So, as many of you know, my mother passed. It has been a rough time, and I am so grateful to all who have opened themselves to sharing their own stories about losing their parents and loved ones.
I am still unpacking all of this, and I will be writing more about later, as I process and make what I learn from this experience something that I can share.
But right now, I am in Hawai’i, on O’ahu. The tastes are familiar…the language is my own. The birds make familiar noises. The marketplace has the foods I miss. The radio sounds like everything I miss when I am on the mainland.
I am currently staying with friends, not contacting my family—feeling a little guilty, though I just don’t want to hear or explain or listen or share stories about my mother (their aunty, their sister, their cousin…) But I think they will understand.
They are family, after all. As are my family buried here, who I probably should put flowers for before I leave regardless.
And yet, this place has never been technically my home. I was not born on the islands. I did not go to school here. I was never bullied here. I never tried out for any athletic team, or had my heart broken here. I never had to have a crappy employer here, or a been turned down for a business loan here. I never felt trapped here, or wondered what life was like away from here.
Those things, I did on the mainland—in the San Gabriel Valley. And those experiences are as valuable (or traumatic) to me as anyone’s formative years.
I was doing a reading at da Shop in Kaimuki when I chatted a bit about this. In discussing whether I was a “Hawai’i writer,” I shrugged and reminded everyone that Hawai’i has its own powerful, brilliant writers and presses and voices.
I so cherish and respect them.
And it is not right to claim that identity for myself.
However, people might see my connection to Hawai’i. They might even see me as their own. And I thank them for that—after all, both my parents are from Hawai’i, most all of my family lives there now.
And here is where it gets complicated.
There are many kids like me—people do leave Hawai’i and start families. And the attachments we have to Hawai’i varies.
I think I was a special case, as my father was an airline mechanic with pass privileges. So I was in Hawai’i 2-3 times every year—in fact, I remember begging my parents if for one year we could not go to Hawai’i so I could get a perfect attendance award in school.
And so, I grew up much closer to the islands than even others with similar backgrounds. My foods, my music, my general way of life…all colored by my family, my mother’s kitchen and my grandmother’s and my other grandmother’s. My aunties…
And Hawaiian pidgin is my FIRST language. I got made fun of in school for my weird accent. I had to learn how to speak proper mainland English—it can still be a strain sometimes. And when I am back here, I lapse into pidgin because that is just how I talk.
So, I am not “from Hawai’i” nor would I want to be—as that would take away from all the amazing SGV experiences I have gained. However, take Hawai’i away from me, and you take away my family, the food I eat, the language I speak.
Take Hawai’i from me and you take away my most precious memories, of rainforests and mango trees and night fishing and burning garbage and “Checkers and Pogo” and mosquito punks and hanafuda and playing“Kikaida” with my cousins.
All things that are genuinely my own.
I am thinking of this now, because after losing my mother, I instinctively knew I had to come home to heal.
After losing my mother, I realize she never saw me as her daughter. After losing my mother, as an adult trying to grasp how so many things are not as clear cut as they seem.
Or maybe they are—but we are cut from so many different cloths, are we not?
Anyway, I am healing, though healing is, like so much within me—and perhaps within you—divided, conflicted, complicated, and in-between.
But one thing is certain. I am so grateful to be here. In a place I have never lived in—but has always lived, at least in some way, in me.