The Parting Glass

(The High Kings)

The Question

We were sitting in a small, cozy meeting room. Designed for confidential conversation, and potential baring of souls, it was one of several similar rooms off the main hospice receiving area.

The counselor was kind and well trained, excellent in her often-difficult task of helping family and friends through the grieving process. I was losing my mother, and she was there to help us through the grief.

After some brief introductions, she opened the conversation with a question. “Tell me,” she asked, “Is this your first experience with death and dying?”

I smiled. In the split second or so before I could reply, my brain exploded. Memories flooded my mind.

I remembered my first experience with death. I was almost three years old. It was my grandfather’s wake. I suspect that everyone is familiar with “Irish wakes.” Well, as my family is Irish, wakes were part of our tradition. Back then, wakes were held at home, and in our home, they were held in the parlor. My Grandfather Ed’s coffin was in the parlor, under the window overlooking the crabapple tree. I remember people walking up the front sidewalk, onto the porch, and through our front door. My parents, aunts and uncles warmly greeted and acknowledged everyone. The mourners came in, greeted and hugged one another before going into the parlor to pay their respects and to say a prayer for Ed. At the coffin, they’d kneel at the prie-dieu, often two by two, bless themselves, and often make a quiet comment to one another. They’d then go into the adjoining dining room or to the kitchen for some food, a drink – or two and share stories.

There was always plenty to eat and drink. That was part of the tradition.  For days, family, friends and neighbors would bring food to share – lots of ham, lots of potato salad, cakes and pies, and of course beer and whiskey.

But on that day, Grandpa’s wake had an extra, added dimension. With so many people had come to pay their respects, so many people were standing and visiting in the parlor, and with the added weight of grandpa’s coffin, the floor began to buckle! Sturdy as our house was, it wasn’t meant to hold that many people in one room at one time. There was no panic. Folks responded quickly and quietly left the parlor for the living room, dining room or the kitchen.

My dad responded quickly, as well. He called his friend, a contractor, who could help. Within no time, that friend was at the door, and he and my dad went down into the cellar. Together, they jacked up the sagging floor with what looked like a giant tire jack. All was well. That jack remained in the cellar of our house until the last of the family moved out more than 50 years later. The wake went on. New mourners arrived; none were any the wiser.

That story became part of our family lore. It became a companion piece to quite a different story that had happened years before. It seems that at one point, Uncle Hugh, one of the many older uncles of my grandparents’, had passed.  Of course, his wake was in the parlor. As the 2^nd or 3^rd day of mourning came to a close, the day of Hugh’s funeral approached. That evening, my grandmother, the aunts and other lady friends put food, drinks, and things away for the night. Apparently, though, old Uncle Hugh’s brothers and buddies were not ready to close up shop, or to lay the old guy to rest. At some point during the night, after a couple more beers, it dawned on them that their old, dead companion would likely want to be part of his own celebration. As a result, his boyos lifted him out of his casket and propped him up in the archway between the living room and the parlor. The fact that he was pretty stiff undoubtedly helped. There they toasted him before they, too, finally went off to sleep. And there he stood until funeral morning. Family lore has it that my grandmother, the young matriarch of the family, was none too happy with the boys. Although not in the best of shape themselves that morning, they got an earful from Grandma and laid Hugh back in his casket to rest, chuckling as they did so.

In the nanosecond I sat there in the little room in the hospice center, I remembered my years as an altar boy. We lived close to our parish church and to our parochial school. As a result, whenever there was need of a server for a funeral during the week, one of my friends and I would often get the assignment. I don’t know how much school we missed over the years, but I suspect that we averaged 3 to 4 funerals each month. Some large, some small. Some people we know, others were strangers. It was what we did, though. We served the living and the dead. Missing school was a side benefit.

Not all the deaths in my life involved wakes in our home, nor were they necessarily strangers in church. My friends, cousins, and I were the kids. Our parents were the adults, the elders. The next older generation – the eldest in the family – was dying. These were the siblings or children of those who had come over ‘on the boat.’ Aunt Kate and Uncle Bert. Uncle Tone. Aunt Sarah. Uncle Charlie. Grandma Florence. Aunt Nell. Some deaths were sudden, as sudden as can be expected when people are no longer young. Sometimes, illnesses and other circumstances preceded long, protracted deaths. Some folks were well prepared; others were ‘challenging.’  About those challenging people, my mother would often tell us, “If I ever get to be like so-and-so, just shoot me!” And of course, some were truly tragic and unexpected; this was especially the case when the departed were young. Whatever the circumstances, the mini-prayer frequently heard throughout the family was for “a speedy recovery or a happy death.” A speedy recovery or a happy death.

The list of passings goes on and on. With each one, there were wakes and funerals. There were cousins to catch up with; flowers, hams, cases of beer and bottles of Seagram 7 to deliver. Stories to tell. There was family to celebrate.

When I was in elementary school, although I did not fully realize it at the time, the elder generation began to die. It was in 4^th grade that one of my best friends lost both parents within a very short time. Jimmy’s mom had died of cancer after a long illness; his dad died of a sudden heart attack shortly after his wife’s death. These events were truly sad, and they had an impact on all of us. But we also watched as family and friends surrounded and protected Jimmy and his sisters. A lesson in what families do.

Not long after, Vin Carroll died. Vin and his wife, Elizabeth, had been part of my parents’ inner circle of friends. His death hit close to home. Again, the love, support, and rallying around of family and friends. Elizabeth, though now a widow, was never alone.

Of course, in our Irish Catholic traditions around death and dying, there were also Mass cards to deliver, Month’s Mind Masses to schedule, and anniversaries to remember. It was pretty much an ongoing process. Dying and death, though not always happy, and occasionally truly tragic, was never maudlin. Aside from wakes and funerals, there were cemetery plots to visit, to decorate with seasonal flowers, and generally maintain. This was all just a part of life. And very often, quite a bit of fun.

The fun part was not lost on my friends and me, either. We had some ideas. One of our favorite ideas centered around those prie-dieus next to the coffins. The idea was to set up voice activated prie-dieus. We thought it would be funny – and perhaps also very convenient – if, when mourners arrived casket-side and knelt down, the voice of the dearly departed would greet them saying something like, “Good of you to come.” Or “Don’t I look like myself?” We wanted to be able to watch the reactions on people’s faces and hear their replies.

Knowing the celebratory nature of wakes and funerals, we, ourselves, kept lists of people we wanted to invite to our own wakes. Actually, we kept those lists alive for years. Even in college, we’d threaten one another with being crossed off “my list.”

College brought a new memory and a new realization. It was during my first semester in college when the changes first experienced in grade school became a clear part of my life experience. When my father died that winter, I realized that my elders had become, as it were, our new eldest. My mother, Aunt Margaret to everyone else, had long been recognized as the family matriarch.  Now, though, my role in our family was also changing.  My generation was moving into the position of elders. We were the ones to now plan the wakes, arrange for the hams and beer, and make sure that there were Mass cards. “I am too young for this,” I remember thinking.

My father’s wake and funeral were powerful. For perhaps the first time, I wasn’t just watching the events unfold; I was an engaged participant. At his wake, I greeted mourners and personally accepted condolences. At home, I made space for yet another platter of cold cuts and made sure there was ice for the drinks. At church, I walked behind the coffin rather than walking ahead, carrying candles, down the aisle of church. And I shared memories and laughed through stories of his life well lived. And at the cemetery, I watched as his coffin was lowered into the grave. A happy death.

In a sudden leap back into that little room, it occurred to me that, sadly, my own children had experienced none of this. Their ‘eldest’ generation had not yet reached the time of passing. Where my peers and I had grown up living close to several generations of family and friends, my children had not. For them, the impending experience of Grandma’s dying and death would be new.

So there we sat in the small, cozy meeting room designed for confidential conversation, and potential baring of souls. I was losing my mother. The counselor, kind and well trained, had asked me a question. “Tell me,” she’d said, “Is this your first experience with death and dying?”

My split second of memories ended, and I was back. I smiled. Then chuckled. I think I even laughed.

I could see that with the laughter, the counselor was taken aback. I fell back to the smile and gathered my thoughts.

“Is this my first experience with death and dying? No,” I said, “I’m Irish. This is what we do.”

I Loved Her First

Heartland In Hawaii

As with all our children, this pregnancy was a fluke. By all accounts, we should not have gotten pregnant – at least not so quickly or easily. With our first, a son, it became obvious as soon as Laulani started to show that the baby was going to be a boy. Now with this second pregnancy, she showed so differently that we assumed that it must be a girl.

We were right.  On a misty-sunny Monday morning in early August, our daughter was born. We had been working on names for months. Coming from Irish and Hawaiian backgrounds, both Laulani and I understood the power of words. The ability to name something – or someone – was not to be taken lightly. For our children, we wanted each to carry his or her cultural heritage in their names. Our firstborn son was Sean Kanoa. John, a family name, is ‘God’s gift’. Sean is the Irish form of John. Kanoa carries Laulani’s maiden name, Noa; Kanoa translates as the one freed from kapu. Our loose translation is ‘free spirit.’ Now, we had a daughter to name. Her name had to be as lovely as she would be. We called her Siobhan Kanoelani. Siobhan, a Gaelic form of Joan, is also a gift from God. Kanoelani is the mist from Heaven, Heavenly mist, like the August Monday morning of her birth. We called her Noelani, or simply Noe, from the moment of her arrival.

I held her first.

After Noe’s birth, I left the hospital that morning and went to pick up Sean from our neighbor’s house. He and I then went to see Laulani’s cousin Byron to share the good news. It would give Sean some time to play with his two young cousins, Byron’s son and daughter. It also gave him some time to let the idea of being a big brother settle in.

When Byron heard about the new baby girl, he was thrilled. “Brah,” he said both laughing and seriously, “Brah, you have a daughter. A daughter! That is amazing. Just wait. A daughter,” he repeated. “Let me see the finger that baby girl is going tie you around!”

Time passed. Years passed. Noelani grew into a young woman. Monday’s child may be fair of face, but it’s hard to describe just how ‘fair’ she became. Her beauty was obvious on the outside, but it came from deep on the inside. The word which best describes that beauty is profound. Noe was a head-turner.  A heart-acher. Never a heart-breaker, though. That would hurt. She was the nicest person I knew. Not that she didn’t have a temper. Not that she couldn’t be stubborn. But she would never deliberately hurt anyone. Inside and out, Noelani was profoundly beautiful.

Noe’s first formal dance came when she was in the 9^th grade. She and Laulani were excited. Together, they found an elegant, classic floor length gown in silver. Her hair was done up, not fussy coifed up. Just simple. Her makeup was minimal.  Her date, corsage in hand, came to the door while his mom waited in the car. When Noe walked into the room, the young man’s reaction was priceless. He did an eye-popping double take, and his knees literally buckled when he saw her.

