Perspective

Irony. The mountain of a man who was posting crazy numbers and lying like a rug on the timeshare tours has been in a moped accident. Last I heard was having his spleen removed. I wish him godspeed and am grateful I did not hit him.

Today a young man Sam has known his whole adult life is an the hospital, perhaps dying of lung cancer. He is 38. He has had mysterious symptoms. He cannot be moved to a hospital with experts. I saw him two weeks ago, bodysurfing and calling a surf contest at Banyans. He has the energy of Prometheus, gabbing, creating, bullshitting, energizing. It is unfathomable. Sam went tonight to visit him. And just called to say, as he is waiting, that another friend, the father of a close friend, a health nut, a jeweler, a waterman, has lost scary weight and is going by ambulance tonight to the hospital. He got married on Valentine's Day to a young woman, his daughter-in-law's cousin. He has been making, if I am to believe certain hints, my engagement ring.

I am home safe with our daughter, who is watching Cinderella. I never thought I would show her this, the whole Cinderella syndrome as it is, but she likes the animals. And it seems she will be slender and pretty, so I suppose it will not be destroying her self-worth, only warping her expectations on relationships. Luckily, she gets bored at the prince part.

We are wondering if she will play basketball. She is exhibiting a peculiar passion and talent for dribbling. Even a teacher at her preschool--not her own teacher--approached me today to comment on her amazing talent at dribbling, a very complex activity for a 3-year-old. At 2 1/2, our friend Maria, a high school basketball star, marveled as Kaikea sank basket after basket. Who knows? Sam has elite-level athleticism. I am not ungraceful, but it wouldn't come from me. Her great grandmother, my mother's mother, was a star athlete. So odd to watch what might come. My greatest prayer, or course, that she has the long life to see what she can be.

Thin Red Line

Is it a bad sign that I can't wait to wake up tomorrow because at 8AM I can go get some Xanax?

I am losing it. And I am surprised.

I recognize that I have not dealt with some of the crushing losses others have dealt with. But I have had pain. My parents divorced, my dad remarried, I wanted them to reunite until well until my 20s, though I never admitted it. I almost married a man who made me feel small, then beat me badly. I almost went back to him. I fell in love again, I got a divorce, I lost a stepsister I loved to drugs and depression. I have watched my brother, who I love as much as my breath, suffer many blows, lost grandparents I adored and nearly lost my mother, twice. I have done bankruptcy, been jilted, almost lost the love of my life to drugs and the court system, endured pregnancy alone. So although I have escaped many tragedies, I have lived.

But I am losing it. I think it's the accident, and I can't put a finger on it. It doesn't help that I am working a job that tests me spiritually in a way I find hard to respect, butI do. It doesn't help that I often fail, and that I might get fired for it, and I have never been fired. More than the wages, I would miss the healthcare. I would miss Dr. Barville, who will talk to me on the phone and issue me Xanax because it is sensible to do so, because I am experiencing shortness of breath and tightness in my diaphragm and crying uncontrollably. I yelled at my daughter tonight, screamed at her, because she screamed at me. I went and hid in the car and only came out when I realized she was still screaming for mommy. What do you say? "I'm sorry, honey, mommy is a little overwhelmed right now, but Mommy loves you. I respect that you're upset, but perhaps you could express it in a way that is less confrontational." She looks at me and almost understands. "Please honey, I love you no matter what, but you can be upset with mommy without yelling at me." I don't know. You want the little critter to know you love her no matter what, and get to show her feelings, but you can only take so many tantrums. Or I can. God how I remember my parents laughing at me and how infuriated it would make me. Now sometimes I can't help it, Sam and I can't help it. The level of fury over not being to take a rattle into the bathtub strikes you as funny sometimes, when you are weighing major lawsuits, job losses and general paranoia.

And now my friend Liz has had a baby! Oh, the things I've said to Liz, who is a woman with a career, and love, and everything, and she will be fabulous, and tested to the extreme. And she better not find it easy or we won't be able to be friends. Oh, the love, and the torture. So much more than exquisite.

And I would pine on by Kaikea is asleep and Sex and the City is on and I need to nestle into this life right now. I did yoga tonight, the first time in 3 years, and it helped, for 50 minutes. Then I cried more and had wine. Which helped, for an hour. Now I have the Girls and Excedrin PM to see me through the end of the night. Tomorrow, woo-hoo, Xanax!

