Hoshi and Mango

I dreamed of Mango last night. He put his head under my arm and closed his eyes and I hugged him.


We sold him last week.

We sold both the horses, both goats, leased the house in Oregon, I have a deposit on the round pen, and DD and I sold some solar lights at the Sunday Market, all in one week.

We grieved the most over Do and Re, the goats, we really loved those little girls. We miss them, their walks with us, their daily bottle—they didn’t need it, just wanted it, and we were giving them only warm water. They were beautiful characters—did you know a goat was like a dog, only one that will dance on anything, the higher the better? I do not have to barricade the Prius anymore, nor the storage shed, but I suspect the trees will not be as well pruned. They will be dairy goats.

I hadn’t written about the horses, for since their purchase I wasn’t sure they would stick--meaning I didn’t know if we would keep them. Always before when I bought a horse I had been so excited I could hardly contain myself. This time I used logic instead of emotion. I like emotion better.

Hoshi meaning “star” was DD’s, while Mango meaning fruit was mine. I was rather neutral about the horses at first buying Mango basically to be a companion for Hoshi. Mango, though, was Mr. Personality. He would come when I called, and he would come to the house un-beckoned, stand at the gate and whinny to me. I fell in love with him, a big beautiful mango colored paint gelding with a map of Hawaii on his hip. The previous owners said he didn’t like many riders. He preferred one person he could relate to, I figured that was me. Now I hope it will be his next owner.

I only rode him once when we checked out both horses, but felt I really didn’t want to risk my body anymore with riding. Neither did we want to risk the horse’s health. Hoshi bucked with DD the third day after we got him, that reduced us to sniveling idiots, depressed and low—that was until we found he was in pain.

We found that this lava rock is murder on horse’s feet. The change in diet, the sore feet, a fly allergy, all contributed to his ill humor. We had shoes with pads put on his front feet and began feeding him supplements and he improved. I could see it in his eye—he was becoming a happier horse. The Ferrier thought Mango was doing fine, but last week with a rider on his back we could tell his feet were sore. Neither were the exuberant horses we brought here—this land and grass and rock was not good for them, they needed to go someplace else. I am so happy we didn’t bring our horses from Oregon, it would have ruined them.

A wonderful lady bought Mango, saved him from this property, and will put him with about 9 other horses on 120 acres of good ground and good grass and a good mineral block. She almost teared up when we parted saying Mango was replacing a paint they lost earlier in the year. “Sometimes animals come back to you,” I said. She agreed.

Hoshi went into a horse family, a mother and her two daughters.

DD said she was glad we got the horses, for now she feels complete with horses for awhile. Had we not gotten them she would be longing for one. They were good visitors for a time.

See the Hawaii chain of islands on Mango's hip?

P.S. We have horses on our property again though, the neighbors. These horses are conditioned for this land, and are good mowers. Maybe they won’t care if I hug them once in awhile.

Mom's Letters

I sit in front of the computer head in hands, heart laying waste at the process that began less than a week ago. On a whim I wrote to a literary agent, “Wouldn’t it be something if mother, a small voice from the past, a farm woman sitting at her kitchen table pouring out her heart on paper in thankfulness and gratitude for the children she adopted could in the 2000’s—a decade she never saw—donate a house to a non-profit cancer organization, and thus promote the cure and healing of the very disease that killed her?”


During the years of 1957 to 1967 my mother wrote letters to Grandma Holt of the Holt Adoption Agency.


The Agency kept the letters until Mom’s death in 1968 and then sent them to my step-father. Guess they were tucked away for years, for I didn’t know of them until recently when my sister drove for four hours to deliver them to me.”

The agent forwarded them to a publisher who wants to see them immediately. They do not deal with incomplete manuscripts, they said. I didn’t tell them it was not complete. Normally such communication takes forever. It was a whim, the letters weren’t typed into a coherant group. Many were not dated, some were hand written, some typed. I am trying to decipher them, writing commentary, and processing my life.