Over the years, there were many more proms, formal and informal dances, tolos, and parties. There were, of course, boyfriends as well. Like the dances, there were many along the way. However, one day not long after graduating from college, Noe asked if she could invite a young man home to meet the family. His name was Chris. They had met at school. She liked him. Nothing serious. He lived in Colorado. She had mentioned something about him before graduation. Would that be OK? Of course, we said. We would love to meet Chris.

We had met the other young men in Noe’s life. They had all come by at one time or another. Some more often than others; some over longer periods of time than others. Our family has a kind of rite of acceptance. Mom and Dad rarely said negative things about boyfriends – unless there was something outrageous, of course. But her brothers…the brothers were a different story. They spoke their minds. If a young man did not pass the brother test, he rarely lasted very long.

Chris arrived on another August day, this one on 2005. I saw Noe and Chris drive up the driveway and walk up the sidewalk, and I knew. Chris was a tall, handsome, soft-spoken, well-mannered, easy-to-be-around young man. Friendly and relaxed, he was a gentleman. He’d worked hard putting himself through college. He also played baseball. Damn! He was good. In short order that day, he passed the brother test, as well. I knew that my place as #1 man in Noe’s life had been usurped.

Before long, it became official. Noe and Chris were engaged. Wedding planning kicked in in earnest. The dress, the church, bridesmaids. Invitation lists, colors, flowers, the dress. Cake, food, music. The dress. The reception. The groomsmen. The misty green and fuchsia colors of the Phalaenopsis orchid. Scores of candles in just the same shade of green. The church, in Hawaii, the one in which Laulani and I had been married years before. A reception in Waikiki. The dress. Each piece of planning generated a list of its own. Noe had an eye for design, for color, for detail. She had a vision of what she wanted, of what her wedding was to look like. “I want people to come to our wedding in Hawaii and get goose pimples when they walk in,” she told us.

For my part, I had just one request. Just one detail which I wanted to have a say in. I wanted to be able to choose the music for the bride and dad dance. That was all. I would walk Noe down the aisle, eat any food, wear whatever clothes were chosen for me to wear. I would do whatever else I was told to do. But I did want to choose the song we were going to dance to.

There were no objections.

I already knew the song. It was a country waltz called “I Loved Her First”. Sung by the group Heartland, it tells the story of a dad watching his daughter dance with her new husband. It speaks of how hard it is to give her away and of his hopes for their future together. As he watches his new son-in-law holding his daughter, he remembers that it was he, dad, who had held her first. I knew from the first time I heard the song that it was the one I would one day dance to with Noelani.

For her part, Noe was familiar with the song. She thought it had a pretty melody, As a waltz, she thought it’d be a nice song for us to dance to. Laulani had not heard it. She was dubious as it was a country song, but she trusted that I wouldn’t go too far into the twang with my choice.

Over the months of planning, as I was driving around town, “I Loved Her First” often came on the radio. If I could do so, I would try to call Noe’s cell phone and let it play as I drove.

As we got closer to Noe and Chris’s wedding day, details began to fall into place. We had accumulated dozens of boxes of those perfect green candles along with the zen-like trays and decorative stones they came with. Now, we had to get them all, candles, candle holders, trays and stones, to Hawaii from the mainland. Given the quantity and weight, that was looking lore and more daunting as our time frame shortened.

Laulani was on the phone one day with her cousin Pua’ala on Oahu. The conversation centered around the wedding, of course. Lau mentioned the candle dilemma. “Eh,” cousin Pua’ala said, “we can come up to the mainland and pick’em up for you. Bully, Noho and me.” At first it sounded like a joke, but Pua added, “You know, we all fly on da kine passes, eh. We can come up, split ‘em up, and each bring some back home wit us. As long as we can stay wit you guys when we up there.” It was actually an excellent idea. Both Pua and Noho worked for the airlines, and they could fly for free. They could carry the candles as baggage and get them to Hawaii. Whatever was left over, we could then ship. In addition, it would be great fun to have Pua’ala, Noho and Bully at our house for a few days in the meantime.

While they were visiting, we talked wedding plans. Since Bully and Noho also had a son with an upcoming wedding, they’ too, were fully engulfed in wedding plans. Everybody had a story – stories. Funny, horrific, busy, family wedding planning stories. We laughed a lot.

I told them about the song I wanted to dance to with Noelani. They hadn’t heard of it, but they did want to listen to it. I pulled out my laptop and did a quick You Tube search. We sat around our kitchen table, Laulani, Pua’ala, Noho, Bully and I. I adjusted the sound and clicked the link to play the Heartland video. They listened. They liked the tune, the waltz, but they wanted to hear the words mo’ betta.  I played it again. They concentrated on the lyrics. Before it had finished playing the second time, everyone at the table was in tears. Every one of us. “Brah, dat’s beautiful,” Bully said. “Can you pull it off without losing it?”

That was going to be my challenge. I was in tears every time I heard it. I was determined to listen to it enough times to become desensitized, to overcome my emotions. Oddly enough, it was just about that same time that Noe called me.

“Daddy,” she said, “I just listened to that song! I mean really listened to it. I cried. Oh, my God, Daddy. I don’t know if I can dance to that with you without bawling.” We would get through it, I reassured her.

Sacred Heart Church is on Wilder Street in Honolulu, Oahu, across the street from Punahou School. It’s beautiful. Stained glass windows and koa wood. For the wedding, the altar was decked with sprays of orchids, the aisles lined with orchid pillars. Noe carried an orchid bouquet as did each of the girls in the wedding party. When I first saw Noe at the church, my knees buckled. She was the most beautiful bride I had ever seen. Radiant. Elegant. Classic. Profound.

Chris was waiting at the altar, tall, proud, and handsome, looking elegant, himself, in his linen suit.

The bridesmaids all looked lovely; the groomsmen were all very handsome.

Aunty Jolene, Noe’s wedding planner, made sure that everyone made it through the ceremony. That, in itself, was no mean feat, but that’s a whole ‘nother set of stories for another day.

After the “I do’s” were promised, the licenses signed, and the recessional played, the wedding party headed to the reception at the Haiku Gardens of the Hale Koa Hotel on Waikiki Beach. The bride and groom actually stopped off at a Burger King along the way to grab some food to tide them over. The rest of us went straight to the hotel. Lau and I arrived before most of the guests. That gave us an opportunity to see how all those lists had been transformed into real life. Kelly, one of Noe’s bridesmaids, was also among the first to arrive.

She walked into the reception area and looked around. I saw her gasp. I happened to be standing close by. She turned to me and said, “This is breath taking! It gives me goose bumps.” I’ll have to tell that to Noe, I thought.

The reception was joyful. People mingles, danced, ate and drank. All celebrated. Uncle Bully emceed. Brothers told stories. Everyone laughed. Auntie danced graceful hulas. Soon it was time for the formal dances.

Noe and I were to start. We would dance our dance. Then the other parents were brought onto the dance floor. Others would join in. But first, Noe and I were to start.

We walked to the middle of the dance floor. I held her in my arms. The music started. We had each approached this dance in the same way. We had desensitized ourselves so we could dance. And so we did. We danced and we laughed. We enjoyed the dance, but as we glanced around the hall, we saw lots of friends and relatives wiping away tears. The beautiful waltz was having an impact. The two of us dance and we laughed.

I handed Noe off to Chris. They danced. The guests cheered. Noe found Chris’s dad; Chris found his mom. I found Laulani. Soon the whole bridal party joined in. Then family and friends. It was a wonderful expression of the bonds uniting families and friends, crossing cultures and continents, creating lifetime memories.

After a time, the evening ended. To tell you the truth, it did not end quickly. People wanted the festivities to continue, the party to roll on. But like all good things, it did have to come to an end. It ended as a new family had been established, recognized and celebrated. Chris and Noe danced on their way, each holding the one they loved.

I, too, left happy knowing that I had held her and I loved her first.

Knock Three Times                                                

Tony Orlando & Dawn

ZORRIES, BUDDIES & JUKEBOX

Cleaning out my closet a few years back, I found an old, well-used, long-forgotten pair of zorries. I had forgotten where they came from. I tried to remember. I wished I could recall the adventure we had in Ponape, Cop and I.  If I could, I would tell you. All I could remember was Rose.

If I could remember the story, I would start by saying that it happened at the end of our two-year commitment as Peace Corp Volunteers in Micronesia.  Micronesia, for anyone who is not familiar, was, for many years, the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Made up of The Marshall, Marianas, Yap, Truk, and Caroline Islands, Micronesia is spectacularly beautiful. It includes Guam and Saipan, although they are politically separate areas. Micronesia has about the same boundary area as the continental United States with a total land mass less than of the size of Rhode Island.  Within that area, there are over two thousand islands in six linguistically and culturally distinct groups.  The islands are tiny, far flung and overpoweringly beautiful. 

I’d spent my time in Palau in the Western Carolines; Cop had been in Ponape, the Eastern Carolines.  I’d lived and worked in Koror, the main town of Palau. Koror is the name of both the town and the island, itself.  It is the main population center of Palau, about the size of large university campus and the population of a medium size college.   Babeldaub, the neighbor island to the north, is the largest island in Palau, in fact, outside of Guam, it’s the largest Micronesian island.  Thousands of people speak Palauan. 15 to 20 on a full day.  Given the opportunity, Palauans, an amazingly wise and adaptable race, could easily rule the world.

Cop, by contrast, had spent his time working on Pingelap, one of the outer island atolls in the Ponape group.  Pingelap’s size is measured in acres, the entire island is less than 500 acres at high tide.  Larger, of course, when the tide is out.  Cop didn’t speak Ponapean; he spoke Pingelapese with about 250 others in the world. 

We had started our Micronesian adventures at the same time; we were closing out at the same time, as well.  I was heading home to the East Coast. Cop was heading southwest to Australia.  His adventures were not yet over.  But together, we decided to have one for the road.  I would travel throughout the island groups with a stopover in Ponape. He would be leaving Pingelap with a necessary check-out stop in Ponape on his way Down Under.  We would spend a couple days together, catch up on two years apart and then continue on our separate ways.

I can’t really tell you where we stayed for the few days we were together. Cop had borrowed a house for us with someone – probably another volunteer – who was away from the island for a while.  We house-sat a nice place, airy, shaded, well equipped, off the beaten path. It had a catchment system which allowed for running water inside.  It took us a while to catch up, just the two of us.  After two years of very different experiences in different cultures, acquiring different languages, there was a lot to tell. We stayed in the house for a full day, maybe two, just trading stories, comparing experiences, reconnecting.

