by Lehua Parker | Nov 7, 2017 | Slice of Life
Two days ago, I was on my way down Provo Canyon, a hour-long drive that I can do in my sleep. Flipping through the satellite radio stations, the car swelled with Merry Christmas, Darling by the Carpenters.
It’s too early, I thought, reaching to spin the dial.
I love this song.
It’s cheesy. It’s early November.
I don’t care. No one else can hear.
I opened my mouth and sang.
There was a time in my life when my hours were filled with music, when singing was about rehearsal and performance, about colors and tones and harmony. I don’t sing much any more and never where I think someone can hear me.
I know what I sounded like then and what I sound like now. My middle-aged voice is hoarse with fall allergies and the damage done to my vocal chords more than twenty years ago. Following Karen Carpenter’s melody line, my pitch was flat of true and my breath control left me sucking wind on most of the phrasing.
Alone in my car, I sang anyway. Really, really loudly.
The next song was O Holy Night.
Sang that one, too, cheering as big, fluffy flakes melted to death on my windshield.
I hate snow. Despite what many think, snow and Christmas are not synonymous. Give me a green Christmas at the beach any day.
Which got me thinking. To me, Christmas music should start in October.
Now I don’t work in a mall or a bank or any place that sells Christmas decorations or forces people to listen ad nauseam to holiday cheer. I’m not talking about full-on Christmas pre-Halloween, and certainly not in public.
I’m talking about a more private introspection.
October is when rehearsals for holiday performances start. Choirs and symphonies pass out sheet music for everything from complicated classical pieces to popular pop medleys. Performance schedules are announced. Television timeslots secured. Many years ago, every October for a couple of hours on weekdays, longer on weekends, I’d practice the more complicated phrases on my flute and memorize all the first soprano descants and hallelujahs.
Not a snowflake in sight.
Alone in the car it didn’t matter that my voice was no longer a stratosphering pure soprano. As I sang songs I knew well, I realized my voice was now an off-key smoky contralto, challenging me to fumble for harmonies and thirds when the melody soared past my now less than ideal range. I sounded awful. But for once I didn’t care.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ve grown past comparing what was with what is, with mourning the loss of spotlights and applause to find my way back to the joy of music again.
Maybe I’ll dust off my flute and pull out some sheet music and play to an empty house while the neighbors are all at work. My fingers curved around the steering wheel with muscle memory, flickering through patterns of runs and skips, my lips pursed in anticipation.
An hour of singing Christmas music in early November changed my entire perspective.
And maybe, just maybe, this new idea that’s brewing will give me the freedom to write what I want without worrying about publication, confusing an audience, or building a brand.
Maybe writing will be fun again.
Last night my husband got in my car and turned the key. Christmas music filled the air. He scowled. “Lehua, you can’t be listening to Christmas music.”
“Sure I can. My ears work fine.”
“It’s the first of November. We still have Halloween candy and pumpkin seeds to roast.”
“Not my problem,” I said.
“Lehua, we have a deal.”
“I know.”
“It’s been more than thirty years. You trying to back out now?”
“I promised no Christmas music in the house until after Thanksgiving. What I listen to in my car is my own business.”
He rolled his eyes and changed the station.
Whatever. With the holiday music station on a preset, it’s not hard to tune in again. Tonight I have another hour plus drive to Salt Lake City. I’ll be the one in a red SUV learning the alto parts to Handel’s Messiah, singing alone, loud, and slightly off-key.
You have been warned.
by Lehua Parker | Nov 2, 2017 | Mainland Living, Slice of Life
I am sitting in a too small hospital gown thinking about Schrodinger’s cat. There are two possibilities before me. Empirically, only one is true, but at this moment of unknowing both are alive in my head.
I’ve been here before.
Job/no job. Scholarship/no scholarship. Pregnant/not pregnant. Broken/not broken. Like the cat in the famous box, each time the verdict was already decided; I just didn’t know it yet.
When I say I’ve been here before, I really have. I know the mammogram drill. With a mother as a breast cancer survivor, I don’t fool around. Yearly check-ups. Seven initial years of suspicious call backs for a second series of images, followed by three years of one painful smoosh visit each and done. As mammogram imaging improved and with my previous records to compare, the chances of false positives were drastically reduced.
I cheered.
The seven previous times I came back for a second, more thorough diagnostic mammogram ended with the technician popping back in the room to deliver the verdict: “You can get dressed. The radiologist reviewed the new images and says it’s light refraction/dense tissue/a blur on the original —there’s nothing to worry about. We’ll send the results to your doctor. See you in a year.”
