Ki'inoho

Ki'inoho. Homebody; to remain at home constantly. Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui & Elbert

At home with nature unfolding. Comfortable using language pieced together. Unashamed to mix metaphors, slip up on grammar, or use language short-hand (pidgin), this is a post for all of us who speak a mix-mash of words but sometimes, too often, we are ashamed or shamed for we are not fluent or facile with (the dominant) words.

My daughter-in-law replied to my email where I attempted writing (Google) French. She was touched by my effort. That made me happy, too. The language and culture that we use on a daily basis is changing, and perhaps it is this natural unfolding of many languages being the 'norm' rather than the 'wrong' that offers me the most hope. 

I struggle with bitter and resentful bouts in my relationships when I feel my Hawaiian culture is being appropriated, and co-opted. I'm one of the generation that knew nothing about the reality of the American thievery of the Hawaiian Nation. None of that history was taught me while I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's. I attended a contemporary boarding school for Hawaiian youth, where no Hawaiian culture was taught or nurtured.

The appreciation and love of home and culture would come much later, and only after I left home. Only after I left my role as ki'inoho, a homebody in Kuli'ou'ou Valley, always close to my parents, the neighborhood, my small world did I learn what I left. It has become my Life's Work to appreciate that culture and fold in the language my Ma spoke fluently (but in secret), to keep my love for it alive. 

So here on this day in America, where the culture honors and memorializes (remembers) those who have died in service to country. This post unfolds as a way to honor LIFE WORK that is practiced every day; doing the best we can, and failing only to keep at it after the wind returns to fuel us again.

Surrounded by the bodies and beings, the plant nation, that make themselves so at home where they are ... here, I see an opportunity to acknowledge how rich language and culture can be. In pictures and a language of mixed sources, here's an expression of makua o'o ... maturing adult not yet fully ripe.

Merci Laurence! E kala mai mon Pete.

Raspberries, started from a single plant a few years ago have made themselves ki'inoho, homebodies that love being where they are. There's the gutter from the garage roof for an idea of how ki'inoho these canes have become.

 Moemoe the framboises. In wait, the raspberries ripen.

 O'o are the cerises, fully formed but not fully ripe.

Apala li'ili'i still green, but the little green apples ...  so plenty and not even June.

First harvest, salad et pissenlit. Lettuce from our garden, dandelions from the orchard floor.

mon Pete. "Cela me touche!"