By Jill Steele
Author "Blood on the Orchids"
Owner Hawaiian Magic Tropical Flowers
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| My daughter Jade at 1st Bay Pohoiki |
I was going to write about something other than the lava and our experience post lava but I am still working through it and it feels right to share. Walking through my new neighborhood with my dog Luna, I am obsessed with cracks in the pavement, always wondering how they came to be there, if they are recent and if they are a sign of something to come. Our rental is near the highway and the lanai shakes when large trucks pass. That concerns me. I have moments of instability, I am realizing.
We are making our rental house a home. This week we will get our mattress off the floor and onto a wooden frame and fingers crossed, we may also get a sofa. We have lately become big internet consumers. We do buy locally when possible but online shopping is easier in my sometimes fragile emotional state. My kitchen is set up and I baked my first loaves of bread since evacuating. I forgot to add salt until the end and the loaves are like salt bagels with salt on the outside, but it’s a start. It has taken a while to remember where everything is. I hid a chocolate bar from my son one night and it took me a week before I found it again.
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| My son Shelby making the most of a small day. |
Puna is a feeling and today I looked around the beach at Honoli'i and thought, “Where are my people? These people don’t look like my people.” My people were at Pohoiki—they were people I knew and people I didn’t know. We knew each other by sight. Where are the “Uncles” who watched out for my kids, hung out at the picnic tables and told fish stories near the boat ramp? I miss the clean, clear water of Kapoho and Pohoiki. I am grateful for what good has come into our lives out of this tragedy, but I think it’s okay to complain because this is a grieving process and we are all mourning a place and a lifestyle.
I mopped the floors of our rental house today, the first housework I have done in my new home besides doing the dishes. When we first moved here, I refused to care about the floors but I am working towards acceptance and healing. This week my goal is to take a yoga class.
❤️❤️🙏🙏
ReplyDeleteLove your post and hearing about your new start. We, too will miss what we had at the Beach Lots. So many mixed emotions but trying to keep in mind Rumi's wisdom..."Don't grieve, everything that you have lost comes around again in a different form" Lois Younger
ReplyDeleteGood perspective, good progress, good goals. Imua! See you Saturday
ReplyDeleteI spend most of my time in gratitude of what I have and what I had, and dreams not realized...interspersed with outbursts of crying. I am mostly sad for everyone else...aloha
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