Chico’s Lament

It probably was because the cat was black I pulled a u-turn on Kaapuni Road to retrieve its body from the middle of my lane driving north. I’d successfully centered my tires over it, but knew it wouldn’t be long before the next driver angled left or right.
Chico is black; he’s one of a litter of three feral kittens I trapped last summer. I didn’t want someone to discover their own “Chico” in that condition. Ever since hitting and killing a Chihuahua on Kawaihau Road, I feel morally obligated to offer the bodies of road kill a respectful resting place.
This one was pretty gruesome. With two paper sacks I cradled the crushed body. One eyeball hung from four inches of ocular nerve and the tongue extended two inches from the mouth.
I lifted it gently to lay beneath a tree with a lovely crown, then found a long palm frond to cover his body. I told his spirit to go to the light and made him look as peaceful as I could by posturing his body in a smooth straight line and being sure to put the “bad” eye down. There was nothing I could do about the tongue.
I just know if the cat were Chico it would comfort me knowing he’d been touched tenderly and not left like a piece of rubbish in the middle of the road.
Then there was the dead cat I didn’t turn around for on the by-pass road. Two weeks after which it had become furry jerky ground into the asphalt. I guiltily drove past it recounting the day I’d seen this red tabby as a fresh kill – its compressed tail rose from the pavement to wave as I drove past; or maybe it was giving me the finger.
Why didn’t I turn around that day to lift him from the road? Was it because I don’t have a red cat? Honestly, I was in a rush to get home.
I considered it.
It was the end of the day and I was tired.
Then there was a day I opened the trunk of my car to discover a brand new red snow shovel. Yes, snow shovel. My husband has hygiene issues about my ritual lifting of the dead from Kauai roadways; the flattened boxes and paper sacks I utilize cause him concern.
I don’t want to hurt my husband’s feelings but I can’t imagine using it. I don’t like its utilitarian nature. Yes, a shovel would make the job more palatable for some, but I don’t do this out of duty to cleanliness; I do it out of a love for animals. There’s a tenderness to the bend of natural fiber as I raise the body to deliver to a gentler resting place.
I have no idea where that shovel is now. I pulled it out a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s behind the shed. This morning on my return from a zumba class I parked my car next to a dead white cat on Olohena, opened my trunk for a paper sack, and moved him off the road.
And no, I don’t have a white cat.

Morning Ritual

Your father always helped me make the bed;
his bony hands would snug the sheets up tight.
I know now, how much was left unsaid.

Fluff the pillows and straighten out the spread;
Smooth his side in the morning quiet.
Your father always helped me make the bed.

His memory is a place, I dare not tread.
Eight months I’ve pushed his absence from my sight.
I know now, how much was left unsaid.

I wish I hadn’t lived inside my head;
stubbornly withdrawing, I’d take flight.
Your father always helped me make the bed.

We lay together at night with books we read,
he’d sigh and give me one small kiss good night.
I know now, how much was left unsaid.

I woke today familiar with this dread;
reached for him in the gathering light—
Your father always helped me make the bed;
I’d tell him now the words I left unsaid.

Wall hanging/Fridge magnet

Ganesh, remover of obstacles, is a Hindu deity. The form was first sculpted and then cast. Each one is hand finished and there are around 25 available colors ranging from pink to silver. They are $20 each.

Just visiting

The day I turned local I drove past my house after a long day at work to buy a can of beer at the Menehune Mart two blocks from my house, then drive down to the beach to watch two fishermen on the reef cast nets; my 15 year-old Chihuahua on my lap with her paws on the door ledge, her sharp nose scribbling messages on the returning Trades.
I scooch down in the seat to watch the light dim to black and the two men switch on a flashlight as they make their slow pitch toward shore – a speck of yellow on an eternity of sea and sky.
Their dark silhouettes interrupt a narrative of rivulets still catching what little light remains of a gone sun. The fishermen are the only movement against the dialogue of the sea.
How wonderful to have that time of day, that place, just the two of you looking back at the coast to see a parade of headlights on the highway while standing knee-deep in water, and not be a part of it.
The best kind of separation.
And, not just one of you – two of you – a witness to say “look,” and later, “remember.”
Like when I walk home after dark and can’t help but spy on families through their curtainless windows. Human traffic merges in halls, the living room, the kitchen; dinner is placed on a table with seven chairs or the blue light of television casts its glow across faces and walls.
I walk by houses with sisters, brothers, a mother and father. A longing catches in my throat. That chaos of belonging. To disappear into a family like a blue thread woven into a skein of orange, red and purple so tight one can’t pick the blue out of the fabric – only know it’s there adding one strand of its strength.
The fishermens' flashlight is the thing my eyes go to when set against the story of the sea and sky. Humanity bobs along a sentence that started billions of years ago and will continue for a billion more, long after my human lantern has burned out. Long after the blue thread in the fabric has been pulled loose, leaving a thin spot in an unfinished sentence.
I will never be local. A can of beer, a truck and a chihuahua don't make me part of some club defining who belongs on Kauai and who doesn't. I am a witness to a story and the narrator of this small scene.
Even though I celebrate 10 years on Kauai April 30, I am and always will be just a visitor here.

