My Madonna

On Wednesday, my phone rang. It was my Ma, who sometimes accidentally calls me on Messenger and always blames the cat. This was a regular phone call, though, and she never calls, so I thought it was odd. But it wasn’t her. It was the police, using her phone to call and tell me that she’d fallen on the stairs in her house.

And just like that she was gone from my life.

I guess a part of me wasn’t completely surprised. She was 83, lived alone mostly, stubbornly, in a house that was too big and had slippery stairs. I worried about her constantly. But when Officer Calvert said that she’d died, I heard the echo of a door slamming shut and locking tight. I was on the outside, suddenly feeling very small and alone and afraid.

Years ago, in the Pitti Palace gallery in Florence, I saw a Madonna and Child by Raphael. Like so many of that genre, it’s just a woman holding a baby. The only way we know they’re special people is the haloes and maybe Raphael felt compelled to paint those to hammer home the point, to make sure, sure, sure we know who they represent and that they’re not just his sister-in-law showing off her baby boy.

The painting reached out to me because of the way the baby’s fingers rest against the fabric of his mother’s dress. There is something so tactile, so sensual in that touch. The bond between the two is palpable. It’s as if he’s looking out into the world with curiosity but still holding tight to the best thing he’s ever known.

I don’t have a lot of memories from my early childhood but I do remember sitting on my mother’s lap, small enough that all of me fit comfortably without any limbs flopping onto the sofa. She would run her index finger along my face, starting at the middle of my forehead and drawing a line down the bridge of my nose, then along my cheeks under my eyes. My skin was still little-girl smooth, unlined, ungreased, untouched by all that lay ahead.

I felt not just loved but cherished, recognized as valuable and having a place in the world, worthy of that place, and above all, safe and protected.

All these years later, after all the things I’ve seen and done and the amazing (and not so amazing) people I’ve met, I always felt tethered to that gentle touch on my face. I’ve always felt the presence of my mother and the purity of her love.

Now, in its place, there is nothing but grief.

Unicorns

Yesterday was one of those days, not awful, just kind of hard, the sort of day you can handle but would really prefer not to, like flossing your teeth. Afterwards, you’re glad you did but wouldn’t ever choose to do it again, all the while knowing you will have to.

It started off with a drive into Hilo in pouring rain, Puna style. It pours, it stops, it drizzles, it pours again. I was a little old lady hunch over the steering wheel, desperately searching for the road in front of us. My right wrist developed battle fatigue from turning the wipers on and off so many times.

Safe but already tired, we arrived in town and began chipping away at our list of chores.

• Hearing test – check
• Buy a sandwich – check
• Stock up on soy milk – check
• Eat sandwich in eye doctor’s parking lot – check
• Eye doctor appointment – check
• Haircut (Finally! We were both starting to look like old mops.) – check

At last we returned to the peace and quiet of home. As I gave myself a mental pat on the back for getting everything done, I noticed that the lights on Leo’s unicorn headset were blinking.

I had a moment of panic. We hear such awful stories about zombie meth heads in this area, breaking into people’s homes and doing awful things. Had someone broken in and (gasp!) left Leo’s lights blinking? I took a quick look around but nothing else seemed to be amiss. So I plucked the headset off Leo’s fuzzy head and switched the lights off. But they kept on blinking. I switched again and again, my wonder and frustration building as sinister shadows reached for my toes from under the bed and ominous music welled up in the background.

What…how…why…huh?

In desperation, I pulled the cover off the battery case and discovered that one of the batteries had corroded and fused itself to its neighbor. I suppose this closed a circuit–or summoned a ghost–and Leo’s lights were merrily blinking their way toward dead battery heaven. I grabbed my trusty pliers, plucked the offending batteries from their nest. The lights calmed; the music faded; the sinister fingers shriveled and receded to the region of dust bunnies and lost tissues under the bed. I returned Leo to the top of the hat rack, unicorn headset bereft of batteries. He didn’t seem to mind.

My heart was still aflutter when we discovered a box by the front door. Inside there was a nest of soft green tissue and when I pulled it away, a serene white unicorn looked up at me and winked.

The rain stopped, the clouds parted and all the stresses of the day melted into that soft gaze, a gentle reminder that we have to do whatever we have to do, but whether or not it troubles us is a matter of choice.

Thank you, Pa. You made my day…and week…and month…maybe even the whole year.

When life gives you lemons

The lemon trees in the back yard produce lemons as plump and juicy as grapefruits, their flesh nearly as sweet as oranges. The scent of their flowers warp speeds me to a land where merry-go-round horses are hand carved from solid wood and all have glass eyes and they’re always open and rides are free. Yeah, they’re that good.

