Ephemeral Life...

I was about to throw a Hoy-Hoy Roach Trap away when I glanced inside and saw something big. I opened it up and it was a gecko stuck to the glue after trying to grab a quick dinner. It took quite awhile to extract him from the glue, without hurting him, using a citrus based solvent which I then had to quickly wash off of him to ensure he didn't suffer chemical burns. He was extremely weak and listless and I didn't know if he would survive, not knowing just how long he had been stuck in the trap. The only thing that moved on him was his little eyes as he watched me tend to him. I took him downstairs in my building and put him on a little sheltered ledge in a wall. I never had the courage to go back the next day to see if he was gone. I feared I would find him dead where I layed him down...for he was wholly dependent upon my care and I abandoned him in my rush to tend to the other overwhelming demands of my life. I humbly ask for his forgiveness, and that of my kupuna mo`o...

I was fortunate to be able to visit Juneau, Alaska, last year for a NAGPRA meeting. During a canoe ceremony, I spotted this Tlingit kupuna with her mo'opuna, her grandchild, who holds in her little innocent face, and growing heart, all the promise for a more forgiving and loving world.  I miss my own grandmother greatly, only sustained by the faded childhood memories of unconditional love and attentiveness, not fully understood or appreciated in my youthful priorities. If only I had a second chance. Love you grandma and miss you. Hope you can read this...

This flower was in a bright meadow in the parking lot of the beautiful Kalalau Valley lookout. Sometimes the grand and obvious attractions make us bypass and overlook life's little pleasures...unless we truly stop to notice them...

I recently had the opportunity to visit Kaua'i where my ancestors lived, loved and died. The last time I was there, decades ago, my father and mother were walking on the beach, and my mother, by then in her 40's, passed a section of the beach and fell to her knees in grief, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. My father, alarmed and bewildered, didn't know what to do, except to try and console her for an intense, but unknown pain. After a while, she was alright. Years later, in reading a newspaper article at the archives, we learned that my grandfather drowned and died on the beach when my mother was only four years old. She was with him when they pulled his dying body from the final embrace of the ocean. She had no memory of his death. So decades later, when she returned to this place, her father's 'uhane, his spirit, gave her one last hug and kiss, there on the beach, forever still his little girl. Something he probably wanted to do on that day he died, a final good...

This is my first blog entry in what I hope will be a great journey in examining love and life as I have experienced it. I've often walked past these common trees for years without noticing their flowers. A low hanging branch provided me the opportunity to closely inspect a flower. Now when I pass, I admire the delicate and fragile tendrils of God's loving caress...