school with the workshop is on summer break and quite empty except for admin offices. So, we ask. Apparently, an irate parent made a threat of some sort. Seriously, teaching is getting a bit surreal.




Took Border Collie to the North Shore for our first summer beach walk on Saturday. The North Shore had its last swell of the season and I stopped at one point to watch the surfers. Meanwhile, ghetto junk yard black dog sneaks up on us and attacks BC. He’s got BC pinned and is trying to grab BC around the throat. My bad ass self does not hesitate, but jumps in and starts whaling on the dog, slapping it in the face with the wonderful weapon I had in my hand. My rubber slipper (flip flops to you Mainlanders). Screaming in the dog’s face, slapping the dog’s face, he finally lets go of BC, who does not back me up but runs for the life guard stand when released. Ghetto dog stares at me for a second while I wield the deadly rubber weapon at him, then the dog turns and trots away. Meanwhile, I realize the lineup of surf watching peoples are all staring at me. What a sight I must have been. At least no one was laughing (I might have taken a slipper to them for not helping out).

* * *

Shopping for Son’s graduation required clothing (white shirt, black tie, black belt). I go into a surf /skate store for the black belt, figuring might as well get a belt he will wear more than once. The store has the soft Tees that son likes and I’m thinking maybe I’ll pick him up one as a little something extra for graduation. The sales guy is very cool and helping me out and asks me if my son likes the BJ Penn shirts (there are three stacks). I’m like, “BJ who??” He says, “The MMA fighter from Hawaii.” I reply, “yeah, that’s a great grad gift, a shirt that says ‘I like fight. Try me out.” The sales guys laughs and replies that he himself cannot figure out why so many young guys wear ‘Tap-Out’ and BJ Penn shirts when it is a walking advertisement for fighting.

I haven’t participated in Random Tuesday in weeks (months?), and not sure if coming in a day late counts. But go and head on over to Keely’s for more Randomness.