One of our two trees was a graft. The lower part, the Meyer lemon, struggles valiantly against gravity as its magnificent offspring drag its slender branches toward the earth. The upper portion, though, was something else, something that grew straight and true, reaching toward the sky but vehemently refusing to bud. It stood armed with nasty thorns, each over an inch long, a biological nose-thumbing, if you will.

Needless to say, its snotty attitude left us unimpressed. Armed with our superior position on the food chain and a small hand saw, Rochi removed the offending menace. But in the process of being tossed into the jungle, the black-hearted knave saw an opening for revenge and plunged one of its thorns into Rochi’s thumb. We put some ice on it and tried to push aside the stories we’d heard about the plethora of bacteria and bugs and snails and rats and other threats great and small that lurk in the guise of paradise.

By the next morning, the thumb had swelled up to the size of Mauna Kea and a worrisome pink line was meandering along the inside of his arm toward his elbow. I consulted Dr. Google, who had nothing good to say about the situation, so we hopped into the car and headed for urgent care, where the doctor likewise had nothing good to say and told us to go to the hospital. We detoured back home for breakfast and coffee and I packed some PB and J sandwiches (I wasn’t a Girl Scout for nothing) and off we went.

In the interest of accuracy, it wasn’t peanut butter. It was cashew butter, made from raw organic cashews that I had roasted and ground myself. Cashew butter is peanut butter that has been sent to finishing school and now makes all other nut butters look like cheap knock-offs from China.

The Nut Butter Revue

The ER doc prescribed masses of antibiotics and that was an end to it. Feeling relieved but in need of a little pampering, I suggested that we treat ourselves to cheeseburgers but Rochi suggested it was well past 2:00 and too late for a heavy lunch.

“OK,” sez I. “Point well taken. How about we eat the PB&J in the car and then share a hot fudge sundae?”

So that’s what we did. And it was magnificent.

Tiger, Tiger

A new year has come, a new beginning, or just another Saturday, depending on your perspective. The clocks will keep on ticking, moving forward, oblivious to the way we label the days. Mother Earth doubtless has little regard for the insignificant significance we place on time.

In our little corner of the universe, we had made a plan to stock up on groceries in Hilo the same day as our last medical appointment of the year, then hunker down and stay home, safe in our nest, protected by the orchids and lemons in the garden, until the new year had passed, until the hoopla was over.

It was a good plan. At midnight on the 31st, the fireworks erupted. Rochi slept soundly through it all, the quilt tucked up under his chin. I listened to bangs and pops and rat-a-tats for what felt like a long time, then fell asleep to the the scent of gunpowder drifting in through the windows.

On the 3rd, we ventured into Pahoa–some would call it a town but it’s barely a village–to test the waters and do some chores. There had been no apocalypse that we could discern. In fact, things looked as they usually do. Barefoot, gray-headed hippies lounged on the uneven boarded sidewalks flanking the main street. At the bank, there was no line. I greeted my favorite teller, exchanging pleasantries across the plastic barrier. I discovered both lemon balm and chamomile on the shelves at Island Naturals, a major coup. And Long’s had finally gotten Heineken light back in stock.

Back at home, we were pleased, maybe a bit smug, feeling like we’d won something unexpected. In reality, we’d merely dipped our toes into the watery edge of the coming year and found the temperature pleasant.

We continue our residence in limbo, along with the rest of the planet’s inhabitants, waiting, wondering, worrying where and when and how we may end up. Within the context of the pandemic, the outside world continues to be full of doom and despair. People still have to face unbearable physical and emotional challenges. My stomach churns when I think of the state of our political system. Mother Earth herself is under threat, seemingly from a different direction every day.

And yet the sun rises over the trees at the rear of our garden. The birds wake up and share news of their dreams and the flowers nod greetings as they dance on the breeze. I want to say all is well with the world even though I know that it’s not, but the idea of a perfect world is appealing all the same.

A very wise friend once said to me that it’s best not to have any expectations because then you can’t be disappointed. That’s how I plan to move ahead through whatever lies in front of my feet. I will keep myself open to the good, the beautiful, the kind and the gentle and welcome it into my heart and home. At the same time, I will acknowledge the bad, the ugly, the nasty and the harsh, but invite it to take a flying leap into a boiling volcano.

Greetings, Year of the Tiger. Let’s see if we can’t keep peace with each other.

Yer Out

I stumbled into the bathroom this morning, still rubbing dreams out of the corners of my eyes, and pulled the last few sheets of toilet paper off the roll. When I tried to replace it, the holder broke in my hand. This was not a life-changing event but it was neither a great way to start the day. Strike one.

