The Things We Carry

You can learn a lot about a person from the things they carry.  The things we carry tell the world who we are.  Or who we want the world to believe we are.  The things we leave behind can speak loudly too.  Our stuff has a lot to say.

Here is some of the stuff I brought with me on this grand adventure.  I don't really know why.  I guess they are my good luck charms.  Talismans.  For some reason they needed to be in my backpack.  I couldn't leave them behind.

There is the Christmas ornament my sister made that just happens to have my middle name on it.  There is the small painted stone with the heart on it from my husband.  It too says 'joy' on the back.  Joy is important to bring along.  There is the fortune from a long ago restaurant that says 'Thou hast seen nothing yet'.  And a camper key ring that one of the kids gave us with the words 'See the world' on the back.  And there is the Shayna bracelet.  Because I wanted her to be with us.

But that is not all we brought.

We may have miscalculated.

We don't even have a tent, or sleeping bags yet.  Or any of the other things people need for camping on the side of the road, or in national parks.  But don't worry.  Gary is on it.  He has already been observed sitting there with that faraway look on his face, thinking about how to rearrange everything into smaller bags so it will all fit in the trunk.  And if it doesn't?  An adventure vehicle that actually looks like an adventure vehicle may be in our future.

And if that pile in our car looks big you should see what we left behind on Kauai in a 10 x 15 storage unit.

Starting the puzzle.

Halfway there.

See that door handle up there in the left corner.  Filled to the very edge.

A lifetime of accumulated possessions.  No one believed it would all fit.  Even we had our doubts.  It was like a giant puzzle.  In the end we used nearly every square inch of that storage unit, floor to ceiling, and as far up to the front as it was possible to go and still allow room for that door to roll down.  It is quite a collection.  We have been good consumers.  Just like everyone else we have gathered a big shiny pile.

A lot of people's piles are even bigger and shinier than ours.  Whenever my sister would come to visit me on Kauai she would always tell me 'Lisa, you have no stuff'.  Which is clearly not true.  But I know what she means.  It is only my purging, decluttering, having a garage sale addiction, and my teeny tiny OCD issues that have managed to keep the level of accumulation pretty much under control over the years.  But in spite of my neuroses, we were still able to fill that storage unit with a giant mountain of stuff.  Stuff that we have to pay to store.  Stuff that we have to worry about getting moldy in the wet tropical air because there were no air-conditioned units available when we needed one.  Stuff that we have to ask our daughter to try and protect for us by changing the huge Damp Rid containers in there every few months.  And sometimes it makes me wonder.

I mean, I like my stuff.  I love how it helped create a comfortable and beautiful environment for my family to live in.  I love how almost everything in that storage unit I found to be either useful or beautiful.  I am not ready to give it all up just yet.  But over the last year I have given that pile basically no thought.  It has barely entered my mind.  All those things that I feel like I spent half my life cleaning and polishing and moving around has been absent from my brain.  I don't miss it.  And it makes me wonder.

It is so easy to let ourselves be defined by the work we do and the possessions that surround us.  By the things we carry.  One of the most important things for me about this time on the road is that it will give me the chance to see who exactly I am when I do not have all the trappings of my previous life around me.  Who I will be without my house and my furniture and my piano.  Who I will be without my endless time-consuming projects.  And you thought we were just going sight-seeing.  This is scarier than spiders any day.

We are carrying so many things with us.  And we have left even more behind.  We are homeless.  And sort of naked.  We have very little buffer left.  The world has become our home and somehow there has been a subtle shift inside me.  I felt it on the plane ride from Honolulu to San Jose.  I was in the bathroom and it was a mess.  Now usually I am a good citizen and clean up after myself.  But this time for some reason it felt different.  It felt like I was in the bathroom of my home and that I was responsible for it.  So I cleaned that bathroom with extra effort.  And I am wondering if that is how it is going to be while we are on the road.  That we are going to feel responsible for everything.  For the world.  And not just the things we carry.

A Hui Hou

Mahalo no na mea a pau.

Me ke aloha pumehana.




And mahalo to Linnea for making sure my words were correct.

Terrible Things

Terrible things happen to people all the time. Terrible things have happened to me, and the people I love. And people get afraid. I get afraid. There are a lot of things to be afraid of here. If you aren't sure what you should be frightened of next, just tune in to the hysterical screeching media and they will tell you. Scary things are everywhere. Fear is everywhere.

When I first moved to Hawaii I was afraid of these:

It wasn't rational. They had never done anything to me. They were just so creepy. I tried my best to avoid them. Especially when I found out they could jump. And drop egg sacs filled with millions of tiny alive babies on your kitchen floor if you startled them. But they are not aggressive. They would rather run away and hide than attack. As far as I know they don't even bite. And besides, I was about a million times bigger than they were. I could easily crush the life out of them, and all those tiny alive babies, if I were inclined to violence. If you hurt them at all they crumple up into little balls with their legs all folded in. Without all those legs they look much less intimidating. But not very much less creepy.