I always nodded and thanked her and got dressed after she left. I learned early not to wear buttons. Too hard to fasten when your hands are shaking.
In the early years I asked, “What happens if it’s really something?”
“We do an ultra sound, then a needle biopsy.”
“And then?”
She sighed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”
I don’t ask anymore.
This year, after three years of passes, I’m back for a second diagnostic mammogram. Before we begin, the technician shows me the images. “See this? That’s what we’re going to take more images of. You can see it in this view and that one, but not this one.”
In the middle of mother roundness is a hard little white spot on the screen. “It’s about here?” I point to an area near my nipple.
“Yes,” she says. “It could be a refraction. But I wanted you to see.”
Seeing it makes it real.
She looks at me and pats my shoulder. “I’ll have the radiologist check the images as soon as we’re done. I’m not letting you go home without an answer.”
I nod and we start.
She’s gentle, but the machines hurt. She pauses after the usual three shots and says, “I want to take a couple more.”
This is new.
“You think the radiologist will want another view,” I say.
“Yes,” she says.
“Better now than later,” I say. When I am already dressed and waiting, I don’t say.
“It’s quicker if I have it when he asks,” she says. “Besides, why not if I can?”
No one takes more images than they need. She’s seen something.
“Let’s do it,” I say. This time tissue is rolled and twisted before flattening. I suck air through clenched teeth and try not to think. What I wish is to not feel.
“Be right back.”
The cat is in the box. It has been since before I climbed into my car to drive to the hospital.
How many times can you beat the odds? The average woman’s lifetime risk is one in eight, and I am not average. I count friends, family, and acquaintances in multiples of eight. The math tells me the odds are not good.
I also know that these odds don’t matter. At the individual level, it’s zero or one hundred.
I remind myself that I am crap at statistics. It’s voodoo mathematics.
I look at my wedding and engagement rings and wonder if I should leave them to my son for his someday bride and give my diamond solitaire earrings to my daughter. But what if my future daughter-in-law prefers her own ring instead of one weighted with a mother’s love? Maybe I should give my daughter my ring, too, and leave my daughter-in-law one of my gold bracelets. Granddaughters! I need to figure out which heirlooms to reserve for them. I guess I could have each pick her favorite on their sixteenth birthdays. Sounds complicated, but fair. I better leave a note with the jewelry in the safe.
Memory books!
I have tons of photos and scrapbook memorabilia stashed away in drawers and folders, none of it organized and waiting for the day when I finally get my act together to create books for each of my kids. I calculate how many good vs. bad chemo days there are in the coming months and realize I need to get cracking. No one, not even a future loving stepmother will do this job the way I will. I hold the memories, after all.
Closets. Dejunk and de-clutter. No one should have to deal with those messes. Empty the downstairs freezer.
In the box the cat both paces and lies dead. My eyes flicker from the closed door to the images left up on the screen.
The air conditioning’s a little cold. I clutch the ends of the gown closer, forcing them to meet.
When the door swooshes open, the technician thrusts her thumbs up. “We’re good,” she says.
I remember to breathe.
“Come see,” she says. She shows me the new images, how in one the spot appears, but in the titty-twister, it doesn’t. “The radiologist says it’s a milk gland. Nothing to worry about.”
Seeing makes it real.
I nod.
“You can get dressed. I’ll see you in a year.”
I thank her as she heads out the door. I zip up my shirt. The cat jumps out of the box.
by Lehua Parker | Oct 19, 2017 | Mana'o (Thoughts), Slice of Life
Me, too.
But I’m going to tell you about my now seventeen year old daughter instead.
When she was starting kindergarten at a private school, they had a get to know the parents, classmates, and teacher picnic. At the picnic I overheard a boy tell his friends how much he loved to chase and kiss girls. I said something to his mother and the teacher, who both laughed it off.
On the way home, I told my daughter if anyone tried to kiss her and she didn’t want to, she had the right to say no–loud and long–until they stopped. And if they kept pursuing, she had the right to make them stop. I said she might get in trouble at school at first, but I would never be mad at her and would explain to the grown-ups.
Sure enough, I got a call the first day of school. I walked into the principal’s office and faced an outraged parent, teacher, and principal who wanted to suspend my daughter for punching a boy in the eye—violence and hitting would not be tolerated.
