by Lehua Parker | Apr 7, 2014 | Mainland Living
I feel like this guy, only he seems blissfully happy.
Must be the beer.
Oh my, &*(^&^@#%^!!! It’s SNOWING again.
I bought little cute sandals, capris, and tee-shirts. I got my toes painted a sunny orange-creamsicle. There’s a tube of sunscreen in my day bag and even a fold up hat. The calendar says spring—winter should be over.
But now it’s snowing big, fluffy, Christmas card flakes that are rapidly piling up outside my window. I haven’t seen more than a hint of sun in a week. Writing at my desk in shorts with the space heater on isn’t cutting it. I think the real reason so many writers commit suicide is because they can’t all live at the beach. People think the world will end in a fiery ball, but I know the truth. It will end in ice, in frozen wasteland, in snow.
Snow. Worst four-letter word ever.
by Lehua Parker | Mar 30, 2014 | Mainland Living, Mana'o (Thoughts), Slice of Life
Oh, hell’s bells. I have to buy new swimwear.
When I was a kid, this meant going with Mom to Sears or JC Penney and trying on a new bikini. No big deal. Bonus if we stopped for guri-guri on the way home. In Hawaii in the 1970s, we all wore bikinis because kids didn’t grow out of them as fast as one-piece suits, and compared to the nudist colony living up the beach from us in Kihei, my sister and I looked like Amish kids. Besides, wearing bikini bottoms under dresses allowed me to yell, “Face!” to boys who chanted, “I saw London, I saw France, I saw Lehua’s underpants!” when I climbed a mango tree or swung on the monkey bars at school.
Back in the day popping a young boy’s bubble with I’m wearing a bikini! Face! was the ultimate burn. Things were simpler.
In the 1980s, I started wearing sleek one piece suits, caring more that the shoulder straps stayed in place while boogie boarding than how high the leg openings were. Remember the French-cut suits that went as high as your hip? I had legs fo’days. Looking at old photos, my ultra-conservative daughter can’t believe her grandmother let me leave the house, let alone walk on public beaches. Wop her jaws when I told her Nana bought them for me.
In the 1990s, I started wearing saggy t-shirts with the sleeves cut off over conservative one piece suits while scuba diving. Around 2000, I switched to baggy shorts and tankinis under big shirts and started playing lifeguard more than swimming myself.
It was inevitable given my new body shape (the non-gym, non-volleyball playing, post-Mom with too many cookies version) that I’d have to fight a battle between what looked good poolside and what was practical to swim in. In the water, skirts and tankinis ride up and most shorts puff out, holding more water than a sponge. Swimsuits that allow you to swim also show every lump, bulge, and chocolate brownie you ever ate. It got to the point where vanity trumped swimming. I put on flirty swim dresses with burka-like cover-ups and stayed out of the water.
It was mainly kiddie pools anyway.
But after losing 40 lbs., all my old swimwear is too big. The family is planning a week-long seashore adventure and I don’t have a thing to wear. I want to swim in the ocean again—no more froofy poolside suits for me. But dang! While the lumps and bumps are smaller, there’s no way I can wear a normal swimsuit in public and not scar little children for life.
You know you’re in trouble when you’re scouring the internet and the styles you think will work are described as perfect for the orthodox sect.
Right now, I’m planning on high-rise bike-style shorts under a dresskini top from Lands End–assuming it ships here in time. Plan B is a longer tankini top from Junonia. Plan C is a swim bra under a rash guard. All are a far cry from the sexy French-cuts I used to wear, but at least I’m back in the water.
Surf’s up!
PS: Of course, none of these photos are of me. Photos of me in swimwear? Are you crazy?
by Lehua Parker | Mar 17, 2014 | Mainland Living
The calendar says first day of Spring, but the snow flurries are flying. In defiance I’m wearing my new summer capris and a t-shirt, but in the space heater under my desk is on. The sun peeks through bare branches to shine hazily through my office window. I know in a couple of months I’ll be longing for frozen ice pops and air conditioning, but right now a little heat sounds good.
Until then I’ll shiver in my slippahs and try to soak up the weak winter rays that trickle through the slatted blinds. Staring at the computer screen, I’ll dream of the taste of saltwater in the back of my throat, the tightness of too much sun across my shoulders, and the sand-kiss hiss of shore-break as it marks the changing tides.
Maybe tomorrow the trees will bud and the snow will melt.
Maybe.
by Lehua Parker | Feb 20, 2014 | Mainland Living
Twitchy.
I’m not sure if it’s his hands on the steering wheel or me in my seat, but the rain is turning to sleet as we wind up the canyon. I give him side-eye, my son now taller and broader than me with his shiny new driver’s license tucked in his wallet. His arms are relaxed, but I can see the tension in his jaw, the same line his father gets when I remind him about trash or the need to buy horse feed.
