July 5th, 2025
We have only been on the big island for a few days and already I have so much to write. Like my inner voice is in prose all the time writing little haikus
“My lips are sunburn
Perhaps it is your kissing me
I think it’s the kiss.”
Or sensing in my rogue iambic pentameter
“The rocks break blue water to foam and roll upon the turtle’s back.”
It is easy to slip into my poet’s heart here. Wherever you walk, flowers fall at your feet. The bushes and trees keep blooming, pushing plumeria, jasmine, and hibiscus out to spice the wind. Yesterday, we learned from an artisan jeweler at the farmers market that if you get a toothpick and stick it in the end of the flower, you can wear a fresh flower in your hair all day. Bobby pins tend to crush the flower, and often they fall out of the hair. Instead, I have been picking the flower up, taking long, deep inhales, then placing the flower in the crook of my bra to let the heat of my body release the natural oil, offering me fragrant, subtle whiffs throughout the day. When I take off my shirt at the end of the day, brown flowers fall at my feet. Now I am equipped to stick the flowers in my hair, and they will hold.
Also, at the farmers market, a beautiful, shy little tan girl around eight years old came over to me with her mother just steps behind her. She asked me very quietly if she could give me a beautiful purple orchid lei. I bent my knees and looked deep into her worldly eyes. Her little hands carefully laid the lei over my neck as she said “Aloha”. The mother proudly explained that she had made the leis in the craft tent and had also made an extra one for someone special. She then walked around the market and, with a little point, decided that I was the one she wanted to share it with. I told her she filled my heart up in a thousand ways that words can’t express, and that I would remember her and this moment forever. Her older brother then gave his lei to Maya.
Last year, for Maya’s graduation, I counted the number of senior graduates that would be attending and came up with the number 25. I bagged the idea of a DJ and instead ordered 25 live leis to be overnighted from Oahu from the Hawaiian Lei Company, a company I use for supplies for certain classes I offer. Placing a lei over someone’s head and around their neck is a way to honor them for rites of passage in Polynesian culture. I wanted to mark this passage. When the time was right, I gathered all Maya’s friends around the open space in the living room, cut open the boxes, and went around with a silent blessing for each graduate. To be honest, at this point, some of the kids I didn’t like that much. Like all mothers, I keep score better than my daughter. When tallied, some of them were just rotten. Even so, I wholly blessed them with my heart, as I have hope for all 18 years olds, no matter what.
It took them a while to realize that the leis were real flowers from Hawaii, and their senses realized it before their minds. When fingertips touch something live, not plastic, when noses smell something ethereal and sublime, something perks up. “Wait, What? These are real, real from Hawaii, like real…real?” The word spread. Most of them had only felt cheap plastic lies and had never held a real lei before, never smelled the clean, fresh aroma that only ocean wind and volcanic soil conjure. Throughout the night, I noticed that all the kids kept wearing their leis, kept touching them, kept smelling them. Even through beer pong and wild dancing, the leis stayed on.
I regret not taking a picture of all of them: bright, shiny, happy, honored. As each of them left, I noticed the soft brown forming on the edges of the petals from being touched with the oil of their hands. Lei makers often wear gloves to prevent spoiling the flowers. I told them to put the leis in the fridge if they wanted to have them fresh for the next day. They hugged me extra hard, thanked me with mature eyes. I whispered to some, “I am here when you are ready.” They knew what I meant. I know some of them will be back years from now, After the drinking gets old and the family drama’s get too heavy to carry with them, some of them will come back through the door and walk through another passage, the one that leads them to a deeper self-knowing, their even deeper navigational system. I knew I had planted enough seeds over the last few years, especially among the assholes. Their souls will remember they were seen and honored. I am patient.
And that is what the little girl did for me yesterday, she saw me and honored me. I wonder what threshold I find myself standing. What am I about to step into? Who and what is waiting patiently for me to be ready? I’ll continue to come to this writing nook over the next few weeks to find out. Stay tuned.