I calmly asked my daughter to explain what happened. She described how this boy was chasing all the girls at recess, knocking them down, and kissing them—and was encouraging other boys to do this, too. She matter of factly said she’d told him she didn’t want to kiss, he told her she’d better run, and she’d said no and if you try to kiss me again, I’ll punch you. He tried, so she socked him. He ran to the teacher, crying. My daughter also said we didn’t have to worry or punish the boy because in her opinion the problem was solved because she didn’t think he would try to kiss her again. Could she go color now? I gave her a hug and sent her out of the room.
I wish I could say the adults—all women—immediately got it, but they didn’t. I insisted that punishing my daughter for defending herself against unwanted sexual advances was exactly the wrong message. Remember, this was supposed to be a progressive, enlighten private school. I ended their boys will be boys defense with my daughter always has my permission to defend herself against assault.
This boy continued to kiss unwilling girls until my daughter taught them it was okay to fight back. She told the girls not to run or cry, but to tell him no and to punch if he didn’t listen. She said sometimes a punch works best, but to use words first. She also said don’t be mad at him, he’ll figure it out eventually.
The wisdom of a five year old.
After a few more bruises and visits to the principal, his parents acknowledged there might be a problem and got him some counseling.
Knowing that you have the right to say no and to defend yourself—and others—is not a magical protection shield. But maybe if more five year olds felt empowered to stand up for themselves, fewer perpetrators would grow up thinking behavior like this is okay.
#metoo
#metoo is hashtag used to to increase awareness of sexual harassment and assault on Twitter and Facebook. The original call for stories looked like this: “If every person who has been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” In my original Facebook post I left out a very important detail to this story, the part where I wished someone had told five year old me what I told my daughter. For all men and women who get this, thank you. Your voices, examples, and actions make a difference. For those who never considered what happened to them in the hallways or playground as sexual harassment or assault and have now realized that snapping bra straps, flipping up skirts, and chasing girls to kiss them is a forerunner to more serious issues, this can be an eye-opening experience. Let’s teach our children better and resist ideas that downplay these incidents as kids will be kids.
by Lehua Parker | Jun 6, 2017 | Travel
The signs lie.
Standing at the trailhead to Balcony House at Mesa Verde in Colorado, I thought I knew what I was getting into. When I bought tour tickets for family and friends the day before, the signs at the visitor’s center warned me about the 100 plus stairs I’d have to climb down and the rickety 32’ wooden ladder I’d have to scale—not to mention the assorted smaller ladders and uneven steps carved into the rock that I’d have to ascend.
It’s no secret that I’m not comfortable on ladders. Heights I can handle as long as I’m not somehow suspended in mid-air. Tall buildings? No problem. Ski lifts? No way. Zip lines? See ya.
Truth be told, I’m not fond of stairs either. I figure if modern people are supposed to climb more than a single flight of stairs at a time, God would not have allowed the invention of escalators and elevators.
Unfortunately, over the years I’ve also evolved into more of a sedentary cool, can I see it on Netflix? person than the gung ho let’s shoot our own documentary on site and live off rehydrated mac and cheese for a week person I used to be.
Some might say I’m lazy. I think of it as growing old enough to afford air conditioning and appreciate room service.
I knew going into it that this trip was supposed to be a throwback to the good old days when our two families camped and hiked together and made s’mores around the campfire with the kids—although this year we were staying in a hotel with indoor plumbing, hot water, and real beds and the only kids with us were our two seventeen year old caboose babies.
Everyone was jazzed. We’d traveled a long way to see the ruins of the Pueblo cliff dwellings on Memorial Day weekend, the first weekend of the year that the tours opened. None of us had ever been here. And while the thought of hanging off a cliff and swinging in the breeze made my stomach queasy, there are some things you just have to suck up and do.
Like a good sport, I bought the tickets, swapped out my rubbah slippahs for tennis shoes and socks, and slathered on sunscreen.
The whole night before I psyched myself for the climb up the 32’ ladder. I had a plan—look straight ahead and keep climbing like a machine. Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t look up. Just do it.
I got this.
I think.
But then during the topside orientation the perky ranger holds up her hat. “And then near the end of the tour, you’ll crawl through the tunnel.”
What the what? Tunnel? Nobody said anything about a tunnel. There were no signs at the visitor’s center about crawling through a freaking tunnel.
“The tunnel is as wide as my hat. It’s 12 feet long and gets wider in the middle, then narrows back down to 18 inches. I want you to understand that once you put your foot on the tall ladder and start to ascend, there’s no going back. We all go up and out through the tunnel.”