44

So I have made myself get out of bed to write a few words tonight, partly because Susan said there better be plenty to read when she gets here, and partly because I really do need to feel like a writer. I started two other entries in the last few days, one about my pre-birthday trip to Kohala which meandered in a big yawn about the bus trip to the ranch with pigs and what not but mostly mused about the time I spent with Kaikea asleep on my lap, full moon over the volcano, listening to the glorious and short-lived Iz, the only Hawaiian musician, I learned from our helpful driver, to be laid in state in Honolulu. Just to think deep thoughts in the quiet was birthday present enough. And it was good I got it then, as the the birthday itself was a piece or two of happiness, then the shock of colliding with a moped, the subject of my other abandoned post. Details asdie, which house within them nightmarish possibilities, I have never seen a man lying in the road near consciousness, especially one who has recently bounced off my car. It was shocking and numbing and something I preferred, at the time, to be someone else's problem. He is alive, and I kept telling myself that was the birthday gift, though I am ashamed that I was immediately filled with petty thoughts like, "I hope they realize it was his fault and I hope his insurance covers this." I think I have decided I am not wholly heartless, but just went out of body, like it was happening to someone else. Sam was there on the phone with 911. People stopped all over. A nurse came. Then police, ambulance, it all seemed very fast. I realized I was shaken when I handed the cop my debit card and didnt' understand what he was saying to me when he said he still needed my license. For some reason, I had the registration to my old car, which he also didn't find useful. And my insurance card was soggy and wet. I'm not quite sure how it got that way. I went over to tell the man, Harry, that I was sorry, and he muttered thank you as he was being lifted into the ambulance. I'd like to take credit for this nice gesture, but it was Sam who urged me to do it. The truth is I was mostly numb, and what I did feel was more like stress and irritation. I had been on a mission to look at a house to rent, and I just wanted to see the house. After I saw the house, I called the number the police had given me and spoke to his wife. They were in good spirits, and he had a broken foot and maybe hand. She was relieved, I think her exact words were "refreshed" that I called. He was a tough guy, and the kids were joking that they hoped my car was okay. They come from Vermont, and they know what happens when you hit a moose. I was desperate to hear he was okay, but nothing else connected.

For the record, here is what happened. There is one road to south Kona, where many of the locals live, as it is cheaper down there. It's a two-lane road, and at rush hour, the southbound traffic is stop and go. I was heading north, against traffic, needing to turn left. The Big Island is a friendly place. No one has taken those Defensive Driving courses that tell you to never wave people on. A big truck saw me trying to turn left, stopped, and flashed his lights for me to go. I later learned he is the "controller of the lane" in insurance terms. I turned left, and as I crossed the shoulder, a moped slammed into me. He had not stopped with traffic, as mopeds and motorcycles will often do. He just flew on past. I never saw him. My passenger, a world-class back seat driver who points out coconuts that might fall on me 800 feet away, didn't see him until he hit the car. He was going fast. But it is hard to defend. It's hard to feel in the right when you have sent someone to the hospital, and I am desperate to be believed and defended. I am angry, and I have reason to be.

It turns out that "mopeds," in this case a 100-pound machine with a 200-pound man--on measure of a moose with velocity behind him--that popped my tire, destroyed a side panel and bumper and could have killed my daughter had he hit me further back, are "pedestrians." They don't carry insurance. So the gift, that he is alive, is profound, but the $500 it will cost me to fix my car at a time when groceries are a strain does not seem quite as profound. It gets worse, but I won't dwell on it. Alas. It is of the times.

More than anything, more than the money, is the shake it has given me. I treasure my fearlessness, it keeps me young, and yet I have had little reason to fear in my life. My sister died in a car accident, and that shook me, though it seemed inevitable, as she took so many chances in her long battle with addiction and mental illness. Even so, I realize how irrational and incomplete the grieving process is, and how little understanding we can actually cultivate. I have thought since of when my father was on a jet that plummeted 6000 feet above the Bay Area and everyone on it thought they would die, he experienced no later fear of flying. He would break into a sweat, however, driving over a bridge, riding an elevator, or riding in the back seat. My point is that everything is delayed, stuffed, moved, rewired, in ways we can't understand.To have an accident be so unearned, while I was driving so carefully, completely unimpaired, has jarred my faith and sense of security. Mine is a new age type of faith, the belief that if I feel I'm blessed I am blessed, and yet I am always secretly aware that I have been untested, and scared that the universe might hear me think that, and truly test me. It takes me to the worst of fears, the ones I can't put into words, like losing Kaikea, then takes me to the sorrows I know I must face and have not, like losing my parents. Or the sorrows we may all face if war should come to us, and then reminds me of all the loss, all around, from celebrities to neighbors. I have a very fucked up strange sense of justice, faith and life. It is a hodgepodge of too many religions, no religions, having born witness to events so greatly magical they defy any other explanation except to feel, at least in that moment, that I was chosen for something profound. And then of course that goes to the weight I feel when my life seems so much less than whatever great path I must have been destined for. And to the idea that a profound life doesn't have to look profound, though I suffer from as much of the rock star jones as anyone else in my generation. As much as I would like to think an ordinary life is extraordinary, I secretly feel that is a bunch of crap. And yet I know that wildly successful people who live their dreams have great tragedies and often turn out to be mean deluded motherfuckers.