Interestingly, it was as foreign for Cop to spend time in Kolonia, the capitol of Ponape, as it was for me.  Oddly though, I had a bit of an upper hand.  Cop was the Ponape volunteer, but he had lived his time on a remote atoll. I, on the other hand, had lived in Koror, the Palauan counterpart-capitol to Kolonia. Cop really had none of his friends on this island; his friends and family were back on Pingelap.  Kolonia however, was filled with Palauans who had left their home district to attend CCM, the Community College of Micronesia.  I had friends, heard a familiar language spoken, and felt quite comfortable.

On our last day together in town, we went out on the town.  There were sights to see.  As similar as the districts of Micronesia appeared on the surface, they were all very unique and uniquely beautiful. Each island group had its own attractions.  Palau had Rock Islands.  Truk had the lagoon.  Ponape had Nan Madol, the ancient floating city, the Venice of Micronesia.  We went there.  I wish I could tell more about that amazing piece of archeology.  The rocks, the canals, the story of the ancient peoples.  It was a beautiful place.

It was hot, too, and on our last evening together, we needed to cool off.  Kolonia had its share of local-flavored bars, so we found one which looked like a likely place to … cool off.   I have no idea what the place was called, but, walking in, I heard the bartender call, “Bim tuu, Sechelei!  Ngara so-am?” (Come on in, friends! What do you want?)  It caught me off guard until I realized that we had entered just ahead of two other guys, two Micronesians.  They were Palauans, and the bartender had been greeting them. As fate would have it, one of them, was an old friend of mine, Harper. Harper was a teacher at the elementary school in Ngchesar.   “Hop!” I said, not hiding my surprise.  “Kau a-ngarang?”

“Mike?  Mike!  I’m fine,” he answered in Palauan.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way home, Cholei.  I’m heading back to America.  What are you doing?”

“I was supposed to teach this summer, but I got sent to school instead.  I’m taking a couple classes here at CCM.” He was referring to the Community College of Micronesia.

This whole exchange had been spoken in Palauan.  Harper caught sight of Cop and asked, “Who’s this?  Your friend?”  We immediately switched to English.  I explained how I had come to be in Ponape and who Cop was. My friend, my brother.  That was all that needed to be said; Cop was a part of our Palauan group.  The next question centered on the bartender.  She had spoken Palauan.  Harper told me that her name was Dilmei, she was from Melekeok. She had been here for about 4 or five years; this was her bar.  Palauans were on their way to ruling the world.  This was a great way to start.

I can’t tell you where Dilmei learned her trade.  She ran a great bar, though.  She served cold beers, well mixed hard drinks and even had some food to snack on.  There was one attraction, however, which trumped the others.  That was her collection of little, table-top juke boxes.  Three or four were strung along the bar, itself; three of four others were scattered around the room.    With the uncertainty of regular, full-time electric power, it was an act of faith to hope that they would be available on demand.  And the demand was great. 

The music selection on these machines was limited, 20 to 30 songs in all.  But – and this was a big, risky but – each of these little music boxes had three or four songs which had little, tiny strip tease movies attached – for an extra bunch of quarters. Ancient music videos!  Tony Orlando would sing, “Knock Three Times”, and the little stripper would bump, grind and take off some clothes.  She didn’t get very far.  The songs were all too short and she started over and over and over with every new set of coins.  In the larger world of prurience, this was pretty tame but in the small world of Kolonia, Ponape, this was about as close to a California strip club as it could get.  We drank beer, cooled off, pumped in quarters, hoped the movie would work one more time and heated up again.  To this day, I have neither seen nor heard of these mini-bits of very soft porn anywhere else in the world. That seven-inch lady on the screen sure was a conversation piece, though. 

PONAPE ROSE

It opened a particularly Ponapean conversation topic; it was Cop who brought her up, Rose.  Ponape Rose.  A living legend.  Those guys who had been around Kolonia for a while had heard about her; the newer guys had not.  I had not.  Cop had only heard of her through tales which passed from one generation of PCV to the next.  Her place, the Blue Rose, was famous.  Infamous.  Her story was the stuff of hyperbole.  Cop suggested that we all go to the Blue Rose.  It sounded like an adventure in the making; I was in.  Harper and his CCM buddies declined, a very unconventional thing for them to do.  So Cop and I went out on our own.  Somewhere along the way, we acquired a friend, a red headed PCV from Yap named Art.

If I could tell how we got to the Blue Rose, it would be a story unto itself.  We walked, we wandered, we asked.  Asking was problematic. Cop spoke Pingelapese, I spoke Palauan. Art spoke Yapese – we think – and Ponapeans, not surprisingly, spoke Ponapean.  And some English.  Before long, though, we were at the entrance of Ponape Rose’s Blue Rose Bar.

From the outside, Rose’s place looked not unlike a lot of other nondescript buildings throughout much of Micronesia.  With no distinctive architectural features, the rectangular cinder block structure could have been a house, a store, or an office building anywhere across the islands.  With the bit of panache which Rose had used to draw folks in, there was no mistaking the place, however.  A neon sign reading “Rose’s Blue Rose”, robin’s egg blue paint on the cinder blocks, and a tattering awning with a fading blue rose were surrounded by rock music rolling out the screened windows and wide-open door. 

From the inside, Rose’s business sense used every available square foot of floor space to encourage people to enjoy themselves.  Save for a larger-than-usual dedicated kitchen area, there were no interior walls.  There was a long, sturdy bar along the wall of the kitchen, ending about three quarters of the way down the length of the open room.  The standard-size juke box was around the far corner of the bar, slightly tucked out of the path of regular bar fights.  There were tables of various shapes and sizes throughout the room, but none touched the dance floor – a tiled ten-foot square at the far end of the bar, close to the music machine.  Decorations were spare, enough to show that the place was for fun, not enough to distract.  At the far end of the room, kitty-corner from the entrance, was a door which led to the benjo. The outhouse. For men. There seemed to be no companion place for women.  It was not something which concerned us at the time.

I would love to be able to have you experience Rose’s men’s place to pee.  As with so much of life, you sort of had to be there.  It was outdoors, simple, functional.  There was a corrugated tin roof loosely covering two stalls which were filled with ice at their back wall.  About three feet of yellow ice.  Chunks, large and small, puddled and slowly, naturally melted, the run-off draining away from the building.  I had not seen that much ice in one place all the time I had been in the islands.  With temperatures in the 80’s most of the time, what kind of ice maker Rose had at her disposal was a mystery.  But ice she had for her naturally, continually flushing restroom for men.

And then there was Rose.  Her perch was on the left, just inside the main entrance, a high stool on which she sat, observed, oversaw, reigned.  Rose was a living legend.  At about 5’7”, she was tall for a Micronesian woman, but she presented at about 6’2”.  In real time, she was probably in her mid-forties.  Or so.  In life time, she was ageless.  I would like to say that she was stunning.  I would like to say that she had a Helen of Troy beauty.  She was, after all, a legend.  There was no mistaking the power of her presence – her pride, energy, her will to maintain her rightful place. But she was not beautiful.  Handsome, perhaps, but not beautiful. She recognized everyone in her domain and permitted us all to enter and to remain.  

The three of us walked through the door, Cop, Art and me.  Since we had come from a bar, walked a ways and had not taken a pit stop, I looked around and discovered the way to the benjo. Art and Cop claimed a table.  The place was fairly busy.  Listening, the languages of the islands came from every table and every island district, Ponapean, of course, as well as Trukese, Yapese, Chamorro, Kapingi, Marshallese, Palauan and more.  There was Japanese, too, and English to bridge any communications gaps. 

Randy, a lonesome American who lived in Truk and was vacationing in Kolonia , saw us come in.  He joined Cop and Art at our table while I was peeing.  He’d not been Peace Corps, didn’t speak any of the indigenous languages floating through the room, and was relieved to see familiar Western faces.  Three Americans together in a raucous bar, soon to be four, stood out like a beacon in rough sea.  Rose walked to the table.

“Hello, boys,” they said she’d said in true Mae West form.  “New in town?”  The guys returned Rose’s greeting and did some quick intros. Pingelap, Truk and Yap.  “Who’s that other guy?” she asked as I was making ice melt and had not yet come back into the bar.  “He’s from Palau,” they told her.  “Ahhh, Belau. When he returns, tell him I said this: ngsoak kau.  He’ll understand.”  She raised her eyebrows quickly a couple of times as if to say, “OK? Got it?” and left to circulate through the room. She also had a round of cold beers sent to our table.

I returned ready to walk the other two guys through the joys of Rose’s outhouse.  I saw Randy, the third, and said hello instead.  The three of them we almost giddy.  “What’s up?”

“Holy crap, Dude,” Art blurted.  “Rose came over to our table and talked to us.”  I looked toward Cop.  His slightly raised eyebrow both corroborated what Art had said and added to it.  But what?  I arched my eyebrow back.

“That’s right, man.  And she said to tell you, “Tell him, ‘swakow’.”  “Swakow?  Swakow?” “No,” Cop corrected.  “more like: nnso wak gau.  What’s that mean? “Ngsoak kau”?  

“She said, ‘Ngsoak kau’?  She said to say that to me!?  Aukiil chedilam!” (Palauan expletive!) That meant one or both of two things, I explained.  “It means ‘I like you’ but it also means ‘I want you’. Depends on the context.”

“Damn,” said Art.  “You must be hot.  Walk in.  Walk across the room.  Walk out the door.  She wants you.”

“Shut up,” I said.  “Either you guys are messing with me or she was messing with you.”  And we drank Rose’s beer.  We then drank some more.  In the heat of the Ponapean night, beer excreted through every pore.  What didn’t ooze out we carried out the back to melt ice.

Time passed.  Fights broke out.  Rose broke them up and tossed the fighters.  Customers began to dwindle. Rose had come by our table from time to time, sent us food and more drinks, gotten to know us better.  For our part, we got to know her, as well.  She was multilingual, engaging each of us in the language we had learned to speak.  She threw a few extra comments my way; I don’t remember them all, but the other guys noticed.  She told us her life story, or chunks of it, anyway. 

She had been around a while.  Before the war, World War II, that is, the Japanese had controlled the islands. During the war, their presence had multiplied. Being a resourceful kid, she’d learned to speak Japanese.  We asked who had taught her, a young girl from an occupied island.  The navy, she’d said.  She learned Japanese from the navy.  All of it.  All the language, All the navy.  Same with English.  The Marines and the Seabees. Some things come in handy.  She had learned what she needed to know and, from stories we’d heard, she had taught the Japanese navy, the Marines and the Seabees few things in return. University of Arno people said. We wished we knew what that meant. She shot me a look. I shot Cop a look.  