Morning cardio done. Breakfast done. Into the car to hit the farmers’ market. I wanted to buy some gourmet balsamic vinegar. This stuff is top flight–the Cartier of vinegars, golden drops of exotica that transform an ordinary vinaigrette into a full orchestration of the palette. But their usual stand stood empty, forlorn and abandoned. The information lady said they’d been gone for some time. Strike two.

Crestfallen, we headed for our favorite fruit and veggie stand and I discovered that I didn’t have my wallet. Credit cards! Driver’s license! Health insurance cards! A $5 gas coupon! (If you’ve noticed local gas prices sail off into the stratosphere lately, you’ll understand why this is significant.) The mature adult in me knew that the wallet had to be at home somewhere and, if not, all its contents were replaceable, except the gas coupon, but the child in me threw herself onto the bare earth of the market and shrieked at the top of her lungs. Strike three.

Just because it had been that kind of day, once we got home, I stepped on what I thought was a stray bit of lettuce but turned out to be a piece of dead lizard. Irrelevant. We’d already struck out so let’s just call the lizard guts smeared on the bottom of my foot analogous to grass stains on the knees of the uniform of life.

All nausea aside, we had a week’s worth of (mostly) locally grown delights as well as a replacement TP roll holder courtesy of Ace Hardware. And I found my wallet, safe and sound, inside the antique schoolteacher’s desk in the living room.

All in all things worked out for the best. And to be honest, all of this was a somewhat welcome distraction from the larger worries that I try to keep swept into a tidy pile in the corner of my mind. Only occasionally does a breeze sail through the window, sending the bits of cat hair and lava dust and dried up lizard parts swirling through the air. I can handle occasionally.

So allow me to take this opportunity, gentle reader, to wish you an uneventful day, free of strikes of any form, a day that you know where your wallet is, a day free from lizard detritus, a day of belief that the sun will rise tomorrow and the worries of today will grow smaller with each hour that passes, or at least that those worries will stay neatly swept into a manageable pile. May your strikes be few and your piles be small.

Boys Will Be Boys

We were driving home from doing some errands today and noticing the Halloween decorations that are going up around the neighborhood. Rochi asked me,

Do people eat the enormous pumpkins they use to make Jack o’ Lanterns?

Well…

…sez I…

We always did. Food never got wasted at our house. We’d scrape off the part that got scorched black from the candle and have mashed pumpkin–which I always hated–or maybe pumpkin pie. But some people don’t eat them. A lot of them get smashed by teenaged boys with baseball bats.

And I was reminded of the old Far Side cartoon where a T. Rex is marking his calendar.

Kill something and eat it.

Smash something and make a mess.

A bazillion millennia later, things haven’t changed much.

Caste

Months and months ago, some friends were discussing the book Caste. In my continuing KonMari frame of mind, I didn’t want to buy it and don’t own a Kindle, so I got onto the Hawaii Public Library website and put my name on a list. I think I was number 457.

Yesterday I got an email saying the library had a copy for me and they would fine me a dollar (an entire dollar!) if I didn’t get my tail up there post haste. For a minute I was stumped. It had been such a long time since I’d wanted the book that I didn’t recognize the title. But given the Covid world we live in, I was up for an adventure. And the journey would give me an excuse to drop by Island Naturals (the cool kids call it ‘The Natch’) and top up my cardamom and wild rice supplies.

The usually jovial fellow who works the check-out desk was instead looking morose as he held vigil at the entrance. ‘I need to see your vaccination card,’ he said.

‘Golly!’ says I.

‘Governor Ige has mandated that everyone has to show their cards to enter public facilities,’ said Jovial.

I had it with me, of course. All those decades that I lived in Japan, I was required to carry my foreign registration card at all times so I’m familiar with the concept. But it surprised me that I had morphed from being a suspicious foreigner to being a suspicious book borrower.

As I was leaving, a woman was just getting out of her car in the parking lot. Jovial turned pale behind his mask and said, ‘This could be trouble.’

Golly. I don’t know if she was a demanding reader or a local nutball or a militant anti-vaxxer. I’m not even sure there’s much of a difference among the three, and to be honest, I was much more interested in topping up my some lemon balm stash so I wished Jovial luck and skedaddled.

Once back to the peace and safety of my pretty little house, I sat looking at the cover of the book and wondered, not for the first time, about the way today is going to shape tomorrow. In one sense, we’re all in a big, leaky boat together, sharing a common enemy and trying to hold it together while we wait for some sort of rescue and release.

On the other hand, we’re also going through a continuation of what the Cheetoh wanted so desperately: division and suspicion, opposing camps entrenched in their own beliefs to the point that being right is much, much more important than being safe or even being alive.

