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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
January 5, 2014
Family history first published as a
Words in Progress dated
January 1, 2002.
© 2002, 2014 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Honolulu Sunset, 2003
© 2003 by Bud Grossmann
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A CLEAN, CRISP SHEET
2
002. A new year, a nice number. Feels good to place it in ink at the top of a clean, crisp sheet of stationery and allow the second 2’s tail to trail out into the margin. But that’s as far as I got. I put the page away. I swallow uncomfortably; my throat is sore from smoke. Fireworks, that is. The morning sky is sunny but stained a yellow-brown. Last night was loud and sulfurous here in Honolulu. Chester, our Labrador, dull-eyed and drunk—dosed last night with a tranquilizer—shows little interest in his Milkbone breakfast. Elizabeth, our fourteen-year-old daughter, makes waffles for her mother and me, the real thing, with whipped egg whites in the batter. When we’ve washed the dishes, I phone my brother-in-law, Keith Nakamura. He and I had talked about maybe taking a drive to the North Shore, to search for surf of the sort you see on postcards. Keith tells me the report on the radio predicted no monster waves, but he says that’s okay, let’s go anyway. I drive to Keith’s home in Nuuanu and get there a little after noon. He’s ready. Before we’ve gone three blocks we find ourselves in heavy traffic—crowds are coming and going at the Japanese temple on Puiwa Road. People are placing paper prayers in branches of the trees. Across the lane, Norfolk pines—planted, not potted—at St. Francis Hospice still bear ornaments. Who was it I visited there, so many years ago? My pastor was present; I can picture him commenting on a hibiscus, fresh and red, in a vase beside the bed of a woman we knew. Let’s enjoy the hibiscus bloom today, the pastor said, because no matter what we do, put it in water or leave it on the bush, it will wilt and die when evening comes. Whether that was metaphor or horticultural lesson, I’m afraid I don’t recall. On Pali Highway an SUV with vanity tags passes us by. “GWAPE” says the plate; the vehicle’s paint is the color of wine. A motorcycle passes us. It’s driven by a man in shorts with a woman in shorts hugging him hard, skin-on-skin, thigh-on-hairy-thigh. Puts me in mind of a bike or two and some pleasant rides of my own. We pass through Kaneohe and Kahaluu. Keith, not usually much of a talker, mentions his grandmother. He says she is still fairly sharp at age one hundred and two. Her hearing is diminished, though, and her English is gone. She sings and speaks in Japanese, the language of her native land. Keith describes a wood-fired, wood-tub furo behind his grandparents’ home on Maui. I reply with a story about my brother Bruce, when he was five or six years old and was cooked beyond the comfort level at a hot springs in Japan. I tell another story: one time after a bath at home, little bouncy Brucie backed into an electric space heater and neatly branded his butt like a checkerboard. We pass through Waiahole and glimpse the island called Chinaman’s Hat. At Kualoa a tumble-down sugar mill rests directly beside the road. A few stone walls and a chimney. Across from those ruins is a beach house where Fran and I stayed once with a friend named Carole, who showed me how to spear octopus when the tide was low on a moonless night. Ah, octopus! Boiled in beer for a midnight meal. Carole owned a ’57 Chevy, I recall, which leads me to tell Keith about a bronze-and-white five-seven hardtop I saw in 1966 in Baltimore, minutes after it rolled through a field and wrapped itself around a power pole. Abundant beer cans were present at the scene. Three teen-age boys in the back seat survived the crash; three in the front did not. Kaaawa, Kahana Bay, Punaluu. Here’s the shell-strewn sand where Fran and I went for a walk on the October day twenty years ago when our son David entered our lives. Sacred Falls. Hauula. We stop for a rest, Keith and I. We brought bottled water and canned sodas but no snacks. Ocean here is shallow and clear. Wish we’d brought mask-and-snorkel. We do have cameras and film. Laie. The Mormon Temple makes me imagine the Taj Mahal. Across the way is a house I once visited. Guy there had birds, he had a cockatiel that kissed him on the lips. Sunset Beach, Shark’s Cove, Three Tables. The waves are not enormous, but they’re glorious all the same. We stop at each beach now, step onto the sand, and taste the salt that’s on the wind. The ocean shakes the shore. A few fools frolic in the froth at the ocean’s edge. Out a ways some surfers are getting rides. The swells are filled with green-gold light as if from deep within. Rainbows sparkle in the sea spray. A turtle, big as a book bag, rises from the depths, turns her back on us, and floats at the top of the waves, her “wings” wide, at Waimea. We meander through Haleiwa, on streets I’ve never traveled before, and then return to the main road to look for a place to eat. At an L & L, Keith orders a chicken cutlet mini-plate; I choose deep-fried shrimp. The sun is still higher than the Koolaus, so we go on to Waialua, Mokuleia, and to where the pavement peters out, almost to Kaena Point. At Dillingham Field we watch a flock of tandem parachute jumpers descend from the sky and, with a flutter of fabric and shouts of glee, set down roughly in tall grass. The harnessed pairs of people remind me of the motorcyclists’ intimate embrace. We have run out of shoreline, so Keith and I head home on a straight string of two-lane road through acres of pineapple, across the island’s center. The sun, roosting momentarily in the notch of Kolekole, reddens the furrowed fields to a rusty brilliance beyond believability. And then the sun is gone. We drive on, through Wahiawa and Aiea, past Pearl Harbor, and into Honolulu. Home!
T
he year begins, two thousand two. Warmest wishes from me to you. ♦
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This page was updated Sun, Jan 5, 2014, 2:00AM CST.
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© 2014 by Bud Grossmann
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