Diving with Dad

 

We ramble along unmarked 4WD dirt roads in my father’s silver Ford Bronco as we make our way to the Kohala coast. I’m 13 and bad with directions. My father knows exactly where we are going as our tires kick up the dirt leaving clouds in our wake. My father knows these roads like the lines on his hands. “Rambling Man” by The Allman Brothers Band is appropriately playing as the Bronco leans and lurches down rocky drops and steep slopes. My dad drives deftly, cutting corners and bouncing over bumps, a childlike grin on his face. I grip the arm rest and brace myself. He laughs and accelerates, dust spewing behind us. He enjoys giving me a fright, he was always playful like that. I give him a look and he slows down. Still, I hang on like it’s the ride of my life because it is. I’m with my father, just the two of us, laughing and looking forward to the day to come.

He takes a turn into a grove of mature keawe trees that opens to a cliff where the ocean tumbles into the basalt below. The vista treats the eye to 180 degrees of wild open ocean. Impenetrable dark blues dissolve into an aquamarine paradise which is ruffled with white water. In the shallows near the edge, boulders and sand appear slightly distorted in the undulation of the surf. Our company are the sun, birds and bugs.

Dad backs the Bronco to the edge, not too close, but still at the edge. You could say he approached his wild life the same way, always at the edge, on the precipice of being completely engulfed and at the same time, completely free.

We unload the Bronco, pulling out fishing poles and tackle, diving gear and snacks. Dad always packed the best lunch. Long before I rubbed the sleep from my eyes in the morning, my father was up drinking black coffee and making fresh spam musubi. Fresh fruit, canned juice and Maui style shrimp chips. Ah, shrimp chips, so delicious and crispy, deceivingly shrimpy without actually having a trace of shrimp; no diving trip was complete without shrimp chips. It’s funny how your taste buds can conjure up memories, like how Maui style shrimp chips always reminds me of these dive trips. I stuff a few chips in my mouth and hop out of the Bronco to help dad unload.  

Dad is geared up with his weight belt and baggy surf shorts clinging desperately to his non-existent butt. His fins, mask and snorkel in one hand and his spear in his other he motions me to follow him down the rocky coast to the water. I take each step with my tobies carefully as the rocks are slippery and my reflexes aren’t exactly cat-like. Dad throws his spear into the water and gently dives into the surge. I follow like a little duckling though I look more like a baby seal. I swing in and out of the surge trying to put on my fins. Dad waits patiently outside the surf.

Dad taught me to spit in the mask to help defog it. I hawked up a big wad of something and smushed it around on the lens with my fingers. I rinsed it in the ocean and plastered it to my face. I put my snorkel in and transformed into a true beauty of the sea! Dad would call me his “little puffer fish” and with the stomach I had on me at the time, I’ll admit there was a striking resemblance.

Make no mistake though, I was a predator of the open ocean when I put my dive gear on. No more nice puffer fish! Listening to my breaths underwater makes you feel like you’re listening to yourself from the inside. I could hear every inhale and if I closed my eyes I could see my respirations. Of course with such auditory power comes the desire to elevate to the highest possible emotion. For me that meant exhaling to the tempo of the Jaws theme song. Something about hearing your breath thrum ‘duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn, duhn’ makes you feel like a powerful predator. And its true, small fish feared me.

While I was kicking around and humming the Jaws theme song, my dad was spearing wiki and uhu and omilu. I watch him effortlessly cut through the water, unload his three prong into an uhu and bring it to the surface. He pulls the fish from his spear and takes out his dive knife from his belt. He jabs the knife into the top of the fish’s skull and wiggles it around, essentially scrambling its brain. He called this “braining” the fish. I never had the stomach for that part or the part that came next. Holding the fish tight in his left hand he shoves a large metal rod through the eyes. Once the rod is through, dad pushes the fish down along a line that secures the fish, the rod then slides back and rests on the fish’s head at a 90 degree angle. The rod and line are attached to a 40ft line and an empty Clorox bottle that acts as a buoy. The other end Dad holds as he tows his “stringer” of fish behind him.  

When I wasn’t terrorizing small reef fish, I was usually dwandling behind my father. Swimming along his stringer, I watch the hollow eyes of the fish as they are dragged through the water. I inspect their scaley bodies and foreign mouths. I watch the blood flow and mix with the water like ruby ribbons. I’m in my own world, wondering what the fishs’ lives were like, amazed that I got to be so close, admiring their beauty even though they were dead.