KNOCK THREE TIMES

It was getting later, and I had a flight to catch the next day.  If I missed the flight, it’d be several more days until the next one.  Wordlessly, we began to plot an exit strategy. The Blue Rose was all but empty.  Rose has sent her bartender, a young Trukese woman, to the back to clean up.  “When you’re done, go on back to bed,” she called.  Apparently, the bartender was live-in help.  She disappeared through the kitchen.

“Let’s go eat,” Rose suggested.  “You guys must be hungry.”  We were not.  Randy needed food, though; he was close to passing out.  Earlier, Art had barely survived Rose’s wrath when he’d expectorated the juice of his betelnut chew onto the floor.  Yapese did that; they spat on the ground.  Palauans, and apparently Ponapeans as well, did not.  They’d spit neatly into a container, any container, which they carried as they chewed.  We had averted tragedy by reminding Rose that Art was from Yap, shrugging sympathetically. 

“Come,” she ordered. “We’ll eat.” Cop and I wanted to run for the door, but we saw that it was already locked.  When she did that, we didn’t know. Possibly as the last of her paying customers had left, and when she’d sent her Trukese girl to the kitchen.  So the four of us followed Rose, through the kitchen, into her private living quarters. What the outside world never realized was that Rose’s rectangle of cinder block bar was the front face of a maze of interconnected buildings of similar construction.  They had been joined over time by a series of covers, roofs, walls and half walls.  What had been simple, four-corner geometry turned into a labyrinth of rooms, hallways, windows and doors, some inside, others out.  Like any good maze, there was no obvious way out. 

“Hey, if we get separated or if one of us finds a way out, just knock of a wall or a door so we can both leave,” Cop said.  “Right, knock three times,” I added.

Rose took the four of us into an interior room with tatami mats rolled in a corner, and left.  It would have been swelteringly hot but for a small electric fan, cracked windows high up near the ceiling, and open vents in the roof.  We had barely enough time to pull out the mats when Rose returned.  She took Randy by the arm and led him away.  The rest of us stood stunned and speechless.  We wished we knew what was going on.  She came back.  “You, spit boy, time to go.” With that, she grabbed Art by the arm and led him out of the room with the same determination she’d had shown when she removed brawlers earlier.

That left Cop and me.  “Remember, knock.  You gotta pee?  Gonna be sick?”  We were devising a plan; we didn’t need a lot of words.  Rose returned a second time.  “Come here,” she ordered.  We did.  She was standing next to a sort of built in piece of furniture which we had not noticed.  It was a window seat, less the window.  Rose stood on the seat and beckoned us to do the same.  We did.  “Look,” she ordered. She stood high enough to look through the open interior relight windows down onto the adjoining room.  We did the same.  There was no TV in Ponape at that time.  No VCRs or movies to rent.  And Rose had no juke box strip show.

What Rose did have, however, was her own, private home entertainment system.  Below us, sprawled on a pair of tatami similar to the ones in our room, were Randy and the bartender from Truk.  Randy, shirt gone, shorts pulled down, was also all but passed out.  The girl was kissing him. Grabbing him. Rubbing him.  But she was not getting the response she wanted.  Nor was Rose.  “Damn fool haole boy,” she hissed as she turned back in our direction.  We knew the term, it was an expression from Hawaii for white guys like us.  Time to make our move. Cop eyebrowed me.

“I gotta go,” Cop said first.  “Really gotta pee.  Which way’s the benjo?”

ZORRIES AND MORE

Rose led Cop around and through her house maze to a back door.  He went out and slipped on the first pair of zorries he came to.  Randy’s maybe.  He did have to go pee, though; this was his exit strategy. Later he told me that he played lost when tried to find a way back in.  But that was later!

In half a heartbeat, Rose was back in the room with me. Wordlessly, she grabbed my hand and led me through a door into her bedroom. It was big, airy, comfortable looking, with an enormous bed against one wall.

She smiled. Wordlessly, deftly, she began to lift my shirt.

“Ngsoak kau,” she then whispered. “Ngarngi a soam, Sechelei?”

There really wasn’t time to think about it. Before I knew it, my shorts were undone and Rose was finding what she wanted. And getting the response she liked. She worked us toward her bed, all the while undoing and removing her own clothes. We were all but naked. I wish I could tell you how she did that, but in truth, I can’t.

All the while, in the background, I could hear faint “knock-knock-knock.“ “Knock-knock-knock.”

“Oh, my,” she whispered happily to no one. “So big.”

I’m not sure who landed on the bed first, who was on top, who on the bottom. What I do know is that it was all over before I could even think about it. I’d joined the navy.

“Oh, my,” she said again, less pleased. “So fast.”

Sheepishly I smiled, shrugged, and said, “I really gotta pee.”

This time, instead of leading me through her maze, she just pointed toward the door. I grabbed by shorts and T-shirt, thinking I would have to figure the way outside myself. And I did.

Once outside, this time I found a pair of zorries. Rose’s, I think. I pulled on my shorts and my shirt and slipped into the zorries.

The knocking had stopped. Cop, I figured, had begun to wend his way back to the house where we were staying. I eventually made my way to the front, the main entrance to Rose’s Blue Rose.  It appeared to be the only real door in or out of the place. That gave me a bit of directional perspective.

It was dark. I ran. I headed in the general direction I thought we’d come, back toward the house we were staying in, and where all my clothes were packed for home.  I wish I could tell you that I knew where I was going, the direction, the name of the area, the distance.  Clawing my way through Kolonia late at night, I came across people in all states of being.  I asked them all for directions…in English, in Palauan.  I got stares, incomprehensible replies, pointed fingers, raised fingers.  Somehow, pieces of the surroundings began to look more familiar.  I was getting closer to the house.  About the time it came into view, Cop called to me from back along the path.  “Hey, man!  You made it,” he called.  “Me!  You!” I called back.  Major relief. 

“What the hell happened back there?” he asked. “I pretended I couldn’t find my way back in – but I really couldn’t find a way to get you out!”

“After you left…I wish I could tell you…you don’t want to know.  She came on to me.  Now I know which meaning of “ngsoak” she had in mind. She handled me like she wanted …wanted…wanted…. more navy! You don’t want to know.”

“How’d you get out?”

“I said I had to pee – too. She just pointed to the door like, “You can go now, Boy.” I tried to remember the sounds of your knocks.  I grabbed the first pair of zorries I came across and started to run. I think these are hers!”

I had not realized that Cop had still been outside Rose’s compound when I left. He’d been searching for a way to get a signal to me. But since Cop had been somewhat more familiar with Kolonia than I, when he did leave her place, he was able to pretty much head straight to the house.  My roundabout, stop-and-ask route had taken me a bit longer to get to the same point along the path.  Now, with little to no distance left, we quickly got to the house, and cleaned up a bit. 

Cop then drove me to the airport in the beat-up old car which came with the house.  The one we had not driven because we were hot, and the beer was going to be cold.  Thanks to my friend, I made it to the airport in time for my flight.  I headed home. Cop left for Australia a few days later.  Truth be told, we have never spoken about that night since although we have passed a few knowing glances back and forth over the years.

What a night.  What a story. I wish I could tell you about it. It was great fun. I wish I could remember the details.  One final adventure.

I wish I could tell you more. But I can’t.

Back in the closet, I slipped the old, long-forgotten zorries on my feet.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The Boxer

Simon And Garfunkel

The Boxer and The Southpaw

Baseball is the pure sport. It is a game like no other.  Just ask The Southpaw. 

Standing in the batter’s box, he’d think, “This is the center of the universe.”

Looking down the foul lines, he’d think, “They have no end.  These lines go on forever.”

In the middle of a game, he’d think, “There is no clock.  There are no limits.”

Focused on a pending play, he’d think, “The game can change in an instant.”

Baseball can become the love of one’s life. The Southpaw loved baseball.  Baseball loved him back. Like any love of one’s life, it is warm and accepting, brutal and unforgiving.  She toyed with him.

When he was two years old, The Southpaw was hitting self-tossed baseballs 30 feet over the backyard fence.

“Kid’s got a future,” the neighbor would shout from his deck.  “Ain’t never seen a little guy do that before!”

Maybe he heard it, too, that two year old.  Maybe he understood that something special was happening.  Maybe he just loved the feel of the ball, the crack of the bat.  Maybe he had no idea what was going on.  Whatever it was, the little guy was hooked.

“Come on, Dad, let’s play,” he’d shout.  Dad would come and toss him some balls.

They’d play catch.  They’d bat.  He’d pitch to his dad.  It went on for years.  While they were throwing and hitting and pitching and catching, Little League happened.  T-ball.  Coach pitch.  Kid pitch.  Minors. Majors. All Stars.  The Southpaw loved it.  The game loved him.

Once during Little League, he was on course to be named to his league’s All Star team.  The All Star team coach had been his coach during the regular season; the coach’s son and he had been teammates, buddies.  Earlier in the season, the coach sensed that the Southpaw could easily overshadow his own son in the game.  He had begun to play mind games with the boy.   “You’ll pitch tomorrow,” he’d say.  But it wouldn’t happen.  “You’re lead off, today,” he’d say.  But in the lineup, the boy would find himself batting 9^th.  “We need you to play short.”  Then place him in left field.  Wherever he went, though, Southy proved his worth.  The coach’s son was good, but he never had the passion nor the sense of the game which the Southpaw had.

During the All Star selection process at the end of the season, the coach had made it clear that The Southpaw would not play for his team.  Other coaches in the selection process had been stunned.  “What!” they said.  “Are you nuts?  He’s the best we got!”

“Nope,” the coach replied.  “Not on my team.  Not if I’m gonna coach.  The kid’s a head case.”

Of course that was far from the case.  Truth be told, the coach was afraid that The Southy would continue to out play his own son and steal more of the glory.

The others in the selection process talked with The Southpaw’s dad, told him the situation and pointed them to a different team in a different League.  The other league took him. Southpaw played; his new team dominated and the rest, as they say, is history.  The Southpaw became a local legend.  That coach and his family moved out of town.

The Southpaw grew.  As he matured, his love of the game matured from a little kid’s infatuation into adolescent passion.  The leather, the wood, the stitches – the tension. It was palatable.  The heft of the bat as it grew heavier over time.  The feel of the ball, as he massaged it in his hands.  The slow, rhythmic dance of anticipation before the explosion of a well executed play…. He loved the game; the game loved him back.

