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.