July 18, 2005

My Hilo Friend Revisited

Palms at Rainbow Falls

Written July 16, 2005

I started to post this as a comment on Haloscan, but it failed as Haloscan has for the past few days and I realized that any posting opportunity should not be missed and placed there to disappear into the back hole of blogger archived nothingness. I have so little to say these days in comparison to my days in Hawaii, that I feel my muse was Poliahu, goddess of Mauna Kea's snows or Pele, goddess of Mauna Loa's fiery lava...I have left it behind ...I wonder what I am to write about, some how the Mana or Manna of words comes eventually, but I worry about boring you.

I realized that I had never written about Sherry in all of my blogging except once in this post last December. Sherry, as a fledgling real estate agent was coming to grips with the deforestation, the incredible changes that are going on, there on the Big Island... Her Island... (For those that have never lived on an island, you cannot understand the pride the words "my island" generates...I think this is where the British get their special strength...) Her cry of "you don't understand" was born of many generations of living with and on the land of Hawaii'ne,. Maui, Oahu, Mo'lokai'i and for the past 100 years the Big Island.

Her story is one that should be told. I often encouraged her to encourage her mother, a legendary High School teacher...Everyone knew of or had sat classes under Mrs. Vierra, who taught English and Classical Spanish, to pidgin speaking farm kids in Hilo town's local High School, to write down or record the family history. She had lived through both tsunami's, and was as we left the island beginning to record her families extraordinary story on audio for the Pacific Tsunami Museum and Research center. I think that the whole family history from the first should be told.

Sherry is a Haolie, descended of British missionaries and a Whaling ship owner that all arrived around 1820-29, then later these English married into a Portuguese family that came over to work the land for the King of Hawaii, she has a noble heritage. Fully subjects of the Hawaiian Kings, still angry about the overthrow, its my feeling that she and her family are as "Hawaiian" as those of Polynesian descent. Unfortunately the courts have ruled otherwise in the apartheid like system that separates the races in this 50th state of the USA. Sherry was denied the Kamehameha School education (the best the islands have to offer) and attended to public school. That's another story, as she fought to get her daughter into the Kam school system along with other white families that can trace their lineage back to pre-overthrow Hawaii.

Sherry lived a gypsy life once out of school, spending a great deal of time traveling the Islands of the Pacific. She ran a import clothing business, all the garments made in Bali, and she enthralled me in the tales of her life there, deeply enmeshed in what is to me a totally alien culture.

We shared a job at a jewelry store that was so unkind to me that it drove me to actually think that "I could do it better..." And so was birthed Azure Seas Jewelry right there in the competitors showroom. I cant say I did things better now just differently, and we were more colleagues than competitors.The fact that I did so much of my planning while working there ended up causing a strain in our friendship once I opened up my store. She needed her job, and I let things go as busy as I was.

We were never as close as we were in those days of my planning, but I always knew that I could count on her if I needed her, and she me. and that is the best sort of friend, the one that you might not see everyday, but when you do, its as though you have never been apart.

Her daughter, was a Theater Arts major at UH Hilo and the last time we talked Karlie was heading for New York with her boyfriend. Big change for the island bred girl with the beautiful blue eyes, Sherry and I look a lot alike dark hair she slim and me large and tall, but close enough in looks to be thought sisters when together... I told Sherry once I wondered how Karlie managed to keep the boys at bay...Her daughter looked like Barbie, perfect fair face...I called her "Pua Nani" or lovely flower when speaking to her mother about her. The answer to that was the the beauty has brains too and has stayed really focused in school, unusual there with a low low graduation rate,and one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the US... and with that sort of determination Karlie will do well, I know.

But she was her mother's life and Sherry an empty nester was wondering about her future and life as we were leaving. I am not sure what her plans were but even she was considering leaving the Islands to get better work once the real estate bubble bursts there which as she said will as it always does.... That thought troubled her, she was so rooted in the culture of Hawaii and truly a part of it as I never could be.

I realized that we had no formal good byes about a month ago and I cried for a bit every day for a week. I wrote the bones of that poem and carried it about in my note book for a long time. I have an email address and need to touch base but havent as I fear for myself and my own homesickness...that I dont speak much of as Woody is sick of it, and there is no help for it. She must feel abandoned, as a number of her friends and her daughter were all leaving at the same time...uggh. I messed up.

I know that I will meet another friend like Sherry one day, I am open to that. The door is wide open for me to return to Hawaii if I need to for a visit, my friend Kathy, also an empty nester has encouraged me lately with that invitation. I fear if I go back now I wont return to the mainland...silly but thats how I feel.

I understand that lostness that Native Hawaiians feel when they leave and cannot return, its an emptiness that I know only God can heal, and only if I do the work I need to do to facilitate that healing. I have a email to write and I will do it today.