I hear shouting underwater and it pulls me from my fishy trance. My father’s waving at me. “Get away from that stringer!” I put my head down and paddle as fast as I can. I reach him and he looks upset. “How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from the stringer? If sharks want to come they are going to go right for that stringer of fish. I don’t want you anywhere near that. Understand?” I spit out my snorkel but only nodded. I was now afraid there might be sharks. He smiled at me and resumed swimming.

Sometimes dad would spot a moray eel and he would spear a small fish and feed it to the eel. Our diving trips were like National Geographic epics to me. The underwater world is so fascinating. That’s what it is, a world, a mysterious, seemingly enclosed great big world. On the surface I am an intruder with my funny face plunged into the surface, big tube sticking out of my mouth. I don’t belong here. And yet, all this life accepts my presence perhaps because they know I’m not permanent.

And nothing is.

Listening to Dreaming Man by Neil Young

The Receipt

 There's a medium black 3 ringed binder I keep with my dad's medical paperwork. There is a loose sheet of paper folded in half, a prescription receipt from our local pharmacy. The receipt is unassuming, typical, except for the fact that I've saved it for nine years. 

The words "Hospice HomeCare" have been manually highlighted in green. There are 3 prescriptions for my father. Levetiracetam 500mg, Risperidone 2mg and Lorazepam 2mg dated 5/14/2015. The first is for seizures, the second is an antipsychotic and the third is for anxiety. These were three medicines out of a cornucopia of medicines my father would take. His pill tray often reminded me of skittles if the candy were misshapen and pastel colored. This seems like an inconsequential piece of paper so why did I save it? And why does it make me cry now? 

There's scrawl of numbers near the bottom each with a dash in front: -3.6 x 3.6 x 4.7 and -4.4 x 4.6 x 5.3. These are measurements of my dad's tumor. The first set of numbers represents the size of the tumor during radiation treatment. The second set is its size after we returned to the Big Island. Seeing this receipt, I'm transported back to the day my mother wrote out those fateful numbers. 

My elbows pressed hard into our dining room table as I leaned in to hear the radiologist on the other end of the line. My mom had the phone slightly away from her ear, but I only heard a mumble. She decisively wrote the first numbers onto the receipt. I held my pen lightly so as to be in confidence with her. I began to sketch out a triangle, I wanted to do everything with her, be there in every way. 

Since I couldn't hear what the radiologist was saying I focused instead on my mother's hands. Her beautiful, slender fingers wrapped tight around the ball point pen. Each decimal was punctured into the page because this was life or death. She wrote out -3.6 x 3.6 x 4.7.

I can't remember if she started crying before she wrote the next line or while she was writing it. I could have burnt that receipt with the intensity of my stare. She started with a 4. I began to cry. I'd known from as long as I learned to count that 4 was bigger than 3 and in the case of brain tumors, bigger is never better. Each number she wrote was bigger than the last, 4.4 x 4.6 x 5.3. I gripped my pen in anger. I could have snapped it in half. I drew some hard squares at the bottom of the receipt. What else could I do? I drew an angry maze of squares, each line pushed in harder than the last, each square engulfing the other. I felt myself grow tight, snap and then go slack like drawing these squares was the only thing I wanted to do. Nothing seemed real or important. I wanted to draw the squares through the paper into the dining room table and then I wanted to sit with my mom and dad in the kaleidoscope of grooves I cut out with my anger. Inside the smallest square we held each other in love and despair.

I looked over at my dad in his hospital bed, Kapa radio playing in the background. That was the last call we got from the radiologist. You know how some things are so finite? That's why I kept this receipt. It is finite. A physical representation of when we learned that dad have unequivocally lost. Though the memory is painful, I cherish it because it is a part of my life and dad's life and mom's life. It may be the most cherished receipt I have. 

House

 I used to be a very nice house

or at least I thought I was

but I learned a hard truth:

I’m not a home on my own.

In fact, I’ll tell you

I’m not even a room.

At night I am building

new walls

tearing down old ones

patching places once gaping

wide and wind blown.

Everything hurts.  

Nails stabbed into siding

doesn’t sit square

ramshackle and wasted

despite the persistent efforts to get it right

and straight

and level.

Everything has been blown apart

But where is the storm?

No splintered studs 

broken beams

collapsed chimney.

Stained glass centerpiece 

partially finished

and lacking all originality

laughs

as light struggles 

to illuminate floors

empty.

