Haku

"to compose, put in order, arrange; to weave as a lei"- Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert

 “We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind 

It must have hailed early this morning.When we woke, the heavy drops were melting off the umbrellas. Pete found the broom to sweep the steps; one of his Cancer taking-care traits that smooths things here in the woods. Still sleepy and under the covers I peeked through the window, saw no white. Once up, the small patches of not-yet-melted hail were like chunky shaved ice.The illusion of an extended fall is over.

Last night we hosted our first guest for dinner in the Quonset, the real Safety Pin Cafe was open for visits. Our guest is one of the community garden interns who has planted seeds, turned compost, dug beds and shared her considerable knowledge with our South Whidbey world. She is the last of the interns to leave after seven months. She and Pete have worked and traded stories and philosophies in the garden and in the Good Cheer Food Bank. At least once a week during planting and harvesting season these two have shared meals. Last night a new experience wove itself into our lives with dinner-for-three in our tiny house world.

After a few preliminary adjustments to accommodate the smell of scented laundry products, our guest sat in one of the three chairs that fit in the Quonset. JOTS was not pleased, but she got used to our visitor. We sat together at the dark blue table covered with the lovely embroidered table cloth I bought at a garage sale two summers past. I watched her eyes take in the oddities of our way of decorating: blankets and skies of colored cloth arch across her head; aluminum insulation warms the walls; safety pins and clothes pins attach things everywhere. We share our 'how-we-got-here' stories when she asks; the stories are familiar to me, but the details weave different this time.

Soon she will board a plane for Boston to spend the holidays with family, and choose another garden-and-teaching position somewhere. The early winter meal and conversation is a recent memory, a part of our recent yesterday. I wonder how or if the experience will be remembered as this young woman makes her way adding to the composition of her life. My experience with a new guest in our Quonset, and the space which inspires the writings and visits in The Safety Pin Cafe give me pause and ponder time. Decades have passed and yet the cozy space we call the Quonset is so much like the inside of tents we slept in as children. Hung off of clotheslines and secured with clothespins those childhood shelters have imprinted me. Could I have known the safety of those times would transport so well? Not really, my stories were still so young then. But, pela perhaps, the die was cast even then.

One of the things we spoke of last night over Granny Smith Apple Pie was how truths change. When I first met this young woman I wore a mask often, not always, but she began to know I did need it. I believed I needed the mask and have used masks to feel protected. The need for a mask has changed. I have them, but use them less often. My stories are familiar, but change. "We all know how dangerous a mask can be ..." I wonder how that will affect the final dose of the story. Really, I wonder.

And finally, as the already muted light of December turns to night, I have spent the afternoon gathering and preparing lei. Haku lei. Our friends are getting married tomorrow. I hoped to be able to order a lei po'o from Hawaii (garland for the head) for the special day. It didn't work out. Instead, I have enlisted help from a friend (and botanist) to gather greenery and winter blossoms here. That was a treat, and such a great way to get to know more about the harpist and sister storyteller. We collected snips of this and that from the Apple Tree Garden on the grounds of The Whidbey Institute earlier in the week. Today, I took myself into the woods around us to gather salal, wild huckleberry and ferns.

I am a rookie haku lei maker, but have those lei-making genes in me. I asked for help from my Ma and Tutu. My lei is nothing like the one pictured above, but Pete says "That's gorgeous." Woven with lengths of raffia, the red-tips of wild huckleberry, branches of salal and wild blue berry nestle the purple heather. The weaving is a meditative activity, and I breath easily, and enjoy the company of my lei-maker ancestors who knew what they were doing back in their day. Tomorrow morning I'll finish up the second lei.

One can never be sure of what memories will stay intact, and which will evolve and how. Story is like that, too. Inspired by a memory and woven with imagination, and a change here and there. Haku the lei. Haku the story.

A name of her own

I wrote this article in 2004 for the now historic(no longer in print) "Hawaii Island Journal" a wonderful small press that covered Hawaii Island news with heart. I lived on Oahu at the time and wrote a twice a month column "Makua O`o." This was the first place I shared the teachings of an elder in training, and it was such a fun way to share my delight for small and naturally occurring miracles. "Notice" would be one of the o`o I might have been focused on when I wrote it. Maybe, some other ...

I found this file as I sat doing 'ole day activities ... cleaning and weeding through a hundred files that need to be culled or stored somewhere else. When I opened it I was surprised. You lose track of what you write, and then there they are ... those words. What is particularly sweet is to read this story and appreciate it as history. That mango tree "Tutu Abuela" ... my old family tree is no longer. In my memory she remains, and I'm happy to store her there. Delete? No, not yet.