Little League came to an end and so did the careers of many of the young players.  The Southpaw went on, though.  He played Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, American Legion.  Although he had a great eye and a solid bat, his coaches recognized his ability to place a pitch wherever he – they – wanted it.  Although he was fast and covered a lot of ground in the field, the mound became his home. He became a PO – pitcher only. High school ball started at the varsity level. 

The higher one goes and the more advanced the game, the more likely one is to be given a nickname.  The Southpaw had one.  Two, in fact, but they were related on some levels.  Southy was the big dog in the pack.  It’s not that he was the alpha male with a need to dominate.  It was his natural, zen-like attitude of self-control.  He stood apart.  He lead by virtue of his presence.  “Big Dog.”  That was it.  Big Dog, in its abbreviated form, was Dog.  Dog, in its familiar form, was Doggie.  Southy was Doggie. 

Dogs gnaw on bones.  Sometimes, Doggie would pick up his bat and step to the plate for old time’s sake.  “Throw this old dog a bone,” he’d say.  “It’s in your hands,” his teammates would retort.  “Doggie likes his boner!” they’d laugh.  Boys will be boys.  So Southy was Doggie; Southy was Dog Bone, Bone, Boner.

Once while playing semi-pro ball in California, Doggie was working for a landscape company prepping the grounds around a new office complex.  The weather was warm; the facilities were minimal.  He was still new to the crew, and about mid morning, needed to relieve himself.  Not a stand-by-a-tree-and-pee, he needed to go, big time.  Sensing a moment of comic relief, the other guys on his crew told him that the nearest sani-can was on the far side of the project, quite a ways if a guy had to go that bad.  “Find your self a big tree, Dog,” they said.  And he did.  A tree, a few leaves and a couple of handfuls of dirt later and he was done.  “Nice job!” they teased.  When lunch break rolled around, Southy went for his little blue mini-cooler loaded with peanut butter sandwiches and Gatorade. Scrawled on top on black marker: “Squatting Dog.”  “Hey, man, we didn’t want to get the friggin’ lunches mixed up after the job you did!”  The whole crew laughed; Squatting Dog was welcomed into the pack.

College ball was Division 1.  During his years on college, there were coaching changes.  The new coach wanted to play “his boys.”  Starting off, though, he had no boys of his own, so it he was heavy into recruiting.  The team suffered.  It was Southy’s first serious awareness of the business side of the game he loved so much.  Eyes were watching.  Scouts liked what they saw, but since they were not “the coach’s boys”, neither Southy nor his teammates were highly promoted.

College summers were spent playing semi-pro ball was in a California-West Coast league.  Again, scouts liked what they saw, but not enough for an offer from a Big League organization.   “You’re better than a lot of guys I look at,” they’d say.  “And you have a work ethic like I’ve never seen.  But so-and-so’s been highly touted, invested in, and committed to.  He’s good, but he ain’t you.  You’re better, but you ain’t got the backing.”

Over time, the Southpaw’s love of the game had only grown.  After college, the young man who had slept with this mitt was not yet ready to hang up his cleats.  A mentor who had known him for years passed his name, stats and contact information on to an associate with connections to independent minor league ball.  “The level of play,” the associate said, “is comparable to AA affiliated baseball, but without a Major League team affiliation.  Guys move up and down, in and out all the time.  Great ball; some incredible venues; contacts and connections all over the world.  The pay’s not great, but you get paid to play.  What could be better?” 

Southy signed. It was a joyous experience.  Over the next several years, he played in towns and cities across America.  Joliette.  Sioux Falls.  Winnepeg.  Pensecola.  El Paso.  Calgary. Shreveport.  And on and on.  Long bus rides across the prairie.  Bumpy prop flights between small cities.  In proud ball parks which rivaled those of the Bigs.  In small parks in smaller towns.  He even did a turn for a winter season overseas.  He played.  He made a name for himself.  He was an Australian All Star.

He was let go, picked up, traded and played.  For the love of the game, he became a commodity.  He played with some of the best up-and-comers and some of those with faded glory whose best days were gone.  The friends he made were lifelong.

Only one thing was constant over those years.  The money was lousy.  “Just wait ‘til you get called to The Dance,” he’d been told on more than one occasion.  “Man, when you walk into that locker room in the Bigs, it’s a whole new world.”  “You know why you worked through this shit,” they’d say.  In the meantime, his team took care of the bare bones basics of life on the road.  He had to make up the difference in the off season.  So he did landscaping; he waited tables and bartended.  He shod horses and did some plumbing.  He sold sporting goods online, and he coached little guys who were just learning to love the game.  Once, after being released from a team because a player in the Majors had come back from Injured Reserve, which bumped someone, which bumped someone, which bumped someone…all the way down the line until he was bumped, he took a job digging graves.  Standing in a hole in a cemetery in a town whose name he never knew, he got a call.  He’d been picked up by another team, and they wanted him to start the game the following day.  It was 500 miles away.  The Southpaw put down his shovel, walked to his foreman, told him the situation.  The foreman teared up as he said, “Good luck – and God speed.”

Every off-season was hard.  September would come and he would ask himself if the previous season was his last.  He’d suffer through withdrawals, take a break, start a new job and wait.  By Halloween he’d know.  “I’m going back,” he’d say.  Once that happened, his whole demeanor changed.  He was Big Dog again, the zen pitcher.  All was right with the world.  Workouts would kick in.  He’d stretch, lift, run, read, reconnect, prepare.  There was joy in the work.  There was a season ahead. 

Finally, one year, the Southpaw said, “I’m not going back.”  It was different this time.  It was over.  The years of working his ass off for love of the game, of teammates, of intimate crowds in hometown ball parks, of leather and ash were over.  The years of being bought and sold, of 15- hour bus trips, of watching less talented, more highly touted arrogant kids move up while watching seasoned veterans try to work through one more season were over.  “I’ve given it my best shot.  My time is up.”  And so it was.

You can’t say that this is a story of unrequited love.  Year after year, the game brought joy to the Southpaw.  But like the sirens of old, who lured men with their song and the promise of more, the game had also held the promise of more.  The Majors.  Rarified air.  The Big Dance. 

The spring of the following year was especially hard.  It was the first time in decades that he had not had a team, spring practice, or a season to look forward to.  There was a profound sense of loss, a period of mourning. 

In the end, he was still Southy.  Big Dog.  Bone.  But that spring opened the toughest baseball season of his life. 

My Son, His Mon and Celine

Titanic was a huge movie.  In April of 1998 it was proclaimed The 1997 Best Picture of the Year.  Celine Dion’s rendition of its beautiful theme song, My Heart Will Go On, was everywhere.  Listening to the radio during those years, we couldn’t go more than a few minutes without hearing it again.  In time, though, other singers and fresher songs took over the airwaves.  It wasn’t too long before My Heart Will Go On became one of the new oldies, a recent hit, played less and less.

Driving to baseball practice one afternoon in the summer of 2006, my son, the youngest of our three kids, and I had the radio on, as usual.  Although it would have been my choice to stick with either old oldies or country, we compromised and hit a station which played a good mix of pop and rock.  It was a warm, sun-filled Northwest afternoon, the kind that people in other parts of the country rarely experience and find it hard to believe we have.  “From what we hear, it always rains up there,” they say. ”People don’t tan, they rust.”   Our response, “You got that right.  Now — stay away.”

Celine began to sing.  “I hate this song,” my son said.  He spoke with an intensity I was not familiar with.  14 year olds are known to be hormonally unpredictable, but this was not the sentiment of a teen.  Rather, his statement came from somewhere deep and intense, from the heart of an old man.

“You hate this song?  This one?  What’s up with this song?” I asked.  “I thought everybody liked it.”

“I hate it, Dad.  Can we turn it, please?  It reminds me of Mom.”  So we changed the station..

To many, that might seem like a strange thing to say.  Our family was intact.  It was close knit and loving.  On the surface, to say that he hated a song because it reminded him of his mother sounded odd.  To say it with such fervor, such vehemence called for an explanation.  “What?”  I asked.  “Mom? I don’t get it.”

“They always played this when Mom was sick.”   That said it all. 

My boy does not generate memories of the time when he was four years old.  He loves to recall good times back in the olden days.  He often talks about “when I was three”.    He’ll talk about being three and Molly in Montessori school, and Miss Helene, his teacher.  Dominic, whose dad was a cop in the city. (How cool is that!) He’ll tell tales of kindergarten. He’ll tell us about his T-ball team and the coach whose name only he can remember – when he was five.  He’ll remind his older brother and sister how they used to toss him around with their friends when he was really little.  He has stories upon stories of many childhood things – but none are from when he was four.

When he was four, his mom got sick.  Cancer.  Not just cancer, but a very rare and aggressive form of cancer which her doctors were unprepared to handle.  Synovial sarcoma.  Stage IV.  In her pleural lining; against her spine.  Mean, ugly, big and growing.  Her doctors were less than hopeful.  It was not until much later that we learned that the doctors had only given her a 15 to 25% chance of survival.  With a family, three kids, and a future, that was unacceptable, and Mom took it upon herself to handle it. 

She gathered family and friends together for support.  She called it her Healing Board. She found a doctor who was an expert in such rare cancers.  She and her doctor laid out a course of action and treatments which would last for almost two years.  Together, as a family, we moved forward toward her cure. 

The Healing Board grew in number.  Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be a part of the amazing life adventure.  Members took on roles and tasks.  Carol and Ruth planned a meal calendar and had others sign up to bring dinners.  Carleen was the fashion coordinator, making sure that Mom had stylin’ hats and scarves for her head, which was sure to bald during chemo.  Elaine organized transportation for the older kids and all their activities.  Carmen planned Shea’s day care and rides to pre-school.  And so it went.  Barbara scheduled girls’ nights in the hospital so Mom was never alone during her long weeks of chemo-drip. On and on, week after week, month after month. 

The other kids each handled the situation their own way.  Our older son was in denial.  “Mom’s fine,” he’d say.  “Mom’s fine.”  It took a 17 year-old girlfriend to give him a verbal wake-up slap in the face before he faced the truth.  “Your mom might die,” she said plainly.  “She really might die!” 

“Could she, Dad?” he asked.  “Yes,” I said, again speaking plainly.  “But she won’t.  She needs you, though.  You.”  At 18, one does not expect to shave a mother’s thick black hair.  But, as that hair was beginning to come out with each touch of a brush – or a hand – that’s exactly what he did. 

Our daughter, like her mom, faced it all head on.  At 14, she took it upon herself to talk to her principal and her teachers.  “My mom’s got really bad cancer.  We’re dealing with it, but if I lose it in school some day, that’s why.” She also told her mom that she was going to be fine and that mom would use her experience to help others survive life’s ordeals.