Nothing feels good

and I’m always behind

despite how hard I try

to build myself back up.

Once I was a house

and I never thought it would be any different

but you flew away

and took your bones with you. 

At night I am

illuminated

three walls

and empty.

hello

hello. i miss myself. this poetic self i read in posts from facebook where some machine somewhere populates a date and tells me to remember. remember yourself. hello. this is spread out and grasping and gasping. i haven't written for so long. who is this to? me. so in two or three or ten years facebook can tell me, remember you. remember? you?

hello. i can't write 'it's me' because adele has taken that forever. if when you read this again some years later and you don't understand then it isn't forever. but regardless, hello, i'm here. i rush out of the void into the white page, image of albino buffalo dust clouds my mind. i am here. i can't quite get over myself. it's strange, i feel strange but damn right i'm going to publish this because this post is like breathing, nothing especially amazing and yet at the same time amazing because i'm breathing because i'm writing and yes it's simple and repetitive but it's here, like i'm here.

hello.

 do i tell you, internet, interweb, strange land of strangers closer than lovers? do i tell you where i've been these past 2 years? i cannot. will not. too private, too sacred. but i want these words, these vague words of 'hello' and 'here' and 'strange' and 'lost' to be put out onto this digital scroll never-ending scroll, physically non existent but scarily permanent scroll.

starts

The semester is closing its jaws and retreating back into the jungle.  I am told to write what is true, what is fact and to gather my sources carefully, picking only the purest fruit.  I have moved away from the land of metaphor and experimental sentences.  The semester was watching, eager to bat me with its paws, claws only partly retracted, from my creative whimsy, my poetic prose.  Now the semester is slinking backward to sleep away a few weeks of summer and I open my notebook to the light and let my heart pour out.


***


The shades are tight around my windows like drawstrings on a velvet sack.  I want to keep the night.  There was a siren that woke you and you reached for your right foot and realized your sock was missing.  That sock also took your foot, ankle, shin captive.  You rubbed your right knee because nothing existed further down.  Must have been stolen from you.  Must be lost wandering in some bodiless landscape with all the other arms and legs that were blown off near the finish line.  I hook my two arms around your torso and imagine we're a seven limbed super creature capable of anything.  You love me and resent me. 


***


She'd like to get one of those espresso machines to add to our already too crowded counter.  I didn't argue.  I never win.  Besides I like coffee, though I'm almost certain I'd much more enjoy a swath of counter space to butter my toast.  But when there's so much to fight about and so much uncertainty in the world, I don't argue about an espresso maker, it's not a baby, or a new house, or another lover.  It's a machine, a clunky, superfluous machine.  Things could be worse.


***


Sister Mary Anne loved me.  I used to throw rocks over the fence into the street.  One day she took my hand and put a piece of butterscotch in it.  "Don't throw everything away" she told me. 


***


The pockets of salmon oil danced in the frying pan, sashaying against the icy river water on one of Kodiak Island's many waterways.  My hands shook, not from the cold, but from the fear that Mama bear and her two babies would round the river bend to track down the delicious smell of fried sockeye salmon.  Our crew took turns conducting dishes duty.  We all hated it.  We were camped right above the river.  A short trail took you down to the river bank.  The only thing separating our little tents from the bears that frequented this section of the river was a fragile looking electric fence.  It seemed no more rigid or daunting than a string of Christmas lights.  We also had a shot gun.  When one person went down to the river to wash dishes another played look-out from above, the electric fence stopped at your belt line.  I barely scrubbed the pan before I heard my co-worker clear her throat.  In the distance, I could see a bit of splashing.  I'm still not sure if it was Mama bear.  I scrambled up the river's embankment and got behind the electric fence.  I stood there for a while, waiting, the humps of spawning salmon galloping like horses in the river. 


***

Mary, me and a diner

Six gray hairs at your left temple, kinky and strung out.  They saw too much of the world too fast.  Lines, like the shallow rivulets of a delta, bear themselves at the corners of your eyes.  You’ve gotten older.  So have I.  You lift the coffee cup to your lips, drink it black, like the land before time. 

“Where have you been hiding yourself?” you ask, your mouth hidden behind the diner mug. 

“Here and there,” I laugh.  My knee is throbbing from my run earlier this morning.  I’ve been running every morning since I got back hoping to build up enough momentum to pass your house, to tap your mailbox, to kneel upon your welcome mat, all sweaty and sore and beg for your forgiveness.

“That’s good,” you say as you set the cup down.  You pretend to be absent minded though you’re anything but.