Pushing my foot through the passenger floorboards, I’m stressing him out.
I take a deep breath and count to five, but it comes out as a sigh.
His eyes get squinty and his shoulders hunch forward.
I count to ten this time and try not to breathe too loud.
When did I last check the tires?
“So you excited about speaking at the conference?” he asks.
“Really more trying not to throw up,” I say.
“You’ll be fine,” he tells me. “Want to stop for Coke or something? It might settle your stomach.”
When did we switch? Aren’t I supposed to be the one driving the car, reassuring, and giving dubious medical advice?
On one hand, there’s a maternal pride that I have shepherded a fussy, unwilling to nurse infant into a capable young man.
But I’m a really crappy backseat driver and the trickiest s-curves are coming up.
“Roads are getting a little slick,” he says. “I better ease off the gas a little.”
I count to three and think about daffodils and spring. It’s gonna be fine.
by Lehua Parker | Feb 14, 2014 | Mainland Living, The Business of Writing
“It’s pronounced L’wah. It’s French,” proclaimed the guy sitting next to my son, Aaron. Aaron gives him side-eye. The guy and his girlfriend are studying the bios of the authors seated on the platform in front of the room. It’s the first day of a writers’ conference and I’m here to talk about how to write children who sound, act, and think like children instead of mini-adults. Seated in the middle of the table, I figure I’m in a power-spot.
“No, says the woman, spotting a dark-haired, olive-skinned author seating herself to my right. “It’s Native American. It’s Leh-huish-hah.”
Aaron tries not to snicker.
“I’m telling you it’s French. L’wah!”
“Welcome everyone. Let’s start by having each of our panelists introduce themselves.”
“Aloha! My name is Lay-who-ah Parker and I write…”
When they hear me say my name, they both shake their heads. “No,” the guy says, “she’s wrong.”
by Lehua Parker | Feb 10, 2014 | Mainland Living
At first glance you’d think my fourteen-year-old daughter is a pretty, self-confident jockette and honors student growing up sheltered and cherished in ways only the truly privileged take for granted. But get to know her and you’ll realize that she’s a deep thinker who knows how to blend. At her core she’s a can-do, no-nonsense, uber-competitive, authority-questioning young woman with the analytical brain of an engineer.
It’s a potent combination that usually leaves people underestimating her until she eviscerates them with her tenacity and logic.
Last night she came home spitting nails from her weekly teenage girls’ church youth group activity. “You know what we did? We made little toy lizards to go on backpacks.”
“Okaaayyy,” I said. “And you didn’t want one for your backpack?”
“The lizards weren’t for us; they were for kids in Africa. It was a service project. I asked how tiny beaded lizards were a service project—wouldn’t starving kids in Africa rather have a sandwich? And they said these were to go on the outside of the backpacks that other people were filling with things kids need. This wasn’t a service project—this was decorating someone else’s service project.” She was deeply and thoroughly disgusted.
I totally got where she was coming from. I also understood why the adult youth group leaders thought this was a brilliant idea: weekly activity, check; service project, check; fun thing to do, check. Now who has an idea for next week?
There is one inescapable fact of a lay ministry—it requires a lot of volunteer work from its members. And sometimes people don’t grasp all of the purposes and reasons behind what’s being asked of them.
Too often in teen girls’ programs the focus becomes what’s cute, easy, and fun instead of worthwhile. Somehow the idea that we’re supposed to be helping girls grow into capable young women of faith gets confused with entertaining them. We avoid asking more of them out of fear that they’ll stop coming and lose sight of why we want them there in the first place.
Combine a skewed focus with a checklist mentality, and you’ll understand why so many church youth camps are held in somebody’s vacation cabin, meals are pre-prepared off-site by other adults and ferried in three times daily, and a twenty-minute hike is deemed as good as the five-mile requirement. We all know it’s a serious pain to set up tents in the wilderness. It’s also far easier if adults plan, shop for, and cook all the meals—double-bonus points if leaders can avoid doing that over a smoky campfire or wonky propane burner. Throw in some spiritual thoughts, a couple of crafts, and check, check, check—girls’ summer church camp is done.
But that’s not the point.
Young women need to do hard things in order to learn that they can. They need experiences that teach them that their service has real value. And that takes time, effort, and a non-checklist mentality from the adults. To do less is to underestimate them—and ourselves.
God never said it would be easy, only worth it.
I know my daughter dutifully made as many of the lizards as she could to the best of her ability. I suspect the whole time she was calculating the man-hours and hard costs that went into them, figuring if they’d sold the lizards for $5 apiece as a fundraiser and then taken the money they raised and…
But beyond asking why they were making the lizards, I doubt she said a word. Like I said, she knows how to blend.
On her way up the stairs to her bedroom she paused. “You know, Mom, when I’m grown up I hope I get to work in a girls’ youth ministry. That way I can make sure we do something real.”
Me, too.