Our youngest was just four. Our bonus.  He heard some of the conversations.  He knew Mom was sick. He saw all the people coming and going.  He experienced the hubbub. He rolled with the punches.  Mom, he knew, had to go to see the doctor a lot.  Then she spent time in the hospital.  The first time she had to go to the hospital, it was only for a short time, but she got really sick when she came home, so she had to go back.  For a few days.  What the little guy did not know was that the doctors had administered her first dose of chemo incorrectly and it had almost killed her.  What he also didn’t know was that she’d found a new doctor who would not make the same mistake again!

Life went on.  As a family, we tried to maintain a sense of normalcy, especially for Shea, as he was so young.  The pace and intensity, the focus and the events, though, were unlike what any of us had known as normal.  Mom would go to the hospital for chemo every three weeks.  She’d spend a full week receiving a slow drip.  Then she’d come home and spend several days in bed.  In the meantime, my son went to Montessori pre-school; somebody always got him there.  He went to play at someone’s home most days after school.  At some houses were friends; at others were “new friends.”  In the evenings, the family was home for dinner, but sometimes, too, other people were there, as well.  The food was always abundant, hot and delicious – and delivered fresh daily.  What the boy didn’t know was that so much food was being brought in that there was no way the family could eat – or store  – it all.  Before long, the delivery dates were adjusted to avoid waste.  What he did know was that some days at dinner he’d have a craft project to show, some days he’d tell us about a movie he’d seen, and some days…well, some days just happened.  On many days, Celine Dion would sing in the background.

This went on for months.  People would come by almost daily.  The Healing Board would meet in the living room before each new week-long chemo session.  They’d come, laugh, talk, eat and pray.  Lots of people.  Shea played along, seeming to take it in stride.

Finally it stopped.  The weeks of chemo, anyway.  After chemo came surgery and the removal of the tumor, vertebrae, pieces of lung…. The surgery was going to be big.  In preparation, Shea visited the surgeon’s office with Mom and Dad.  As the surgeon explained the impending procedure, he pointed to bones and other areas on a life-size skeleton in his office.  Point here.  Open here. Remove this.  Replace that. The surgeon spoke; the skeleton fascinated Shea.  It was a real, bone-by-bone human skeleton, the kind they have in books.  This one, though, he could touch.  Fun.   A little scary, but fun.

The surgery date was set.  Mom was going to go back to the hospital again.  It had been a while and her hair was even starting to grow back.  She wasn’t as sick as she had been, especially when she’d gone for chemo.  Life was sort of getting back to the way it used to be.  Mom packed her bag for the hospital.  Dad carried it into the car.  Our son was going to stay home with his older sister when Dad took Mom in.  It was time for Mom to leave. She walked down the hall for one more hug and kiss. 

That’s when he lost it.

For months, this young man had gone with the flow.  He’d rolled with the punches.  He’d played along.  At that moment in the hallway, though, with visions of skeletons, talk of surgery, and Mom asking for one last kiss, he completely and utterly broke down.  With wails of anguish, tears of despair, sobs and moans, he held Mom as tight as his 4 year-old arms would allow and begged her not to go. His heart was breaking; he was inconsolable.   Mom got down on the floor and cradled him, rocked him as she had done when he was an infant.  “You’re in my heart,” she assured him.  “You’ll stay in my heart forever.”  And then, “I’ll be home soon.  I love you too much to stay away for long.”  He calmed a bit, enough for Big Sister to take him and allow Mom to leave.

Mom’s surgery was the following morning.  14 hours.  The surgery, itself, is a story of skill, faith, close calls and triumph.  That evening, Mom was in post-op recovery.

Nina, a close friend and Board member, had brought the kids to the hospital.  We did not know if we would be able to see Mom so soon after the procedure, but it wasn’t long before we were given permission to do so.  We’d been warned, however, that she’d been through a long, difficult operation, that her appearance might be disturbing, and that she might not be fully awake.  We should not worry if she didn’t respond to our presence.  We were prepped and we prepped.  I picked my youngest up and carried him as we entered the post-op recovery room.  Mom was behind a curtain.  The nurse pulled it back to create more room for all of us.

Mom was lying on a bed, flat on her back.  Her neck was in a brace.  There were dozens – literally dozens –  of tubes of various sizes and colors dripping and draining several areas of her body.  She was covered in a small light sheet; most of her body was exposed.  Part of an enormous surgery wound was visible on her side.  To the most experienced medical person, the sight of such a patient might be unnerving.  Mom looked toward us and smiled.

My son began giggling.  He was looking, pointing, and counting.  His giggles turned to full blown laughter.  As I held him, he clapped.  “Look!”  We did.  It wasn’t a sight to bring such glee to a four year-old.  “Look!” he repeated.  “Two hands.  Two arms.  Two feet.  Fingers and toes.  Ears.  She’s all here!  She’s still all Mom!”  It was then that we understood.  This young boy’s fear had been that the surgeon would cut his mother up and take away the pieces.  Although that’s exactly what happened, they weren’t pieces he’d ever see.  As far as he was concerned, Mom was all there, intact.  Mom would be coming home.  I held him close so that he could give her a kiss.  His heart was full.

Treatments were not over yet.  There was recovery from the surgery, followed by months life in a neck brace.  Then there would still be weeks and weeks of radiation, specialized radiation which would be administered in Boston, across the continent.  By that time, though, the four year-old had turned five and started kindergarten.  He remembers that.

As time went by, Celine Dion’s song from Titanic was played less frequently.  In time, too, Mom made a full and miraculous recovery; she is cancer free.  The Healing Board disbanded.  The kids thrived.   Life went on.  There are still moments from that time which we revisit when we are all together.  The older kids are adults now.  They remember a lot and have their own stories to tell. 

That four year-old, too, has grown and matured into a fine and handsome young man.  He always has lots of stories to tell.  When he was three.  The soccer State Cup.  Mr. Jones in 4^th grade.  Girlfriends. His baseball MVP….

To this day, however, he never generates a memory of being four. 

And he never listens to Celine sing My Heart Will Go On.

You Don’t Mess Around With Jim 

                            Jim Croce

Agnes, Harriet and Jim

To say that Hurricane Agnes was devastating is an understatement. To say that Harriet was a force of nature is also an understatement.  Together, they were life changing.

In the spring of 1972, Agnes made her way up the east coast of the United States.  As a hurricane, she really wasn’t much.  Cat 1, max.  However, the rains which were a crucial aspect of her personality threatened death and destruction up and down the eastern seaboard. 

In the spring of ’72, Harriet and I were on the faculty of St. Patrick Junior High, Elmira, New York. It was located several blocks north, up Main Street, from the Chemung River.  My classroom was on the 1^st floor, right above the library in the basement.  Harriet worked in the library.  Our desks were essentially on top of each other.  We passed notes to one another on a string through the windows. 

The school year ended, and as we were all engaged in finish-up activities, Agnes arrived, bringing rain, a lot of rain.  A lot.  Classes were over and all the students were gone for the summer. Our school was safely away from the rising river.  Not only by virtue of the many blocks in distance, but also because of the slight but steady uphill rise in elevation.  We would close up shop and get home before the worst of Agnes hit town.  Just in case, though, before we finally left for the safety of our homes, the staff volunteered to spend the afternoon moving library books.  Harriet had it all organized.  Better safe than sorry.

While a few folks finished up final grades for report cards, several of us went downstairs to the library and, under Harriet’s direction, began to move books as high on the book shelves as we could get and fit them.  It would mean a lot of resorting and reshelving later in the summer, but – better safe than sorry.

We also listened to the news and weather on a little AM radio which Harriet kept on her desk.  Rain. Lots of rain.  Some wind.  And a dam which had been breached.  Upriver from Elmira.  That didn’t sound good.  

Once we’d put as many books as high as we could, and once we’d gotten all the tape recorders and overhead projectors off the floor and onto tables and desks, we went outside to see what we could see of the storm.  It wasn’t as rainy as the reports had indicated.  However, we could see the river.  That was scary.  The Chemung River, which divided downtown on the north from the Southside, had obviously overflowed its banks and inundated aptly named Water Street, the main east-west thoroughfare across the city.  Amazed, we headed slowly down the street toward the flooded center of the city.  From our point of view, anyone living on the south side of town would have a tough time getting home.  As I lived about 20 miles south of the city, and as the highway paralleled the river, I began to think that I, too, might have a tough time getting home.

We hadn’t walked far – not much more than a block or so – when we stopped.  Stunned.  For a brief moment, we could not believe what we were seeing.  The river was approaching us faster than we were walking toward it!  The water, flowing east and south, was spreading north.  We backed our way up the sidewalk toward the school.  The river came closer.  We walked faster; the water got ever closer.  We turned, picked up the pace and headed for the park just north of – and slightly higher than – the main entrance to school.  We watched as the water rose. We listened as water crashed into the gym which was a newer, separate building on the south side of the main school.  We cringed as the water exploded through the street-level windows which were above the book shelves in the library.

Harriet lost it.  “Better safe than sorry!” she roared, her naturally bawdy, contagious laughter catching the rest of us by complete surprise.  “Better stupid than smart.  Better wet than read.” 

And so it began.  Quite literally, the first day of the rest of our lives.  “Goddamn Agnes.”  Then,  “Agnes Day,” she intoned to the tune of Agnus Dei.  “She’s no lamb of God, that’s for damn sure.”

We all laughed.  We realized how ridiculous our efforts had been in moving books to higher shelves when the windows were still above them.  We realized how helpless we were in the face of nature on a rampage.  We realized, too, that what had happened to our school had also likely happened to many of our homes. 

Harriet lost it again.  Harriet, Eddy, her husband, and their three sons lived a few blocks west and a few blocks south of the school.  It took no stretch of imagination to understand that, if what we had just seen had happened as far from the river as we were, anyone closer to the river would be even more in the path and deeper under water.  No laughter this time; tears. 

There were no cell phones in 1972.  Trying to make contact with family and friends in a situation such as that was all but impossible.  Eddy and the boys were somewhere else in the city, Eddy at work, the boys….  Harriet did not know where the boys were.  At that moment, she realized that her home was almost certainly destroyed, her husband’s place of business gone and her family scattered to places unknown.  Near panic set in.  She was alone.

Those of us who had been involved in moving books and watching the river rise now clustered around Harriet.  There was nothing we could do except be there with her.  Harriet had two favorite songs.  One was “All the Cowboys Want To Marry Harriet” … ‘cuz she’s so handy with a lariat.’ The other was Jim Croce’s current hit, “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.”  Since we were not all “on her veranda, oh what a line they hand ya”,  Croce kicked in.  “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape….”  A life rule.  “You don’t spit into the wind.”  Another.   “You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger”, and you don’t mess around with… Harriet.  We were about to be schooled in the rules.  The rules of survival.