I feel like cussing because I don't get to do it at home anymore. I cut way back a long time ago, and have listened while Sam sprinkled his stories with the f word and wondering when it would happen, and it did. Kaikea gleefully shouting "fuck!" over and over again, as often as she could. I handed that one over to Sam, and felt great relief at deciding to ignore the problem altogether. I enjoyed listening to him try to explain why we don't say it, and have tried hard to keep a straight face as she tests out whether we really do get to say it. Wisely, we have managed to ignore it. A week or so has passed and she seems to be moving on. Her current obsession is wanting to know what letter everything, and I mean everything stands for. It's a great opportunity for us to practice spelling and vocabulary.

So back to faith, and courage, and fearlessness, and fears manifesting where you least expect them. Like the fact that I could not get into the water, and had no desire. Sam pushed me to go, in the way he does, not quite handing me the surfboard but repeating how much I need it, which means I know he is desperate for me to be restored. I went out when it was windy and blown, rare here, and I thought very small, but it was bigger than I thought. Not big, just headhigh on the sets, but everything looks different when the water is dark and the peaks are blown. How quickly I have adjusted to being able to see the water, and know what it will do, as reef breaks do. But I surfed Banyans, which has rock clusters everywhere, and disoriented as I was feeling, I couldn't remember where they were. I cussed him the first time a set came in, and I was ducking and rolling, not quite sure where reef shelf was, the black jagged rock that slices and dices. Then I made it over that set. Nothing pretty on the waves, caught a couple, and it was probably the third set I survived where I started to feel like me, where the fear started to drain just a little, not of surfing, but of life.

When I came out, I was better. A lot better. Though I am struggling still. All around me, worlds are coming down. I have to keep believing they are being reshaped, sandcastles being rebuilt is all, in newer more eco-friendly configurations. Or perhaps it is more like lava. If that is the case, only Pele, only that kind of heat, can reshape them.

Tales from Timeshare

Words form all night in my head while Kaikea tosses and turns, whimpers and pushes me with her feet and asks for backrubs and cries about monsters. I contemplate getting up to write them down, but I never do. I'm too hungry for sleep. The morning comes, and, just as I wake, the words roll around, perfectly formed, but there's no time. I make coffee, make her lunch, make my lunch, try to chant, read email but don't answer, take a quick look at Facebook, get up the grouchy ladybug, placate her, feed her, dress her, shower me, dress me...and still it seems I am always late. I am so grateful that I don't punch a clock, exactly, and think of all the movies I've seen when the mother is threatened by an ogre of a boss for being late repeatedly, and reminded how I once thought those moments cliche.

Then the day goes by, these days the big boss poking around, sending in spies, a corporate world with the slightly tainted air of used car sales that I find hard to absorb, my only foray into corporate culture having been the peculiar blend of glitz, education, glamour and soullessness that was CAA, as I find myself stressing over losing a job I would like more without the smoggy aura. Yesterday I had vowed to take a half hour break in the day so I could blog and feel like a writer instead of a person trying to cheapen the life experience.--as a few would-be clients intimate. But the big boss was swooping and snooping, and my schedule was looking tentative. I began the job with a certain amount of promise and flair but may not live up to my potential. When that happens in the timeshare/activity business, they send you to booths in the hinterland where the people never come, like window-watchers in Japan left to flounder without work, until you quit. Anyway the days get away from me, and I am grateful for the job, jobs disappearing on this island, and soon it is time to pick up Kaikea, celebrate her accomplishment of going she-she at school with ice cream, a bribe now gone way round the bend, get home, get dinner going, once a week maybe a surf break, but then too tired for dinner, ply her with movies so I can think grown up thoughts for long enough to restore myself, but mostly I will have to settle for mindless distraction like American Idol, brain cells having burned out and sleeping already, then fall asleep with her, only to wake with words in my head and too tired to get them out. Again.