I wrote that note in desperation, the house in Oregon hadn’t sold. I thought of the cancer survivor who wants it donated to her Foundation. I wrote the letter. My thoughts about it have evolved from helping cancer warriors, to orphans, to the one thing that would mean to most to me, and probably to my mother. It is one thing that desperately needs healed. What a legacy that would be. I asked my daughter as we drove from Kailua-Kona to our side of the island. “If sexual abuse could be eradicated, wouldn’t that be the legacy I would want most?”

“The book could do it,” she said.

Could it? How much do I tell? Mom’s letters paint an idealic family. Mom moved heaven and earth to have the babies she so desperately wanted and loved. She wrote long and lovingly about them. She trusted the “Lord” all along and felt “Him” guiding the process. Her dream fell into place and then she died. When she was diagnosed with cancer she asked me, “If this was to happen, why did God give me all these children?" I don’t know. She launched them. Perhaps her mission on earth was over. But then the next happened. I saw how sweet children could be damaged by the one man they all adored and called Daddy. Sexual advances by such a trusted person causes young girls to question everything about themselves.

“Tell of it,” said my daughter.

How much to tell? Wouldn’t keeping it a secret be the same thing that has allowed this cancer (the abuse) to proliferate?

How do we end it? How do we reach girls and say “Tell somebody. Don’t be ashamed. Get help.” How many adults knew this was happening and turned away pretending they didn’t see?

Within the week of working on the letters, we rented the house in Oregon. And in speaking about it to DD I wonder if this expose’ was the reason it had not sold. I had to get desperate. I had to write the letter. We listed the house on Craig’s list and we had so many people wanting to lease it that I had to make a tough decision as to which one to choose. We have leased the house.

Guess the house was giving its gift too.

A Place of Healing

Jungle Art

What will I miss when we leave the Big Island?

Well, running off to Hawaii for the week end for one thing. Hawaii is on the other side of the island—you know, luxury hotels, white sands, swaying palms. Here it is beautiful, but not traditional Hawaii, and I yearn for some order and refinement in my life. I don’t want to always live under primitive conditions no matter how many Coqui’s chortle.

Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I ran off to Hawaii this past weekend. We swam in a pool and went to a Luau. We figured if our time here is limited we ought to take one in. Baby D loves music and dancing, and was mesmerized by the fire dancing. I thought, you can watch, but don’t try this when you get home. When we left the Luau, DD said to BD, “Well today you learned that New Zealand is a part of the Polynesian Islands, your school for the day.” We figure the world is his school house (and ours apparently).

For those of you who know that when we lived in San Diego, we attended a 6 month program to up our consciousness, well, Hawaii has upped ours, and I suppose it has cost about the same as the other program.

We could spend another 5 years here and then move, or we could stay 5 months, and say, “That’s it, I’m out of here.”

I thought about keeping quiet regarding this. Last week I told a friend that it was a secret that we are thinking about leaving. The next week, here, I broadcast it. You know how it is, when something is pecking at you it’s hard to go on with the chatter like, “No I’m not talking about the elephant in the room. What elephant?”

I believe we got what we came to Hawaii to get, a break that was so radical, so outrageous, so far from where we had been, that it forced us to think in new ways. DD has her vision to the future, and it does not include Hawaii. Here dream job awaits. If she leaves we are going with her. She needs us, we need her. BD needs us, and we need him. I can write and HD can design wherever, but some resources would be nice. The patina of rust we can do without.

Okay great master, provide the footprints and we will fall into them step by step.

Aloha,

Joyce

P.S. I am working feverishly on a book about this experience called Talk Story, Seeking Aloha on the Big Island.
“Talk Story” is a Hawaiian phrase for chatting, gossiping, or shooting the breeze. It is what good friends do on a lazy Kona day… I think I will write it under the Nome de Plume of Jewell D. I have used that handle for so long it has become me.