Harriet took a long, deep breath and stopped crying.  She squared her shoulders, pulled herself 163 pounds up to her full 5’1” height and said something to the effect of, “I’ve just about had all of this crap that I’m gonna take!” and started off in the direction of her home. How she planned to get there or what she intended to do if she made it were not notions any of us brought up.  Harriet was going home.

“Those damn kids better be there when I get home,” she said.  “They’re probably just screwing around some place.  They’re just like their father…..”  We all started laughing and in unison completed the punch line she was infamous for:  “And you’ll never tell them who he is!”

“Damn right!” she responded, never missing a beat.  “If they’re not there……”

“You’ll have a ceteret.”  (A ceteret was what she threatened to have whenever her boys caused her grief.  She’d get mad, start yelling, etc…. Thus, a ceteret.)

Mother Nature had just thrown a curve, but Mother Harriet was not one to buckle.  Forces of nature take on a life of their own.  Survival was the priority, now.  Failure was not an option, and the rules would see her through.

Just how Harriet got to her house, we will never know.  How she found Eddy and the boys is another mystery.  What we did learn was that she did eventually contact her husband and sons, gathered them together.  They even found Roy, their ungroomed Poodle which thought it was a Basset and howled at the moon. Together, they regrouped, found a place of shelter and settled in for the long haul.

Her home had been destroyed.  The river had risen so fast and run so swiftly that there was not much left.  The water line indicated that the Chemung reached levels on the first floor that were just higher than Harriet’s head.  The basement, furnace, washer and dryer were useless.  On the main floor of her house, the furniture, kitchen appliances, food, and keepsakes were strewn somewhere else around the neighborhood and beyond.  All the family had left were their beds and clothing which had not been in the laundry in the basement.  Family memorabilia.  Just a memory.  The rule: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, and you don’t look back.

Agnes bored quickly.  She did her thing and petered out. The saving grace was that it had all happened fast and that it was summer.  Once the storm had passed, and the water receded, the weather cleared, and stayed fairly dry.  Oddly enough, even the humidity didn’t rise to an uncomfortable level right away.  Things in the open air began to dry out.  Once major debris was moved, roads were reopened and local travel picked up.  The job of the summer was to clean up and restore a sense of normalcy.  Communities banded together to help one another. The school staff volunteered to do all they could to clean, repair and freshen up to ensure that the building was ready for September. 

We started in the library.  Hundreds upon hundreds of volumes lay swollen in the damp, dank basement of the building.  Not much air flow there.  Not enough, anyway.  Mildew, rot and soggy, soggy paper.

We shoveled out book after book after book.  It was important to us that the library be restored. It was Harriet’s domain.  Her other home.  As days went by and became hot, the fetid smell of decaying literature, science and research became overpowering.    For her part, Harriet helped.  For our part, we also spent hours at Harriet’s home, helping clean and clear their property.  The family had secured a small, government supplied house trailer to live in.  As it was not much larger than a big camper, they used a combination of cramped trailer space with the upstairs of their house.  Neither was enough; together it helped the five of them cope and adjust.  Rule: You don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub was an Elmira institution.  Located between school and Harriet’s home, it had been our hangout during the school year, our TGIF place. It continued to be a place of respite during that long, arduous summer.  Horrigan’s had a rule: no women were served at the bar.  Oh, women were served.  It was tradition, however, that they did not step up to the bar, itself, and order or drink.  Respect.  That was the reason.  Women deserved respect and standing at a bar was unladylike.

During the summer of 1972, the female students of Elmira College had fully embraced Women’s Liberation.  And Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub had its old-fashioned, chauvinistic rule about women at the bar.  The girls of Elmira College took it upon themselves to set things straight.  Night after night, they came into the bar.  They demanded service.  Night after night, they were served whatever they wanted, as much as they wanted, as long as they were sitting at a table.  There were rumblings, demands at the bar, refusals of service, fussing and fuming, lots of drinks all around. Each night, a few more young women showed up. Night after night, we watched this little drama play out.  Finally, after an especially grueling day of rotted books and fetid paper, with an aching need for a few cold draughts, Harriet’s patience had worn thin.  The girls began to infiltrate.  Pretty soon, they had reached critical mass.  It may have been the day, the heat or the rowdier-than-usual attitude that evening, but the demand for service at the bar was approaching fever pitch.  As she had on Agnes Day, Harriet lost it.

“I’ve about had it with these kids and their stupid-ass women’s lib crap,” she whispered around the table where a group of us sat.  “I’m gonna do it.”  And with that, she squared her shoulders, pulled herself 163 pounds up to her full 5’1” height and marched over to the bar.

“OK, ladies, now hear this,” she shouted above the crowd.  The room became quiet.  “Slappy,” she said to old Slappy Gallagher, the long,long-time bartender, “gimme a goddamn draught of stout!  In fact, gimme two.  I’m thristy.”

“You got it, Kiddo,” he said as he reached for a mug.  He tipped the big glass under the spout, pulled back on the long wooden handle and filled one glass then another with dark, foamy brew.  Harriet downed the first while standing at the bar. “Thanks,” she said and carried the second back to the table.  That was it.

For a short moment, Buzz Horrigan’s Irish Pub was dead silent. Then it erupted.  Shouts of victory.  Giggles, screeches, cheers.  A few of the girls walked to the bar and ordered drinks.  Within minutes, they spilled back out onto the street to proclaim their defeat of male dominance.  In fifteen minutes the place was quiet, the girls gone.  Save an occasional young woman on a date, they never came back.  No woman has ever been served at that bar again, either.  Rule: don’t spit into the wind and choose your battles carefully.

In time, things began to take on a more normal life.  Water Street, that main downtown street which had been so severely devastated never did come back as it had been.  In the interim, other retail areas emerged, different pieces of commerce took over and a long, protective park boarded the river. Eddy’s place of business reopened in another part of the city.

School started in September.  Harriet was back home in her freshly painted, newly stocked, brightly lit library, just below my first floor room. The gym, so heavily destroyed by water, was replaced, better than ever. In time, too, Harriet’s home was restored, refurbished, clothing replaced. The trailer was removed. It took longer than she’d hoped, by several long months, but then, thousands of people had been displaced, homes destroyed and lives turned upside down.  What did we learn?  Agnes was an act of nature; Harriet was a force of nature. We all survived.

Rules: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t pull the mask of the old Lone Ranger. 

Choose your battles. Never give up. 

Ever.

Bobby McGee

Kris Kristofferson

Me, Jesus and Bobby McGee

There are songs to make you sing; songs to make you want to dance.  There are songs of love, songs which tell stories; songs which arouse patriotism and songs of protest. There are song to make you laugh, and songs to make you cry.  Hearing Janis Joplin sing Bobby McGee always makes me want to cry – and it usually succeeds.

Meketeketang.  A long time ago, leaving the airport in Koror, Palau after two years of Peace Corps found me filled with mixed emotions.  Going home after the experience of living – being completely immersed – in a no-longer strange or foreign culture was going to be both happy and challenging.  True, I would see family and friends I had not seen in years. But I would also be leaving behind family, friends and a life I had come to love.  Truth be told, it was unlikely any of us who had shared that life would ever see each other again.

The itinerary I’d planned took me from Koror, Palau, to Colonia, Yap, then on to Agana, Guam.  From Agana, a hop to Truk, and then to Kolonia, Ponape.  I had planned this route so I would have a stopover in Ponape to reconnect with my great friend “Cop” and have a few days of vacation with him.  (That, in itself, is another story for another day!)  After a few days in Ponape, I would leave Kolonia, stop in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, and finally arrive in Honolulu.  After a short layover in Hawaii, it would be back to the mainland, through Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and finally Elmira, NY, and home.  Long flights; short hops. Worlds of difference.

The first leg, Koror to Kolonia, was uneventful.  The flight was fairly full, lots of Palauans, some going to Yap, more heading to Guam, some to Honolulu.  With each stop, my hold on the last two years grew a little less tight.  In Guam, we had to deplane and wait for a connecting flight east through Truk to Ponape.  Many of the familiar faces and much of the language I’d come to speak and enjoy would not be reboarding.  Each stop, each leg put further distance between me and the previous two years of my life.

After a few days in with Cop, it was finally time to leave Ponape. The stewardess on our flight – yes, she was still a stewardess back then – recognized me.  Although I didn’t know her, she knew that I’d lived in Palau.  Her name was Deedee, and as she told me, she knew somebody who knew me, and she thought she’d even seen me at such-and-such a place once when she was home.  Small world.  Maybe I wasn’t becoming as far removed as fast as I thought. Anyway, she spoke Palauan to me and made me feel at home as we settled in for the long flight to Hawaii.

Curiosity got the better of me.  I asked about her name, “Dee”.  She laughed.  Yes, she said, it was an unusual nickname for a Palauan girl.  When she had first enrolled in Flight Attendant training school, the other girls began to use variations on her full name, Dilmei.  She was Dill, Dilly, May, even Delma , Della and Mamie.  “Better not use ‘May’”, they’d said, “unless you’re ready to say “May not!” a lot.”  “’Dill’ sounds like a pickle,” they said.  “’Dilly’ll turn into “Doozy.”  On and on it went until Dilmei finally said, “Just call me D.”  “D” soon became Deedee – and she’d been fine with that ever since.

I hadn’t been long seated when Deedee approached and asked if I’d mind if a young man sat next to me.  His name was Jesus Ngirabelochlech, she told me.  I knew the family.  Jesus was flying to California.  On his flight from Koror, he had had a family member and friend with him until they reached Guam.  He’d flown from Guam to Ponape by himself, but there had been other Palauans on the plane going to the Community College of Micronesia.  They’d gotten off and he was now alone for the first time – and afraid.  Since we were now both alone, would it be OK if we flew together?  I said, “Chochoi!”  Yes!

Jesus was 17, a high schooler.  He’d gone to high school in Koror, but a year or so back, his family had also arranged for him to go to school in Agana, Guam.  Not too long, though.  Just enough to give him a taste of life outside of Palau.  Now, they were sending him to California to live with a family member to finish high school.  They wanted him to have every opportunity and possibly even go to college. He spoke English, but there on the plane, he was too nervous and too afraid to do so.  After leaving the loved ones who’d traveled to Guam with him, after seeing the last of his connections to Palau get off the plane in Ponape, and afraid that he might never get back home again, Jesus was about ready to crumble. I, a Palauan speaking chad r nebard, a Westerner, became both his link to the past and possibly his link to a new life.

We settled in for the long flight to Hawaii.  We talked.  Lots of things came up.

