If God were a clownfish kite

This Easter Sunday was one of the best days of my life. I don't have any pictures of it, but I do of the weekend and Saturday leading up to it, so I'll start with those.

Last weekend, the three of us went to Magic Island to celebrate Honolulu's centennial. Magic Island is a man-made island just at the western edge of Waikiki. The "centennial," which has been a year long affair, is a made up holiday on pretty much a made up birthday. Although Honolulu is about 200 years old, its birth is being dated arbitrarily from the act of the Territorial Legislature in 1905 that established the five counties of Hawaii, including the City and County of Honolulu. So, a fake festivity on a fake island. No matter. Maia is always up for crowds and fun.

Magic Island had a kind of a carnival atmosphere. E.K. Fernandes, the local show company, had put up a bunch of rides and games, and there were food tents, too. Maia liked the rides...

...and the cotton candy, too, once she got over the weirdness of the concept.

This past weekend, there was an Easter celebration going on in Maia's hula class on Saturday. The teacher is an elementary school teacher in real life. She is one of those 24/7/365 teachers who has run this halau hula (a Hawaiian word that means "long house" and signifies a school) at the YMCA on a volunteer basis for something like 20 years. She is really quite remarkable. Everybody calls her Auntie Carolee, even folks like Kristina and me, who are close to her age.


That's her, handing out awards...

and consoling a child who was feeling bad. Everybody got an award for something--funkiest costume, most one-of-a-kind basket--Carolee had something for everyone. I think the child was feeling bad because she had to wear homemade rabbit ears and not the cool ones cut out of paper plates that everybody else got to wear.

Sunday morning, I taught Maia to read her first sentence. We had been practicing "_at" words, and so I made up a sentence using only those words. Well, almost only: "The fat cat sat."

Mais wanted to play, though, and she made funny sounds and faces at me that made all three of us laugh. She *is* such a comedian. (A couple of nights before, she had cracked us up mimicking me snoring. "Like Dadddy do," she had said, curling up on the floor and doing a big exaggerated snore in and whistle out.) But I told her I wouldn't take her to the park unless she at least made a guess at the words, and so she did. She was pleased with herself when she read the sentence.

Then she and I went to the park and to Micky D's--our usual Sunday morning routine.

We both had a good time, but after we got home, and she had gone off for her nap, I said something that made Kristina cry, though I didn't know it at the time. Kristina asked if I regretted that Maia was growing up, and I said that, No, I was glad because I want her to grow up before I go. Stupid thing to say, but it's the truth. I don't have all that many years left, and I want her to have reached a point in her life where she can take care of herself.

I went off to exercise then. I try to do an hour a day. Sunday was the 27th day in a row on my current cycle.

When I got back from exercising, Maia met me at the door and told me that we were going to go fly her kite after we went to the restaurant.

"Mommy said."

That Kristina had said this seemed wildly improbable to me. We're really pinched for cash now with the house because our house is being remodelled, and my business is down a little. But Kristina, in fact, confirmed that that's what she had said to Maia. And then because I could see that she was sad, I asked her what was up, and she told me she was feeling bad about what I had said, about my feeling my mortality and all. That she thought we might go out as a treat.

Maybe it was because of all of that that I forgot the camera, I don't know, but I did. So you'll have to make it the rest of the way without pictures.

Auntie Sandy (a friend of Kristina's) had gotten the kite for Maia. It's a Nemo kite. It's a big thing that needs some wind to get up, and so I decided to take Maia and Kristina to Kakaako Beach Park, which is the windiest park I know.

We picked up dinner on the way--plate lunches from I Love Country Cafe--ate at a park table, and then got out Nemo.

It's a whopping big kite. It came with a spool for reeling the string in and out.

Nemo really took to the winds at Kakaako Park. Took off and was flying right away. Here is the kite flying on another day.



But no more than 10 minutes into it, the spool of string came out of Maia's hands, skittered across the grass, and then got pulled up high into a banyan tree by the kite, which had been grabbed by the wind and was being blown out towards the ocean.

So there we were, the spool stuck high above us in a tree, the kite flying on its own, way up in the air, and we with not a clue as to what to do.

