Cordelia Camelia meets Javelina
Javelina Rovers
© Yvonne Mokihana Calizar, 2019
Javelina Rovers
Will snort big time
Your Gringo Lingo
Stop saying "Ja"
English no, no, no
Hah-va-LEE-nah
Juana
Not "Joe-a-nah"
"It's Juana, like Tijuana.
I was having a morning iphone chit chat with my son. It was early Wednesday, but I was here at the keyboard taking a first lasso at the poem 'Javelina Rovers.' I started reading it to him, excited to have a new something coming on; something Cordelia Camelia would probably enjoy. He kept interrupting me, "Don't say Ja!" I couldn't hear him, didn't understand his protestation. Ha! The Mom was being corrected and was not having any of it. Dah.
Like I said it was early, and I was in my zone, not expecting an exploration zone. But my son was having none of that. The word was Spanish, and the Gringo Lingo had to go.
We had one more lesson in language and this time I was transported to a small town of my childhood where my family went for dinner. Back in the the late 50's there was a restaurant -- old style family and bar diner -- on Old Wai'alae Avenue. in Ka'imuki Town. Kaimuki Inn.This restaurant, and those family times are sweet and innocence memories rich in our taste-it-zone because two crust banana pie was the desert. Eaten hot, or cold (as Maleka reminded me she prefers) Banana Pie has become a recipe to pass down. I was asked for the recipe Kawika, my son, had been telling her about. Wow, how the legacies flow.
The thing about language lesson is this? My son asked, 'What does 'Kaimuki' mean? I told him something I had to learn much later in life. It means the oven (imu) that was used to bake the stocks of the 'ki' or ti leaf plant during hard times. He remarked, "Oh, so they(we) been pronouncing it wrong all these years!"
Yes, like so many words we roving ancestors, traveling humans use in our lives the meaning and pronunciation of places, people, elements, associations get lost because we move or lose connection with origins.When I lived in Hawaii as a girl that fact that island grown bananas would create the taste of memory had not baked into my story yet. And when I was a girl, the pronunciation of Hawaiian words was yet to receive the attention and respect it would need to create a renaissance; the timing was still ripening. Only later would I appreciate the luscious rich taste of an Apple Bananas (smaller, richer, sweeter) than the store bought bananas I buy in my local Whidbey Island markets. When I was asked for the pie recipe, the bananas ready for baking were ripe and grown on O'ahu. That was a pie I can only imagine today. Lucky I can imagine, Cordelia Camilia.
I am seated at the computer, cozy in our golden wagon. Pete is quietly reading (and making notes) Nomadland Surviving America in the Twenty First Century , a book recommended to us from a friend who is just now leaving Javelina Country (Tuscan, AZ). "I've just finished reading this. Have you read it? If you have let's talk about it. If you haven't read it get it from the library. You're already living this."
While writing this post, I got hungry.
"There's a bowl of left overs out there," Pete said without moving from his horizontal position.
"Good idea!" I'm eating that bowl of chicken wings and long rice (Mung Bean threads) with green beans. The flavor is close enough to be Kaimuki, or Ka'imuki to make the wet and damp reality of life on a Salish Sea Island on the last day of my seventy-first year an okay with me experience.
Life is turning out to be more or less, mas o menos, some of dis and dat with a lot of adjustments to original recipes so often eaten unconsciously. I'm feeling less judgment about the changing circumstances in a ripening kupuna (elder's) life.
Vincent could easily be one of Pete's tribe, for pennies are Pete's first choice when it comes to washers.
"How much are washers, Pete?"
"11 cents, plus tax."
I feel fortunate, rich with experiences and the imagination to turn life into myth, to make a dollar out of 15 cents, and be grateful to be living at a time when the meaning of words spirals around to include corrections @the perfect time.
To end this last-day-of my old year post, here is a link to a story I wrote in 2017, the last winter Pete and I lived in the woods of Forest Lane. The story is called Banana Skin and Ginger, the installment is entitled, "Timing."
The first paragraph begins:
For those who have followed my journey of writings, you know my stories have a winding predisposition, and old characters, like the taste of two crust Apple Banana pie show up to remind me of flavors I so often think lost. But they're not.
Many mahalo to my Ancestors, to the places I have loved and left, and people who have influenced me to be the person who writes myth to understand life. Ma, Dad, David, Aunty Lily, Mrs Pung, Mrs. Quon, Kuliouou, my mango tree, the Tide Pools, the Bath in Waimanalo, Kaimuki Inn and Kaimuki (with and without the proper diacritical markings), Iao Valley, Hilo and Waianuehea Avenue, Aunty Betty, Koko Head Elementary, Aunty Vicky Hall, Aunty Betty Jenkins, Mokihana, Cindy, the Gulch, CKB, Pete, the two Margarets from Minnesota, the nieces and nephews on Islands and in the Midwest. And many more I've forgotten ...
When I remember and safety pin my memories together, it is a soul retrieval dance that gives life to the Cordelia Camelia in me, a girl happy to be alive and playing!
xo Mokihana
.