I was also afraid of these:

Now these are the stuff of nightmares. Maybe it's built into our DNA. I have only been stung once. It wasn't the centipede's fault. I stepped on it in the dark and he reached up and got my ankle. I'm sure I would have done the same thing if I were being crushed. If I see a centipede in my house its life is mine. If they are outside they are free to go. I do this to improve my centipede karma. My husband prefers to dismember them. Even if they are in their natural habitat minding their own business. He has terrible centipede karma. He has been stung at least three times, always while sleeping in bed. Sometimes being afraid might be the smartest thing to be.

And these:

There is no way for these creatures to hurt me. The only thing they can do is fly into my face or crawl all over me spreading filth. And yes, they can fly. They do fly. They also creep around in dark places excreting trails of brown and smelly bodily fluids. They are gross and disgusting and vile and repulsive and foul and horrifying. But not dangerous.

And even, I am ashamed to admit, these:

My first night on Kauai I looked up and saw one of these on the ceiling. I must have looked concerned. I was told, "Don't worry, they always stay up there." But as soon as I went to bed that night one of them fell on my face. And to my dismay they continued to fall on me, or jump on me, year after year, when I least expected it, from toasters and shower curtains and window screens and lamps. Geckos can be vicious to each other, but they are completely harmless to humans. Unless your heart is weak.

After a few years I lost my fear of all these creatures. Mostly. They became just another part of the landscape. Usually. We tolerated each other. Up to a point. If roaches or centipedes found their way into my house they were slaughtered without mercy. Geckos and spiders were sent outside to live with the hope that they would gorge themselves on roaches and centipedes. I was so proud of myself when I was finally able to pick up geckos with my bare hands and take them outside.  I felt so fearless.

I am feeling sort of fearless again these days as we upend our lives and get ready to wander. But a lot of people seem to be afraid for us. We're getting a lot of advice lately on how to keep ourselves safe on the road.

When we were on the mainland buying our adventure vehicle we were sitting in the finance manager's office doing paperwork. We had told her our story and she seemed excited for us. Then she started asking how we were going to protect ourselves. If we were going to get a gun. Or mace. We laughed and said no. And no. She said, "Well, you should at least get a can of wasp spray. Because wasp spray is designed to shoot long distances so you don't have to get close to your target." Target? I thought. There are going to be targets?

When we were finalizing plans for our first house-sit someone in our family said, "Just make sure they don't steal your credit card information." But I don't even know how this would be possible. Nobody is paying anybody for anything. We are the strangers coming into someone else's home. It seems to me that we will be the ones with opportunities for pillage and plunder. If pillage and plunder were on our to-do list.

And when we started looking for an Airbnb place in California we were told in ominous tones to make sure we don't go near Oakland. Tones that made us think we wouldn't make it out of there alive. But one of Gary's best friends has lived there for as long as I can remember. He and his wife were on the phone with Gary the other night and they were laughing. They kind of sounded happy. Maybe their house has bulletproof windows. And a safe room filled with weapons.

We have even been warned about Bigfoot. We believe the person issuing this warning was serious. We're kind of afraid to ask.

But I'm still feeling sort of brave. I think I was more worried about playing wrong notes in my Sunday morning preludes than I am about setting out for parts unknown without a real plan. And maybe I'm being naive, but I believe the world is a safer place than we are sometimes told it is. What we're planning to do seems less scary to me than the thought of looking up one day when we're too old and tired to change anything and saying, wait a minute, what just happened?

Gary is a risk manager. He used to get paid to think about worst case scenarios. He's really good at it. He does it every time we go out, assessing the pros and cons of each and every parking stall in each and every parking lot we ever find ourselves in. And he does it with pretty much every other decision we ever make in our lives. Whether I want him to or not. We're going to be careful. We're going to make the best risk-managed choices we can. The truth is, terrible things might happen to us while we're on the road. But terrible things might happen to us if we're not on the road.

When my older son left home for the first time at a very young age, to start his life in another city, the last thing I said to him at the airport was, "Keep your wits about you." This has become a family joke. I am mocked mercilessly for these words. But I'm going to say them again. We are going to keep our wits about us, trust our instincts, and decide for ourselves what to be afraid of. We are going to assume the best about the world and the people that inhabit it. And we are going to consider getting that can of wasp spray for the glove compartment. In case we are wrong about everything.