Things are tough in the timeshare business. Forever they have offered a $1000 sign-on bonus to entice people to this commission only job, then they cut the bonus, then they stopped hiring. My company got a windfall when the competition across the street, Wyndham, crumpled. They brought on the best from that job, hence my competition. And the big boss has brought in some killers. There's the bonafide used car salesman who blocks the sidewalk and works up such a lather the people surrender to his pitch just to get around him. And the pushy tattle tale chick who would tell on her mother to get her fired if it would get her ahead. Then the 350 mountain of a man whom I suspect just carries them over by the napes of their necks and puts a pen in their hands. He tells them all manner of lies--I know because I talk to some of his survivors. He promised one little vegetarian gardener lady a full buffet smorgasbord and a one hour presentation. Which is almost true. You get muffins and a hardboiled egg for breakfast, and you should be done in two hours. Except you have to make a minimum income. And you have to bring your husband if you're married. He doesn't care about the rules, or people's time, and the punishment for all the lies and deception? It's not a business that reprimands lies. It's a numbers game. Get enough people to show, and they'll buy. Somehow, inexplicably, I have to tell the truth. I can tell the best version of the truth, but it has to be truth. If I don't--

Shit!...I was just trying to come up with a way to describe the feeling of snakes in my stomach when I've bullshitted too much and then the big boss walks in! I had barely enough time to close the blog window. Not good. This is the only booth that has internet access--did I mention I'm at work? How I'm writing? But I was feeling smug since I already booked two tours today, not so bad, enough to keep me from window-watching. But now I suppose I should smile at strangers and see if I can carry them over by the napes of their necks.

Highlights of Kaikea

First, from the shout of "fortissimo!" which she has learned from watching The Little Einsteins, and likes to shout as she recites the entire episode, or to embellish any other activity, fortissimo being a celebration of all kinds, and then the segue from "fortissimo" to "brush my teesimo!" Which I think might be her first joke...

Later, shaking a maraca and keeping a wicked beat to the one song she insists on hearing when she lets me play the guitar--though this is the first of I hope many jam sessions--the Ocean song by Lucinda Williams, watching her tiny mouth shape "Stand under the shower, clean this dirty mess, give me back my power, drown this unholiness, lean over the toilet bowl and throw up my confession, cleanse my soul of this hidden obsession," hoping she will be so empowered she could not write these words, then watching her sing happily to the chorus, "I wanna watch the ocean bend, the edges of the sun then, I wanna get swallowed up, by an ocean of love." Of course she had no chance with this song, it vibrated against my stomach as she grew inside me, resonated into her little embryonic world as I played it over and over again, and then she heard Lucinda rasp it out every Saturday morning as I drove to Hilo to visit her daddy, his life now full of promise, in jail those last three months.

The session gives me hope that I can be a fun mother as soon as she likes playing my games. I am not very much fun at her games. And sometimes, I confess, I don't feel like trying.

So my friend Susan convinced me today that I should start blogging again. I did this before, in another life, before Kaikea, when I was just a born-again surfer with lots of time to contemplate the metaphoric challenges of surfing as an adult and, of course, of life. But now I am 3 1/2 years into childraising, and the day I thought would come soon, when I would magically have the time and energy to create feature-length works of, I had hoped, art, seems to be DOA. And don't tell me about mothers who can do this. As Anne Lamott would say, I couldn't be friends with them. Even though she is a mother who did it, I forgive her because she already had a career and a small house when her child came along, plus no partner and a struggle with addiction. I was in the beginning of creating a career, and creating everything at once, it turns out (family, career, financial stability, mothering knowledge, home) seems to be a divine challenge.

So anyway, Susan convinced me I should do this so I could feel like a writer again, instead of a failed timeshare tour salesperson, which is how I was feeling before I called her. More another day on the adventures of the timeshare-tour-salesperson-cloaked-as-an-activity-expert. For now, suffice to say that overall it feels better to write about it than to do it, though the very best part of it is getting to do the activities. More on that, like the nightflight over the volcano and the pictures I got of Pele's eyes, on another day too.