And yes, that is my full name given me at birth.

A name of her own
By Yvonne Mokihana Calizar

When it rains hard sheets of water drum dense summoning the wind. Together they make quiet a racket, pocking up the stiff dried dirt making thick mud soup where the eaves are without gutters. I love the rain almost as much as the trees and croton hedges love the wetness. I know they lap up the liquid like any child would a favorite smoothie or icy drink on a hot Kuli`ou`ou afternoon. Tutu Abuela our mango tree is an old friend to both the rain and the winds. Thanks to the reoccurring cycles of air, wind and rain, she has set her roots deeply, spread wide her branches and in her lifetime buckets of mele mango have ripened and fed family and friends. If there is culture in my life Tutu has been present through all of culture’s time. She has seen the home place large and open with a grassy lawn cut into baseball diamonds for home-style neighborhood games. When there were dogs on this kuleana we kept them on chains wound around her trunk. She was accommodating. I wonder whether the old wounds I find deep at Tutu’s base are a memory of those chains. I was unconscious of the special place this tree would play in my lifetime when we had a huge front yard and kept our dogs chained. Small was my awareness that a tree would play such a consistent role of nourishment for me.

Until recently our mango tree was without a name. She was my ‘mother’s mango’ tree to many of us and I realize I would call her that as a way of keeping Ma close to me. To say she was my mother’s made me feel un-alone. Visitors to our place have easily felt my mother’s energy. For years I have asked my mother to guide my choices when the decisions I have to make seemed impossible. Living in ‘her’ house meant living with her spirit, her ways of seeing things, and her beliefs. A subtle and important change has happened to me because I have given our mango tree a name of her own. Tutu Abuela. Both words mean the same thing in English. They mean ‘grandmother.’ But to me the importance of a Hawaiian-Spanish name like Tutu Abuela means I have made room for the missing “me.” Calizar, my family name is a Filipino name with strong links to the blood of the Spanish. It is an uncommon name and with it comes a mystery that I hope to understand. Sometimes bits, bites or chunks of our history and our culture are shut in rooms without keys. I know almost nothing about my family in the Philippines, but sense that it is time to live my life with that family present more often. I’ve begun making room for that piece of me.

It began with the rainy season. Caring for a mango tree means different things. I rake the fallen leaves, sorting out the little rocks that get caught in my rake as I gather up the thick curved leaf fingers into piles. We’ve kept Tutu fat – she is nearly as wide as she is tall and that means the clothes lines that stand beneath her now brace one of her heavy limbs to the south. Our back yard is one-quarter mango tree so her presence is legion. You cannot NOT see her. The shoots along her limbs have grown thick as well creating a virtual mango forest within one old tree. The leaves catch rainfall and funnel water into the craggily, cracked valleys of the mango tree. Over the years, without noticing, these pockets of water have become drinking fountains for mosquitoes, ants and families of other crawling critter. Tutu developed crotch-rot of the worse kind. It’s funny how my attention to others –other people’s mango tree’s, other people’s ways of living with or without trees—had distracted me from the disease living right under my nose. I was busy amplifying my righteous attitude about my neighbor’s decisions to cut their trees and did not see that large wounds were steadily wearing into the heart of the matron mango. Ants had moved dirt into the weakened joints of the low growing tree creating soft spots that would eventually split the fifty-year old in two.

I suppose if Tutu Abuela was one of a forest of wild mangoes the rot would continue and eventually the ants and their families would take the tree down. The kupuna would become a nurse log for keiki, creating a fertile place for seeds dropped by a bird to set roots and sprout. Portions of the once-strong mango might be vital enough to retain the identity as bearer of perfect fruit. But the chance that all traces of mango would disappear would be as likely as any. Tutu Abuela is not a wild mango growing in a lost and isolated tropical paradise. She is a mango tree with a name of her own, and she is part of me. We have begun tending to the puka in her heart, and with tender words spoken as we cut the rot from her she continues her place in my culture. My family knows that I ask her questions and listen as she answers. My family knows that she is important to the health of this place and that means she is important to my health.

Parts of our culture will be subject to crotch-rot and invasive bugs – over-stimulation, fear based beliefs and tending to other’s business rather than our own among them. My relationship to my culture is a living and changing business. It’s definitely my own business, and may seem odd to those who observe me at it. But, the truth I learn by cultivating a love for things over which I have seemingly unquestionable power is: if I neglect or take this love for granted I will never know how valuable a story ‘She who has a name of her own’ has to share. It is raining steadily and by the morning Tutu Abuela’s pockets will overflow with water. We’ll need to remember to clean her wounds. A small thing. A good thing.