But if I’m to believe what I read in the papers, we’re developing a division, a system of castes in a sense. The Blue States are pretty much vaccinated. The Red States are experiencing higher rates of infection and illness, overflowing hospitals, overworked health care workers. As long as those states keep insisting they’re right, I can’t see anything but a dark and ominous future ahead.

So we find ourselves facing a deep division of profound significance that goes way beyond I’m-right-you’re wrong. It seems to me that the only way to move forward is to abolish this caste system and pull together. But how can we do that without someone wallowing in rightness and someone else having to accept wrongness? There should be some sensible way to come to terms without having to cut the baby in half.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening any time soon.

The Purloined Mayo

I have heard that while men can be quite capable in many ways, it has been scientifically proven that the man who can find the mayonnaise in the fridge has not yet been born, so I decided to do an experiment while I was making lunch. I was feeling a bit twiggy, having had oral surgery last week and not yet able to eat normal food, so while I was making some dull soup for me, he had requested a sandwich. Maybe that tweaked my spite nerve.

“Rochi, could you get me some green onions from the garden?”

Success! OK, he’s listening. My hopes kindled.

“Could you get the mayo for me, please?” I asked, with as much innocence as I could muster.

“Japanese or American?” he asked. My hopes rose.

“It’s your sandwich, so your choice,” I said, rather diplomatically.

And then I waited. And waited.

He searched high.

He searched low.

But nary a jar of mayonnaise, oriental or occidental, could he procure.

With renewed faith in science, I reached for the fateful jar, cleverly hidden in plain sight in the door of the fridge, where it has been kept since time immemorial.

I promise not to gloat.

Well, maybe a little.

I’m not Edna

I had to call Macy’s customer service the other day. When I was finally connected to a living, breathing human, she said, “My name is Edna. How may I help you?”

I said, “Seriously? Is your name really Edna?”

You see, I had both of my Pfizer vaccines at the Edith Kanakaole Tennis Stadium in Hilo. It was a mass vaccination event, called a Pod. The first day, there was music playing and a jolly atmosphere. (This is Hawaii, after all.) The announcements said that 5000 jabees were expected, so we should get lost ASAP after our 15 minutes of recovery time, please and thank you.

The second time, after I danced to my designated folding chair to the pulsing beat of some classic Michael Jackson, the announcement said we should make good use of our recovery time by texting our un-vaccinated friends because they had extra vaccines and didn’t want to waste them.

The people I wanted to text are mostly in Japan and don’t have access to vaccines. My elation and sense of relief at being done with the jabbing business and–hopefully–having earned a degree of protection and safety within an unpredictable and threatening world, flitted away through the open roof of the stadium along with several colorful birds and the tenuous hopes of a generation.

Still, I was done. And I was alone, a rare experience these days. So I drove myself and the Bandaid on my arm to the mall and bought myself some underpants. I was feeling so pleased that I let the salesclerk talk me into applying for a Macy’s card, which came with a tantalizing 25% discount. At that point, I was practically bubbling over, so I went to housewares and bought a couple of really great frying pans to keep my new undies company on the back seat of the car as I drove home.

A week or so later, my new Macy’s card arrived in the mail with the wrong name on it, hence my call to dear Edna, who sorted out the business and promised to send Eda, not Edna, a new card.

I am wondering, though, how this happened. Macy’s offered Edna-who-doesn’t-exist a generous $1200 credit line right on the spot as she stood by the jewelry counter clutching her wonderfully soft cotton undies. But how did Edna come into existence in the first place, using Eda’s address and social security number? Not-Edna is perplexed, but also a little comforted. Big Brother doesn’t always get it right.

So if you’re looking for some extra soft cotton undies, or some really great frying pans or a generous credit limit, drop by Macy’s and tell them Edna sent you. They seem to be fond of that name.

Smoke Out

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Eight years ago today, April 19, 2021, I took my last puff on a cigarette. That’s eight full years, or ninety-six months or two thousand nine hundred and twenty days, give or take a leap year or two, where I have not taken even a single puff.

Over those eight years, my life has turned upside down and inside out.

I have seen my own weakness and done–or not done–things I am not proud of, dusty spiderwebs in the corners of the attic of my heart and mind.

I have felt pain both physical and mental that might have eaten holes in Superman’s cape.

I have felt happiness so overwhelming that the flitting butterflies in my stomach put on boxing gloves and tried to knock each other silly.

And I have found depths of strength and resilience inside myself that had been lost in the dead letter office of my soul for decades.

Throughout all of those joys and challenges, there is one thing I have know and have never doubted: smoking would not have made any of it easier. Even though the Nicotine Monster still raises his ugly head from time to time, he no longer has any power over me.

This, gentle reader, is a very good thing to know.