The tree wasn't climbable, and there was no way to reach the spool. We were at a loss. Kristina finally went home to get a mango picker to see if we could get the spool out of the tree with that. Maia and I stayed to keep an eye on things.

We watched the kite from a grassy hillside that looked to be the place where it would land if it ever came down. I finally lay down on my side, but Maia wanted me to lie on my back on the slope, so she could lie on top of me.

We lay there on our backs watching the kite in the sky, she on top of me, as the kite was kicked back and forth across an arc of about 30 degrees. The kite often came perilously close to getting caught in the tops of a couple of very tall palm trees. A few times, the wind died down, and Nemo did get caught in the palms, but the wind always lifted it out again.

"Come down, Nemo," Maia would say from time-to-time, "you can do it. It's all right, Nemo."

We watched it for a good fifteen minutes. It seemed headed down to ground near us a few times, but they were all false alarms because the wind would take it back up again.

Finally, the wind turned the kite nose down. It came down on the slope, near to where we were, and I grabbed it. I took the kite off the string, disconnected the ribs in the kite's wings to disable it and gave it to Maia to carry. Then I started to wind the string up on my hand as we headed down the little hill back to the banyan tree.

At that point, the most amazing thing happened. On the way down, I had tugged at the string and had satisfied myself that there was no way that I would be able to pull the spool up through the tree. I had figured that I'd just have to cut the string at some point on the Nemo side of the tree and leave the rest of the string and the spool in the tree. But once the tension came off the string, the spool lowered itself out of the tree and down to the ground. I undid the string from the spool and pulled the string out of the tree from the Nemo side. So finally we had all three pieces of Nemo again--the kite, the string, and the spool.

Kristina showed up with the mango picker and helped me re-spool the string.

And then we went home. On the way out of the park, Maia took one of the mango pickers from Kristina, and pretended that it was a fishing net. She and Kristina caught fish in the net from the path, and it was my job to collect the fish from the two nets.

What I didn't tell Kristina on Sunday is that it really would be okay if I died now. She and Maia would have made it all worthwhile.

If I did, I wonder if God would appear to me as Nemo--a very large, orange and white clownfish kite.

I don't know if there is a God, but that would make me happy. Probably make God happy, too.

Maybe I'll take a picture of Maia with Nemo and put that up.

[Maia flying Nemo on a day in June, 2006]






John, April 16, 2006.

"I don't like your nose"

Yesterday, I told Kristina about something Maia had said. We had been lying on the bed Saturday morning, and Maia had said, "I don't like your nose."

My nose is broken, and several times before, she had commented on it. "Your nose is crooked," she had said. But this was the first time she had said that she didn't like my nose.



It made me think that someone at her preschool had made a similar comment about her left ear.

"What did you say?" Kristina wanted to know.

I hadn't said anything--hadn't known how to respond.

"I should have said something, shouldn't I? So she'll have an idea of how to respond?"



She's such a beautiful child. And she has such an engaging fun-loving and friendly personality. I don't want her to get hung up on her missing left ear.



My Mother said that she smiles with her whole face, and it's true.

These pictures were taken by a professional photograher a couple of months after Maia's second birthday.

John, April 7, 2006

More pics from Shymkent, Kazakhstan, April/May, 2004

This is a pic of the little market just up the street from our hotel. There was a canopy above the sidewalk and in that space were a bunch of flower stalls. Up some steps from that were a few little shops sharing a roof, and including a little grocery store, a clothing store, and a children's store. Kazakhstan has amazing florist shops. They are everywhere and have beautiful roses and other flowers.


This is the little market across the street from the first one. This was more a local market and included food vendors selling baked goods and kebabs. Whereever there was an opportunity to set up a little barbecue, you'd find people selling kebabs. But that was true only of Shymkent, not of Almaty. Almaty seemed a more refined sort of city. All in all, I think I liked Shymkent better.

This vendor was selling magazines. They were lying flat on tables.

Another book vendor. That's a bus stop to the left.

Just down the street, a cellphone store. There were cellphone stores and service companies everywhere. Everyone had a cellphone.