Hanalei Bay: A walk

photo by f. murphree

Thank heavens for the clouds tossing pillow cases over this unseasonably warm tropical sun, a hint of winter’s welcome return. A breeze muscles through a weedy hedge to reassure me: It really is February on Kauai.
I kick off the blankets at midnight, sweaty and muttering profanity. I roll away from my husband’s inquisitive sleep to keep from sticking sweaty calf to sweaty calf. He’s never too hot to cuddle.
Now, I kneel in the sand. Grateful to wear my favorite blue sweater with its three broken buttons — buttons broken the day the sweater fell from around my waist into a gutter to sleep through the night beneath a car tire in the rain – the first rain in Southern California in months. It blackened the water of a hotel tub three times before rinsing clean.
Gil Fronsdahl gave a dharma talk on three exercises to aid in learning to let go. He called them the three doors: The door of the wishless, the door of the meaningless and the third, locked from memory now. I bring it up because my wishes give me the illusion of being unhappy.

– I wish I lived in a cooler place.
– I wish I lived on a mountain near a river
– I wish I could drive across three states

I take Gil’s advice and when I feel my unhappiness beckoning, I try to name the wish that aims to catch me in its net.

Purple confetti moth
zigzags
over daisy petals – lights
on a twig.
Zips up wings – to
conceal iridescence.

Wishes are not now.

Now is that ruthless sun biting through linen to needle my neck. Now is the flip, flip, flapping of journal pages against my pen by a breeze that pulls the sheets over the sun so I may bare to be the only person in a blue, wooly sweater on a beach stitched with red bikinis.

Doors.
Gil’s second door is the door of the meaningless. Quit trying to make meaning from things. Oh Christ, here I go – that old tape rolling. “I am the one thing not belonging here.” Belonging, not belonging. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Who says who belongs where or in what?

Sand. Seeds. Sticks.
A single five- petaled daisy rooted in sand
Bravely, reaches toward light.

Now: Bee bees of sweat rise on the skin between my breasts, join, form a river, and trickle in a quick stream down my center to collect in belly folds.

Now: The wind lifts the top layer of my skirt above my thighs.

Now: The shadow of my pen builds an ark across the page not caring about wishes or meaning.

Now: A body surfer slips fins over feet, bobs on swells that move him out to sea.

Now: Hand-in-hand, an elder couple walks along the shore just out of reach of the curious suds.

Now: Three women friends sit in lawn chairs; one reads aloud to the others from a book titled, “Emotional Freedom.”

Letter to my dad on his 81st birthday

Sitting here eating a scone and drinking a cup of coffee.

Your alter on the shelf above my computer holds your missal, buck knife (god only knows where and how that was used by my suburbanite father); a framed photo of you and mom on Tunnels Beach the summer the Gillards were here; a bottle of “Goats Do Roam” South African red wine I bought for the bitchen Capricorn motif on the label, a scone (of course served with coffee in a mug I made); and all the usual alter stuff: Buddha, Quan Yin, a couple unfired bowlie heads, Tibetan bells and a Zuni fetish of a horse.

Happy Birthday Dad.

I’ve pushed you to another plane the past few birthdays. It was Jennifer Weigel’s book, “I’m Spiritual Damnit” that woke me from my denial that you are still near and accessible.

Thanks Jen.

I can’t help but consider all I’ve learned in the past 4.8 years of your absence:
If you were still alive I’d definitely make a copy of Adele’s CD “19.” You’d love her lush voice and very sexy restraint. I’d also turn you on to “Radio Lab,” my favorite story telling podcast that is deep, intellectual and funny; thoughtful, mostly.

I’ve been really self-centered lately. I’d call you and complain about how my mother-in-law is driving me crazy and you’d give your pat response of “Tough shit,” and the conversation would move on the next topic; probably what you were making for dinner that night.

By the time you discovered your love of cooking I was living in San Diego off and on, as I chased boyfriends around the West Coast. Most our food exchanges were over the phone.

I have a Polaroid of a lentil roulade. In the white rectangle below the shot you wrote, “We must try this together sometime.”

I still haven’t been able to locate that recipe. It’s in neither of your “Vegetarian Times” cookbooks.

There’s so much to share, but most of it you know already since you are "in the next room."

Happy birthday dad.

I miss feeding and hugging you.

Here's to you Dad

Dad died over four years ago, but I've decided to continue celebrating his life. My sister Laurie is calling it, Semana de los Muertes: A life celebration. His birthday is January 19.
In his honor I am cooking some of his favorite foods this week. Happy birthday Dad! Have a scone. Thank God for making you my dad.

Cranberry Date Scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and then bake for 20 to 25 minutes minutes.
Combine:
3 cups flour
½ cup sugar
1 Tbl. baking powder
½ tsp. Baking soda
½ tsp salt
Then cut in 1 and ½ sticks cold butter. Mix until gravelly.
Add:
1 cup chopped dates, 1 cup cranberries.
Mix in 1-cup cold buttermilk. Do not substitute with regular milk. Be careful not to over mix. May need a bit more buttermilk, just add until the dough pulls together.
Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
Plop spoonfuls of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet. Scones bake faster on the black cookie sheet.

ALTERNATIVES
Mango-coconut scones, use:
21/2 c. flour
1-cup oats
1 cup of coconut, you can double the amount of coconut if desired
1 cup mango
½ cup orange juice in place of buttermilk

Substitute pecans for dates
¾ cup cranberry
¾ cup toasted pecans