The waitress docks at our table and fishes a notepad from her crusty apron.  This is the diner where we first met nearly ten years ago.  I suggested we get a coffee after a late night exam study session.  You didn’t even need to study but did so because you saw a flailing creature, slightly beautiful and terribly confused.

“Are you ready to order?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I say staring at you.

You don’t look at me and instead read off your choice slowly, deliberately from the Denny’s menu.  “I’ll have a half an order of the Grand Slam Breakfast”. 

“Eggs Benedict,” I say still staring at you.

"So how long are you here for?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes soft with the possibility that my indecision may prompt you to ask me to stay forever.  Because we loved each other once.  Remember?  You say nothing.  You’ll wait me out because I always have so much to say, so many words to ruin myself.  “I’m not quite sure what I’m doing.”

Once, you found my directionless life a precious thing you wanted to cradle, once, you wanted to be my evening star.  I threw out the line from my dilapidated wagon, couldn’t you see I was completely lost without you?  Can’t you just give a girl a ride?  Just for this lifetime, just for one complete rotation ‘round the universe?  You lifted the cup again, hid your mouth and said, “Hrm.”

My heart sank.  I traveled over 3,000 miles in a last ditch effort to correct my life.  I had been waiting for this cup of coffee for 2 years, thought about it every day, thought how I would rest my head on your chest and you would cover me like the Madonna.  I was getting my metaphors mixed up.  I was never very good at religion, had a problem with devotion, but surely you understand, I’m a fallen angel, we all are, except you.  Shouldn’t you want to hold me?

“I suppose I’m looking for a reason to stay,” I said.  My hands reached toward you with no consultation with my consciousness.  There was no sense in being subtle.

You snatched up the cup again.  Surely there was nothing left in it.  You held it in front of your face, both hands wrapped around it.  You looked like you were praying and I saw the pain in you.  And how dare I drag you into all of this again?  How dare I?

I pulled my hands back and coughed into them.  You said nothing.  “Well, anyway, it’s been good to get away a little bit.  I’m always moving you know, looking for something, but I never know what.  So silly.”

“Keeps you young,” you said in an effort to be kind.  But we all knew my moving was only aging me.  All the heavy lifting of packing and unpacking and trying to start up again.  I don’t know how to apologize, wasn’t born with that gene, so I move when I mess it up.  Like ripping the page out of the journal.  I was running out of pages though.  I could feel it, I was 35 and I could feel it.  Look back on my life and see there’s nothing there.  But I remember you.  Remember that page perfectly.

“Yeah, young,” I laughed. 

woman of my life

You woman of my life,

Long haired, dark-eyed woman,
Dances under weathered tarps woman,
Heavy heart anchored woman,
Sinking woman smiling in the sea
Salt water filled belly woman
Rescued woman
Fine white sand dusting your apple cheeks woman.

Could it be you woman

This is the end of me woman
Dropped jaw journals woman
Scrawled woman
Deep bone bruise woman
Paralyzed to refuse woman
Could this be love woman
So swift woman
Seabird in her hair, ocean woman
Metaphor love laced woman

Unknown woman

And known woman
At the corner of my mind woman
Painted in every shadow of my thought woman
Woman’s woman

Humble woman

Repetitive stroke of the C cord woman
Snow drifting down roads and wrapping streetlights woman
Where I biked in darkness and let your snow light my lips woman
Thinks she’s homely woman
Thinks her body’s her best feature woman
Golden heart woman and doesn’t even know it.


Big dreams and quiet mouth woman.
Waiting at bus stops, wants to change the world woman.
Not your woman, so stop looking at me woman,
Lesbian woman.
Loving woman
Just wants someone to hold woman
Under the sheets
In the wintertime woman
And the summertime woman
All the time woman

Gets cold easily woman

And breathes heavily in her sleep woman
Compassionate and much too kind woman
Eats too many sweets woman
Holds me tightly woman
Loves me like I love her woman
Under the sheets, hand always on me woman. 

Doesn’t understand her own mind woman.

Guilty woman
Always sorry about something woman
Blessed woman
Doesn’t forget woman.
Earthbound woman that loves to stroke the hair at my temple
My temple woman
Whose closed eyes I like to kiss in the morning woman

Mirror woman

Mirror woman I know you.
Laughing eyes closed and crying woman
Small feet, small hands woman
Underestimates herself woman
Deserves better woman

I promise to love you forever woman.

I promise to love you forever.