Believe again

“I don’t have the miracles I did in the early days of my practice,” my Chiropractor tells me, “people stopped believing in them.”

In 1938 Clyde Bristol wrote The Magic of Believing, and Phyllis Diller for one, and Angelia Lansbury for another applied the principles of believing, and look where they went. Jim Carrey placed a 5 million dollar check into his Dad’s coffin as an affirmation of how much he would make as an actor. The next movie, The Mask, paid him $5 million in salary.

We need to start believing again. Our subconscious will love us for it.

On the Hawaiian front, we are forging ahead on house renovation. When I told June, a friend in Eugene Oregon, how Daughter Darling and I carried a kitchen counter top, a U shape that fit the width of the kitchen, and complete with sink in place, over the refrigerator, over the table, jockeyed it beside a shelving unit, and screwed it out the door, she laughed and almost fell off her chair. “Write about it,” she said. Yes, but who but wonderful June would want to read it?

I didn’t think we could get that unit out the door, but when DD sets her mind to doing something she does it. Telling her I would place the house for sale when the kitchen was complete provided motivation that sent that kid in into the hyper-drive of a super hero.

After the new cabinets were in place, and the sink was removed, we carried the counter top back in. That counter has a melamine surface, very water proof, using it eliminates all that plywood, hard backer, you know, it worked and looks great with ceramic tile on the surface and the sink back in.

When Husband Dear was in the hospital I painted the one wall behind the cabinets red. I told him, “You are going to be shocked.“ He said, “I figured.“

It looks great.

I grumbled a lot at more house renovations, but you know how it is before you put your house up for sale you fix it better than when you live in it. More Chiropractor visits ensued, but there I got a nudge to believe in miracles again. Oh yes, without a kitchen sink I washed dishes in a dishpan in the bathtub. (Telling you that is just to garner sympathy, but I bet at one time or another all you guys have done something similar. My log designer in Oregon told me he lived in a Teepee for a time when he was building a house. And later when the college of his daughter’s choice required an essay. What did she write about? You got it. The teepee experience.)

DD says, “In California we will have abundant electricity, and water, and a dishwasher, and does that refrigerator have an ice maker?”

“We had that in Oregon,” I said.

“Yes, she said, “but now we appreciate it.”

Remember the lady at The Pond’s Restaurant who told us, “Living as you are will make you appreciate everything?”

P.S. You ought to see the fish at The Pond, the water is so clear they appear to be hanging in space, no it is clearer than that, like on glass, no, its like nothing is holding them up. The ducks too, baby ducks following momma on nothing.

Mixed Blessings

”You know about the Big Island don’t you?” the doctor asked me.

“In what regard?” I said.

“The Big Island doesn’t have the facilities your husband might need in the future. He would have to go to Honolulu. The Big Island isn’t for you.”

Looks like we have another reason for leaving this island—although not a reason we want.

Husband Dear was fine when Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I got home from Southern California, and here I was blogging, chatting about the food—Point Loma Sea Food crab sandwich is the best in the world, and has been for 30 years. I was chatting about our wonderful trip, about my food poisoning, yuck, (not the crab), and three days later Husband Dear suffered shortness of breath with fluid build-up in his lungs. Yuck, yuck, yuck. A skipped medication and then re-taking it sent him into a crisis with Congestive Heart Failure. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Three days in the hospital, and a couple of days of rest and he was up and rearing to go. Where? I don’t know, but he was ready.

Actually cruising the island was it. On Thursday he circumnavigated the island. I was reluctant to have him drive, but he wanted to, was perky, clear headed and alert. We took DD to the airport in Kona. A conglomeration of miles gave her a free ticket, and leaving from Kona instead of Hilo, it only took 4 ½ hours to get to LA. (Another house-hunting trip.) Beats the stop in Honolulu and the stop in San Francisco and the entire day it took for us on our last trip. On top of it, the airline gave DD and BD the entire row of 3 seats. BD napped and played with Kiekis behind him, high-fived the passengers, and had a ball. It was a day meant for miracles.