In My Molecules

Kauai is in my molecules. Her moist tropical air filled my lungs for nearly thirty years. Her rich red earth stained my clothes, my hands, my floors. Her constant gentle trade winds blew through my windows and my life, making the heat and humidity bearable. Her fiery sun burned my pale skin, aging it before its time. Her rains drenched me. Iniki pierced me. She will always be a part of me.

I have been away from Kauai for nearly a year - a year I have spent living with my in-laws on the island of Oahu. A year that has been so mentally and emotionally and physically challenging that I have not had time or energy to just sit and process. It feels like I have spent the last twelve months saying a long good-bye. But now, time is up. I arrived on Kauai as a brand new bride with one suitcase, two cardboard boxes and a baby in my belly. In a few days I will leave Hawaii for good with two suitcases and one backpack, my babies grown and gone.

Some of my babies were back with me over the Christmas break and we did some hiking. We tend to do that when the children gather. The night before the last child boarded the last plane we took one final hike. Jason and Gary and I went up to the top of Kaiwi Ridge - the ridge we see every day from my in-laws' backyard. We went in the dark. All of us were using our new headlamps for the first time. The moon was 98.8% full. The view was spectacular. Moon on water. Na Mokulua in the sea. Picture postcard perfect. Up on the top we were feeling everything. Inspired. My son started talking about the theory of relativity. And other theories. Theories about space and time and matter. Theories I do not understand. He said there is a theory claiming that everything you ever did in your life is still happening. Is always happening. Never stops happening. The good, the bad, the everything, is always there. Will always be there. Maybe I misunderstood what he was saying, but I think I like this theory. Even if it means that Iniki will always be wreaking havoc somewhere out there in the space time continuum.

If this theory is true my father will always be sitting in my house in his "paradise corner." The corner where the two walls of windows meet and the breeze is constantly blowing. He will always be sitting there with that serene smile, reading the paper or napping, looking up as I walk by and opening his hands and his face in that familiar way of his and saying simply, "Paradise."

If it is true, my sister from another mother girlfriends will always be walking with me on Ke Ala Hele Makalae, or sitting next to me at the piano, or drinking wine with me. They will always be there when I need them, laughing and crying with me, lifting me up or bringing me back down to earth.

My piano students will be there too. Listening to me, trusting me, creating sounds that fill them with wonder and joy. They will always be there, some growing up and telling me I have changed their lives, some simply bouncing away down the porch calling over their shoulder, "Thanks for the lesson."

All those gentle kind souls from all the churches I ever played for will be there. They will be supporting me and encouraging me and allowing me to grow as a musician. They will keep telling me how beautiful my music is and how much it means to them. They will keep showing me what love can be.

My grandson will always be standing there at the airport with his arm around me, looking at me with concern as the tears stream down my face, comforting me with his impossibly wise words, "Grandma, just think of it as every day you are away is just one day closer to you coming back and then you won't be sad."

And my kids. They will always be there curled safe in my arms. Or splashing in the sun and salty waves. They will always be taking me on adventures, surrounding me with their hearts and their lives and their love. We will always be gathering around the Christmas table, every one of us, together, laughing until we cry. Everything, everyone, in the same room.  It will always be there.

I want to take my arms and surround it all and never let it go. But I also want to take those arms and turn them into wings and fly away. Maybe it is like when you finally realize you are an adult and you can't wait to leave your parents' house. You love your parents. You have a comfy bed and maybe they even cook for you. But you can't wait to leave. You can't wait to break free.

I want to fly away from Hawaii. I want to break free from what my sister calls the "golden handcuffs" and what I refer to simply as "rock fever."  That feeling where if you get on that same road one more time, the road that takes you everywhere on the island, the only road there is, you will simply go stark raving hopelessly utterly mad. I want instead the feeling of endless possibilities. The feeling of being able to get on a highway and drive for days. The feeling that you could end up anywhere, and not just on the other side of the island.

I want to experience the seasons again. I actually want to be cold. I want to feel crisp air waking up all my atoms and telling me I'm alive. I want to wear sweaters and walk in the snow. I want to see the leaves fall and things die so that I can watch them come back to life. I want to see the cycle of life. And not just the bright sunny side. Sometimes over the years, when I would visit my family on the mainland, it would feel as if I had been living outside of reality. In a wonderland. A beautiful blazing technicolor mirage that made me feel as if I was missing out on something.

But most of all, I just want my towel to dry. Before it's time to take my next shower. Is that too much to ask?

My son said another thing up there on that mountain. Something I have heard him say before. Something I often think of when we're coming down from a hike and I'm afraid I'm going to fall. He said, "You have to trust your feet mom, they know what they're doing." So here we go. Trusting our feet.

I love Kauai.

She is in my molecules.

I'm not leaving her behind. I'm taking her with me.

I'm taking everything.

The view from on top of Kaiwi Ridge
Photo by Gary Heu