© Yvonne Mokihana Calizar, 2019
Javelina Rovers
Will snort big time
Your Gringo Lingo
Stop saying "Ja"
English no, no, no
Hah-va-LEE-nah
Juana
Not "Joe-a-nah"
"It's Juana, like Tijuana.
Juana, not Joe-a-nah, in East Side Sushi
Like I said it was early, and I was in my zone, not expecting an exploration zone. But my son was having none of that. The word was Spanish, and the Gringo Lingo had to go.
We had one more lesson in language and this time I was transported to a small town of my childhood where my family went for dinner. Back in the the late 50's there was a restaurant -- old style family and bar diner -- on Old Wai'alae Avenue. in Ka'imuki Town. Kaimuki Inn.This restaurant, and those family times are sweet and innocence memories rich in our taste-it-zone because two crust banana pie was the desert. Eaten hot, or cold (as Maleka reminded me she prefers) Banana Pie has become a recipe to pass down. I was asked for the recipe Kawika, my son, had been telling her about. Wow, how the legacies flow.
The thing about language lesson is this? My son asked, 'What does 'Kaimuki' mean? I told him something I had to learn much later in life. It means the oven (imu) that was used to bake the stocks of the 'ki' or ti leaf plant during hard times. He remarked, "Oh, so they(we) been pronouncing it wrong all these years!"
Yes, like so many words we roving ancestors, traveling humans use in our lives the meaning and pronunciation of places, people, elements, associations get lost because we move or lose connection with origins.When I lived in Hawaii as a girl that fact that island grown bananas would create the taste of memory had not baked into my story yet. And when I was a girl, the pronunciation of Hawaiian words was yet to receive the attention and respect it would need to create a renaissance; the timing was still ripening. Only later would I appreciate the luscious rich taste of an Apple Bananas (smaller, richer, sweeter) than the store bought bananas I buy in my local Whidbey Island markets. When I was asked for the pie recipe, the bananas ready for baking were ripe and grown on O'ahu. That was a pie I can only imagine today. Lucky I can imagine, Cordelia Camilia.
I am seated at the computer, cozy in our golden wagon. Pete is quietly reading (and making notes) Nomadland Surviving America in the Twenty First Century , a book recommended to us from a friend who is just now leaving Javelina Country (Tuscan, AZ). "I've just finished reading this. Have you read it? If you have let's talk about it. If you haven't read it get it from the library. You're already living this."
While writing this post, I got hungry.
"There's a bowl of left overs out there," Pete said without moving from his horizontal position.
"Good idea!" I'm eating that bowl of chicken wings and long rice (Mung Bean threads) with green beans. The flavor is close enough to be Kaimuki, or Ka'imuki to make the wet and damp reality of life on a Salish Sea Island on the last day of my seventy-first year an okay with me experience.
Life is turning out to be more or less, mas o menos, some of dis and dat with a lot of adjustments to original recipes so often eaten unconsciously. I'm feeling less judgment about the changing circumstances in a ripening kupuna (elder's) life.
"When Vincent bolted it (his solar panel) to the roof of his van he used drilled out pennies/ it was cheaper than washers." - from Nomadland.
Vincent could easily be one of Pete's tribe, for pennies are Pete's first choice when it comes to washers.
"How much are washers, Pete?"
"11 cents, plus tax."
I feel fortunate, rich with experiences and the imagination to turn life into myth, to make a dollar out of 15 cents, and be grateful to be living at a time when the meaning of words spirals around to include corrections @the perfect time.
To end this last-day-of my old year post, here is a link to a story I wrote in 2017, the last winter Pete and I lived in the woods of Forest Lane. The story is called Banana Skin and Ginger, the installment is entitled, "Timing."
The first paragraph begins:
"Worrisome traits are the ones we love to cling to because they itch us with that old, familiar sensation. Some even give them names so we can hate them all over again. Others prefer the drama of denying any relationship with the twitch leaving the mystery to someone with credentials. As the transformative planet Pluto crossed the roots of his star chart Herbert had chosen the name previously assigned to a fantasy character as a way to slip between the cracks. It seemed a perfect time: winter was a time for hibernation and the extreme temperatures gave the usually virile and active man the perfect cover.
For those who have followed my journey of writings, you know my stories have a winding predisposition, and old characters, like the taste of two crust Apple Banana pie show up to remind me of flavors I so often think lost. But they're not.
Many mahalo to my Ancestors, to the places I have loved and left, and people who have influenced me to be the person who writes myth to understand life. Ma, Dad, David, Aunty Lily, Mrs Pung, Mrs. Quon, Kuliouou, my mango tree, the Tide Pools, the Bath in Waimanalo, Kaimuki Inn and Kaimuki (with and without the proper diacritical markings), Iao Valley, Hilo and Waianuehea Avenue, Aunty Betty, Koko Head Elementary, Aunty Vicky Hall, Aunty Betty Jenkins, Mokihana, Cindy, the Gulch, CKB, Pete, the two Margarets from Minnesota, the nieces and nephews on Islands and in the Midwest. And many more I've forgotten ...
When I remember and safety pin my memories together, it is a soul retrieval dance that gives life to the Cordelia Camelia in me, a girl happy to be alive and playing!
xo Mokihana
.
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