So there we were half-way around the island, about 40 miles from Pu’u Hononua O’Honaunau, The City of Refuge. We had been planning to visit it as HD missed DD’s and my earlier trip. The serenity was not as gelatin-silent as my first visit, but miracles rolled off the lava like the mist that blows off a cresting wave.

First the weather gave us a window of non-rain. It had rained on the drive, even in Kona where they get dribbles of inches of rain, while we get feet of water. So we ran between the raindrops—my family agrees that that would be a good title for my Hawaiian book. What do you think of Running between the Raindrops? Anyway, when the sprinkles came again we left.

Second, a Native Hawaiian stood under a palm tree carving a Tiki god and talking to a small assemblage of people. He said when he was a child the elder would sit the Kiekis down and have them watch the sunset. “What do you see?” he would ask.

The children were afraid to answer, afraid to get it wrong, but when pressed they would shrug and say, “The setting sun.”

What you ought to see is that “There is life beyond the horizon.”

To the children the island was their entire world; they didn’t know or understand how life could exist beyond the water. I took it to mean there is more for us as well. There is life beyond the horizon. Hey, maybe that’s a title. Which do you like better?


Third: an epiphany, remember the excited Tiki god who was there to tell us that when our blocks are cleared the zest for life returns?

I believe we came here to heal emotionally and to begin to live again, not to buy our little property and nestle in and live out our life. No no no, there is life beyond the horizon. Meet you in LA for lunch.


                     --A life lesson from Baby Darling: “If you hear music stop and dance.”

A Fishing Expedition

I miss everyone I know, and if someone I don’t know is reading this, I miss you too.

Why? As though living 3,000 miles away from my friends and daughter isn’t enough, Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I took a trip to the mainland and I didn’t visit a single friend. (It was a fact-finding mission.)

Maybe we made a new friend though—Baby Darling is a master at attracting people, you know how it is with puppies and babies… At Chevys Restaurant in Glendale California we met Debbie, a young woman, efflorescent as champagne, and a photographer. Her companion was a Documentary maker—his documentary, “Press One for English,” has to do with immigration. While Debbie goo-gooed over BD, we struck up conversation. We asked her how she liked living there and told her what we were up to. She gave us her email address and we were off.

Back at the plane change in San Francisco BD high-fived the passengers around us. He high-fived the man in front of us who played finger puppets over the back of the seat, he high-fived his wife, as well as the man beside us who showed him pictures of his dog he had shipped from Hawaii to SF. The couple behind us figuring we were having so much fun joined the fray and were high-fived along with the group. As we were coming in for a landing at the City of Angels airport, the sun was gold on the horizon, and BD was squealing, pointing at the wonder that was happening outside our window. Someone commented that they had never seen anyone so excited over a sunset.

We have to get this child off a remote island and into the world.

Shall I tell you about the man in San Diego now or later? Now? Okay.

From our eighth floor Hotel window overlooking a grassy hillside I could see an orange dome. It looked like a beach ball set in the tall grass, but I surmised it to be a small tent.

The following morning BD and I watched as a young man, dressed in clean light colored clothing, stood beside the tent, it was a contemplative stance, and while there he slung bubbles into the wind almost like someone bowing to the sun. He then gathered up a small plastic bag, a skate board, walked down the hill, threw his bag into a garbage can, jumped on his skate board and took off into the world.

You might wonder about our restlessness and our search, and you might understand that too. You have your own life and search for fulfillment and understanding. It is a human condition. The ancients called it pathos, a yearning for home. Ulysses traveled around the known world to find his. The ancient kahunas of Hawaii knew about energy and that certain sites would heal the physical or emotional body, thus when they felt called, they moved. Yes, I have nomadic tendencies. I do believe, however, that our human search is to find the divine within us.