About Me: WHAT HAPPENED???

Some wit has proclaimed that inside of every 70 year old is a 20 year old wondering what happened. That wit is right on. As my daughter remarked, the older we get, the more like ourselves we become, but I thought as my body aged, my personality would change with it. It hasn’t worked out that way. There’s this major disconnect. At times, if I think about things in advance, I adjust gracefully, but sometimes I am the quintessence of fuddle-brained frustration! A few examples:

I was once a prodigious multi-tasker who could do six things at once. Now if I do two things at once, I'm distracted by a third, then a fourth as I deal with the elements of the first two.  Too often I'm lucky to complete one! Several emails and video clips on the internet let me know I'm in ever increasing company judging from the number of times they arrive in my inbox.

About Me: THE COFFEE-GRINDER CHRISTMAS

In my senior year of college, I married my best friend. He was a graduate student on a stipend so we had little money. I had saved $15.00 for his one Christmas present and hoped to find a vintage coffee grinder with which he could grind the fresh roasted coffee beans he preferred.

I had had no luck and now it was Christmas Eve and I was taking one last walk in and out of shops in the antiques district of Baltimore.

I queried each proprietor and they invariably said I’d have to look myself so I went all the way to the back of each shop, tiptoeing to see on top of tall shelves laden with stuff, peering under tables and into dark corners, even peeking into “staff only” areas. No luck.

Parenting: THAT TONE OF VOICE

On one of the calls my son made from college, I was a bit late in picking up the phone and, unbeknownst to either of us, the upstairs answering machine recorded the whole conversation. We chatted amiably about this and that and then I remembered that I had sent him vehicle registration papers that he needed to fill out and return by a certain date. As I told him this news, he said, “There you go again with that tone of voice, Mom,” a frequent complaint. And I protested as usual, “What tone of voice?” “That 'gotta make sure my kid handles this' parent tone of voice that says you don't trust me.” 

I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought I was just emphasizing something important. I did think of him as responsible and thought I was just giving him a reminder.

As I was getting into bed that night, I saw the message machine blinking so I pressed the play button. I smiled, happily reliving our conversation until the part about the vehicle registration when there it was – “that tone of voice.” It did indeed sound like I did not trust him to do the job.

About Me: A MATTER OF MORELS

When I would explain to my 16 or 17 year old “children” something I thought they must do, or why I thought things “needed” to be done my way, my son would hear me out and then say, “Got it covered, Mom.” or “Don't worry, Mom, you raised me right, and now I get to decide this one.” or “Gotta trust your parenting, Mom.” When her turn came three years later, my daughter would say: “Mom, do I need to hear this?” or “I'm sorry you’re still having a problem on this, Mom, but I'm not worried about it, so you don't have to be either.” or “It’s just not my problem, Mom. Good luck working it out.”

I’d have been grounded for weeks had I addressed my parents in that manner! But my kids weren't being insolent. These things were said with quiet self-confidence and sincere, sometimes amused compassion and tolerance for the difficulty I was experiencing in letting go of my “parental entitlement” to meet their childhood “need for guidance." Wasn’t it my privilege and my responsibility to nurture them with advice? Mothering was a role I enjoyed and that I knew needed to be phased out at some point, but my kids were understandably more aware of the step by step process than I. They were usually gentle with me, but firm. We all knew I still had ultimate veto power but because they were responsible kids I seldom felt the need to use it.

Da Kine Stories: HAWAIIAN METAMORPHOSIS

During the 16 years I lived and worked in Hawai’i during the 1990s, I observed many of my Hawaiian friends, acquaintances, and people I met in recurrent meetings and activist gatherings as they were going through what I came to see as a personal, social, cultural and political metamorphosis. This painful process is a response to the renaissance of Hawaiian culture that sprouted in the 1960s and has been growing and flowering ever since. Hawaiians I have known seemed to move from their culturally innate aloha through hurt and rage to a mature life-choice to live aloha. That choice is the most important step they make in reclaiming Hawaiian culture and the most difficult.

What is amazingly sad is that, to this day, most of the world is still ignorant of the history of the Hawaiian Islands, the suffering of generations of Hawaiians, and their exemplary response to injustice. This is true in spite of the fact that people from all over the world enjoy Hawaiian vacations and come to live permanently in the Aloha State. I submit that even the following very inadequate thumbnail sketch is preferable to perpetuating that ignorance.

About Me: MY ANGELS

My grandmother was a devout Episcopalian who said Morning Prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer every morning since way before I knew her. We often had long philosophical and religious discussions as we walked the beach when I was a teenager. She would wonder aloud how I could have so many questions when, as far as she was concerned, her Book of Common Prayer and the Bible took care of all the deep matters that I was so curious about. I think it was a bit of a generation gap as well as different personalities.

Once, when she came to visit my home in later years, she offered to dry the dinner dishes I was washing. “Oh, no thank you,” I responded. “God dries my dishes.”

“Oh my!” she said. “Don’t you think God has more important things to do than dry your dishes?!”

Da Kine Stories: RUNAWAY

One evening in the spring of 1989, while on spring break from her senior year of college, my 22 year old daughter wistfully remarked. “I sure would like to live and work in Annapolis, but it’s too expensive.”

“Not for you, I replied. “You can live at home.”

“Oh I would LOVE to live at home! But not with my MU-THER”

“Great! You take care of the house and I’ll go to Hawai`i.”

“Would you really?”

“Would you really?”

“Deal!”