He wanted to know how I spoke Palauan so well.  I suggested that he was talking melengmes, the Palauan cultural phenomenon of saying what one thinks another wants to hear – just to be polite.  But he insisted.  Frankly, I needed the reassurance.  I told him that I had had great teachers, a great family and lots of good friends who’d helped me along the way.  He’d be comfortable with his English in no time, once he was in California and living among all the Americans.  That didn’t really help.  It only made him more anxious. 

In no time at all, we were calling each “Cholei”, friend.  In less time, he was calling me “Udelei”, a sort of friendly honorific which roughly translates into something like “Big Brother.”  I liked that.

“What if they don’t like me?  What if they laugh at me?  What if I can’t wear shoes?  What if it’s too cold?”  So many things to worry about.  I told him that I had exactly the same fears when I first went to Palau.  Except I changed “too cold” to “too hot”.  Now, I told him, one of my biggest fears was exactly the same as his: what if I can’t wear shoes.  I hadn’t worn shoes in two years, I told him.  We laughed.

We ascended, leveled briefly and descended onto Majuro in no time.  As we looked out the window of the plane, we both said the same thing at the same time.  “It’s too skinny!”  Majuro, from our perspective was a very long, very narrow beach.  No real land.  No hills.  Nothing but a strip of sand.  And we were landing.  Looking out our windows as we landed, we saw nothing but ocean.  We both hoped that the tide was as high as it was going to get.  Otherwise, there’d be no airfield at all.  There was not going to be a lot of time on the ground in the Marshalls, but we each wanted to be able to say that we’d been there, so we left the plane, walked into and out of what functioned as a terminal and got back onto our plane.

Not long after we took off again, it was time for our in-flight meal. (It was meketeketal time, remember.) When our turn came, Deedee was our server.  The dinner was salad, roast chicken, baked potato and peas.  There was also some kind of dessert, coffee, tea and other drinks.  (I have to tell you that for all the bad rap airplane food got, I usually liked it.  For me, it was hot, filling and actually fairly tasty.  I know that I was in a minority.)

I undid my silverware, opened up my meal and began to prepare the food the way I wanted it – salt, pepper and butter on the potato; dressing on the salad; Coke over ice in a plastic glass.

I was just about to dig in when I noticed that Jesus had barely opened the things on his tray.  “Ngarang?” I asked. ( “What?”)  “Chitiim?”  (Don’t you like it?”)  Ngdiak songeringch?  (Aren’t you hungry?)

He looked toward me barely holding back the tears in his eyes.  “Yes,” he said, “I’m hungry.  But I don’t know what this food is or how to eat it.” And holding the knife and fork that were on his tray, he added, “And I don’t know how to use these things.” 

I chuckled.  Not in a mean way, but to let him know that I’d experienced the same things when I had first come to Palau.

“Basically,” I explained, “American meals are a lot like Palauan meals.  There’s going to be odoim and ongroul. – protein and starch.  Salads and vegetables are also often included. “No mengeloch, eh?”  He laughed.  To be a full Palauan meal, there had to be protein and starch.  To have one without the other was like mengeloch…like a man having sex alone without a woman.  Usually, I added, the protein part of an American meal was cow, pig or chicken – beef, pork or chicken – cooked in different ways.  Sometimes there might be fish, I told him, but most of the fish I’d had as a kid was tuna from a can.  In Palau, it was just the opposite: lots of varieties of fish, but most of the meat was Spam in a can.  The starch was usually, rice, tapioca or taro, in some form.  For American meals, it was usually potatoes or pasta.  Maybe rice, depending on where you lived.  No shoyu, though.  Get ready for salt and pepper – and ketchup.  Tonight, we’re having roasted chicken, baked potatoes and peas.

“What about these?” he asked, pointing to his utensils.

“Oh, yeah,” I added.  “And no chopsticks.  Usually.  Maybe you’ll be able to get some in California, though.  My small town…..No.”

I showed him how to deal with his knife and fork.  He experimented, got some food into his mouth, made a mess and was about to give up.  “You know…sometimes it’s best to just think of this as finger food.”  We both put down the silverware and started eating with our hands.  Again, we laughed.

Jesus’d begun to feel better. “After Hawaii, when we get to America, maybe we can see each other sometimes.  You know, after school.  On Fridays.  Sometimes?  Does your family have a car?  Maybe you can drive to my auntie’s house,” he said in Palauan.  “We can ‘play’.”

It was now my turn to hold back the tears.  I knew that after this trip, in all likelihood, we would never see one another again.  All he knew was that he was going to live with his mother’s sister’s husband’s sister and her family in a place called San Jose in California.  And I lived in America, too.  Yes, I said, maybe we can.  When he asked where my small town was, I told him Pennsylvania.  About 2,800 miles from San Jose.  That would be like driving a car from Koror to Kolonia, and back.  The look he gave me told me that he understood.  We didn’t talk for a while.

“Does your Auntie have a phone?  Do you know her number?”

“Yes.  No.”

“Do you know her address?”

“San Jose, California.”

“What’s her name – her last name?”

“I don’t know.  It’s American.”

Silence. 

“You want my phone number?  And address?”

“Sure.”

I gave him both.

More silence.  Then some sleep.

After the long haul from the Marshall Islands, we landed in Honolulu very early in the morning.  Jesus’ family had arranged for friends to be at the airport to meet him and take him to their home during his layover.  His flight was scheduled to leave later that evening for San Francisco.  Mine left in the early afternoon for Los Angeles.  His family friends insisted that I go with them to their home to rest and eat.  They would bring me back to the airport in plenty of time to catch my flight home.  I accepted the offer.  It would not have been polite to refuse.

Although I have no idea where we were in Honolulu, the air was warm and sweet, the company was familiar and the food was comforting.  Jesus’ friends delivered me back to the airport in plenty of time.  I thanked them.  Jesus and I, friend and big brother, said our good-byes. Yes, we will see each other soon in America.  I’ll drive.  This time, however, we both knew that we were talking melengmes.

I was now “in America”, flying home alone.  I had been given the gift of a few extended hours of a most powerful life experience. I had let go.  I had been let go. 

As we flew across the Pacific, I decided to listen to the music coming through the earphones.  I had never heard Janis Joplin sing “Me and Bobby McGee” before.  But there she was.  The voice.  The lyrics.  The emotion.   As Janis sang Kristofferson’s words…

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing, that’s all that Bobby left me, yeah,
But feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,
Hey, feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

It was the right song at the right time, a small, powerful life experience in its own right.  A journey; love; letting go.  The emotion was overpowering.

I cried when I heard Janis sing that song. I still do.

Song Book: Lyrics and Words is a growing, evolving storybook. The collection started with Song Book stories. These were the motivation for the collection. Lyrics and Words tell stories which are connected to and inspired by memories generated by music.

The stories and memories are my own, and they are all true. (Or slightly adapted for retelling.) The songs are favorites. For me, the combination of the songs and memories is powerful.

I have been asked about the image on the front page of this Song Book – about why I chose a picture taken from an airplane window. It, too, relates to the stories. In particular, the first story I posted about meeting Jesus on the plane while Janis Joplin sang “Bobby McGee”. It seemed a very appropriate way to introduce all of these stories.

In addition to the Lyrics and Words stories, you will find three additional categories of stories: Words Without Songs, 50 Ways, and Kid Stuff.

Words Without Songs are just that. Stories. Original stories. Written for your enjoyment.

50 Ways refers to Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”. They are “Jesse” stories. As a good friend once said, “Everybody has a Jesse.” A “Jesse” here is someone in life – male or female – whom we have to leave behind.

Kid Stuff contains stories written especially for young people. There are several Christmas stories within this category. Older folks will enjoy them, too, I hope. But they are kid stories, in the end.

Click on any of the Categories selections from this home page to find those stories. Some stories may turn up in more than one category.

Listen to the music. Read the story. Relive the memory with me. Watch for more. Your feedback is always welcome!

Enjoy!.

SONG BOOK STORIES

Below is a current list of stories shared as of December, 2023. Click the title. Listen to the music. Read. Enjoy!

STORY                                   SONG/Category                   ARTIST

Angel Wings                                       (Kid Stuff-Christmas)

A Year with Santa                             (Kid Stuff/Christmas)

Apophasis – The Blue Rose          Knock Three Times       Tony Orlando/Dawn

Beauty in the Cemetery                Yellow Brock Road           Elton John

Board Game                                       (Words Without Songs)

Boxer & The Southpaw                  The Boxer                    Simon & Garfunkel

Brooklyn and Me, TCB                    Taking Care of Business    Bachman, Turner Overdrive

Buck, the Tooth Fairy (Kid Stuff)

Cop, the Eddy and Me                    Up on Cripple Creek          The Band

Grandpa and Santa Went for a Walk (Kid Stuff/Christmas)

Harriet, Agnes & Jim             Don’t Mess Around with Jim     Jim Croce

Heartland in Hawaii                         I Loved Her First               Heartland

J-M-J!                                           Breaking Up Is Hard To Do     Neil Sedaka

Jesus, Me & Bobby McGee        Bobby McGee                    Janis Joplin

Jimmy’s Conundrum      Ever Have to Make Your Mind Lovin’ Spoonful

John, Judy & Joslyn                          In My Life                                Judy Collins

Johnny’s Last Gift                         Leader of the Band           Dan Fogelberg

Ken’s World                                        Pickup Man                           Joe Diffie

Maggie May, Jack & Diane            Maggie May                   Rod Stewart

Mr. Bojangles & Tim                   Mr. Bojangles                Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

My Little Town                             My Little Town                  Simon & Garfunkel

My Son, Mom & Celine             My Heart Goes On               Celine Dion

Old Man Talk                           Don’t Let the Old Man In        Toby Keith

Once Upon a Time                      (Kid Stuff)

One Last Christmas                   (Kid Stuff/Christmas)

Party Dog                                    Only Good Times                  Beamer Brothers

Reindeer Tales (Kid Stuff/Christmas)

Sammy the Stop Sign               (Kid Stuff)

Scared                                             Angles Among Up                 Alabama

Shoes                                     Boot Scootin’ Boogie                      Brooks & Dunn

Spray!                                                   (Words without Songs)

The Brotherhood              Ain’t As Good As I Once Was    Toby Keith

The Four Seasons                         (Kid Stuff)

The Line                 One Toke Over the Line           Brewer & Shipley

The Quest                                        (Kid Stuff)

The Question                                     Parting Glass                    High Kings

The Santa Cast (Kid Stuff/Christmas)

The Sun Here Comes The Sun The Beatles

Werevolves of Woodinviille    Werewolves of London   Warren Zevon