This is the storefront of the internet cafe that we went to. It was near a university and always busy. This place was a life saver. It was run by several very nice and helpful young men. When we left, I tried to make a gift of some money to them. It was a small amount, but that was offensive. So I went to the department store where movie CDs were sold and bought a CD for them. "Gangs of New York." Not the best choice, but I had noticed that they liked action flicks. The manager of the place accepted that from me and comped me a little free time on the internet in return.

Some pictures from Shymkent--late April, early May, 2004

The first two images are of an open air farmer's market located down the road from our hotel. It was just before a bridge. Shymkent has the feel of a border town--lots of trade, lots of traffic, lots of different types of people. A little raw and rough. A Kazakh guide/interpreter called it the Wild West and that's sort of the feel of it. This was at the end of the day when all of the trading was about done.




These images are of a flea market. You could find anything you wanted there. The stalls mostly consisted of steel sheds and shipping containers. The shopkeepers would lock up the doors to the containers at night.

This was our hotel. It had been recently constructed but had an unfinished feel. The grounds, for example, were a mess, and there were features of the interior that needed work. You had the feeling that it had been built for a clientele that had never materialized. Nevertheless, the business was conducted as though the clientele were there--there was a bar that was always open and barely used and a pretty elaborate convenience store--almost a grocery store--on the first floor that was well stocked and staffed and barely ever used. Strange.

This was what I thought of as "The Temple of Ra"--a condo being built up the street from our hotel and that had reached a stage of unfinishedness that looked like it was going to be semi-permanent. During the time that we were in Shymkent--most of two weeks--I never say anyone actually working on the condo, and we would pass it on a daily basis. The condo was between our hotel and the main grocery and also the place that we went to for internet access.

This is the large park across the street from our hotel. I took this from our hotel at about 10 pm at night. It was light until very late. The park was always well used. The street between our hotel and the park was a six lane, divided boulevard. Along with the new Mercedes and Toyotas and the ancient Russian cars, you would also sometimes see a cart being drawn by a horse or mule.

This is from a street near our hotel. I liked the older buildings better.

"That bird doesn't have a family"

We decided to take Maia to the opening of Ice Age 2 on Saturday night and to go eat a pizza at Costco on the way. Can't beat the price for pizza at Costco.

It was the first movie Maia had ever seen, and she loved it. On the way there, she kept saying, "It's going to be exciting, yeah?" She loved the funny looking squirrel on his endless quest for acorns, invariably wildly unsuccessful, and she laughed her big chesty laugh whenever he got himself into trouble.

At Costco, she had said something that stuck with me.

We were eating pizza at the picnic tables set up by Costco on a cement lanai. There were little groupings of people everywhere, but there was also a bird, a dove, wandering around on the cement floor by itself.

Maia said, "That bird doesn't have a family."

Kristina said, "Maybe its family is at home," but Maia said, "This isn't home, this is Costco." Kristina continued in that vein, but I don't think Maia ever gave up on the idea that that particular bird didn't have a family.

Today, I took Maia to the airport and to a park. The airport used to be a regular Saturday morning stop, but with Maia's hula class on Saturday mornings, we hadn't been for quite a while.





On the way to the Hertz lot at the end of the runway--which is where we position ourselves to watch the planes taking off and landing--I had noticed a park. We had never been to that park, but I thought we might try it today to see if there was a place for Maia to ride her bike, which I had put in the trunk of the car.



The park turned out to be a large one, and evidently a favorite spot for Samoan families. There were a couple of dozen families barbecuing and sitting around talking under portable awnings--aluminum tube frames with canvas stretched over the top of the frames, sort of like tents with no sides. Some young men were playing softball. There were a lot of kids, too, on the climbing structure.







The sight of all of the families reminded me of what Maia had said the day before about the bird. And so on the way home later on, I asked her if she remembered the bird that didn't have a family.

"Yes," she said.

"Was that sad?"

"Yes," she said again.

"Why?" I asked.

She talked a lot nonstop, and I didn't make out everything she said. But the thing that she emphasized was, "The bird didn't have anybody to talk to."

"Have you ever known a person who didn't have a family?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No," she said.

I wonder if she doesn't remember it, in some way.

Finding our way through this isn't going to be easy.



John, Sunday, April 2, 2006