Oh, baloney. No way the ADA would let that fly in a national park. There’s got to be a handicap by-pass or something.
A tall dude raises his hand. “Why not?”
Ranger Perky chirps, “It’s not safe to go backward. You have to go forward. There really is no going back.” She waves her hat around. “Don’t worry. Everyone here can fit. Trust me. Things squish—you just have to make them.”
Oh, no. Obviously, as an anorexic park ranger she’s never wrestled her lumps and bumps into spanx shapewear. Trust me. Things definitely do NOT compress or squish as much as everyone hopes. Doesn’t she know that in the olden days women wore corsets to get an 18 inch waist?
My corset days were looong in the rearview.
Fudge.
“Let’s go!” she says.
“I’m out,” says Tall Guy. “I’ll wait here.”
I open my mouth and turn to my husband.
He just looks at me and shrugs his shoulders.
I close my mouth and look around.
Seriously, who’s wider than me? I can’t be the only chunky monkey on this tour. That guy? Am I bigger than that guy? I mean around the middle. He looks one can shy of a keg. Anybody else? Not her. She’s smaller than me. Her, too. Him, him, her—all shopping the plus section, but smaller than me. Oh, no. Am I really the biggest person here? Did the ranger see me when she said everyone could fit through her hat? There’re a lot of people here, and I was standing way in the back. What happened to all the geriatric people I saw at the visitor’s center? Where are the folks with the walkers and canes? Why does everyone here look like a triathlete?
I bite my lip.
I say to my teen daughter, “I don’t think I can fit through an 18 inch hole.”
She pats my shoulder. “Mom, she said everyone could fit. Besides, that guy over there is bigger than you. Just go after him.”
I eye Keg Dude. Maybe he’s fatter, maybe not.
He’s oddly unconcerned.
Of course. He’s a dude.
He pulls a granola bar out of his pocket and starts munching.
He sees me watching him and waves. “The ranger said no food on the trail, so I’m eating this now. Don’t want to attract scavengers to the archeological site.”
Perhaps this info should make me feel better, but all it really does is make me afraid that he and I are both in denial. The whole tour is supposed to be an hour. Who carries snacks for an hour hike?
As we head down the trail, I whisper to my friend, “I’m not sure I can do this.” She’s known me from college, from before the kids and late night ice cream runs, when my skinny jeans were truly skinny and my waist was the same circumference as my current thigh.
She pats my arm. “We can do hard things.”
She’s thinking I’m afraid of the ladder and heights. Yes, we can do hard things, but not impossible things. Camels and eyes of needles come to mind.
We start down the 100 stairs. Desert heat radiates off the metal bolted into the side of the cliff. The stair edges are slick with wear, and I hold the rail in a sweaty death grip, certain that I’ll slip and bounce down the cliff.
On second thought, that would solve a lot of things. I consider loosening my grip, but then I imagine myself in a broken heap of blood and bones at the bottom and realize I’d probably chip my teeth on the way down and would have to go to the dentist.
I hate the dentist.
I hold a little tighter and creep down a little slower.
After lulling me with a gentle walk, eventually we turn a corner and come face to face with the 32’ ladder, the point of no return.
I glance at my friend. “We can do hard things,” she says again.
Yes, we can. We can bear children. We can sit through hours of piano recitals, soccer games, and debate tournaments and finish science fair projects at 3 am. We can cook Thanksgiving for 60 people and figure out what to get our MILs for Mother’s Day.
We tell our daughters to face their fears. I glance at mine with her long limbs and athlete’s grace. Will she ever listen to me again if I chicken out?
A small part of my brain recognizes the brilliance of this strategy. I’m so freaked out about the tunnel that climbing a ladder is no big deal.
Mostly.
At the top, there are a few more turns, and then a narrow passageway I squeeze through to get to the first big room. It’s dark. I can’t see with my sunglasses. I suck it in to get around the last bit.
I made it through the tunnel!
Woot!
Except it’s not the tunnel. Apparently, the tunnel is much smaller and farther along the trail.
The Ranger is nattering on about kivas and rain water, but all I’m thinking about is the evening news where the lead story tonight will be about the daring rescue attempt to pull a wide load out of a narrow shaft.
Rescuers knock down a 1200 year old wall. Pueblo people weep at another westerner’s desecration of their ancestral homeland.
Helicopters and cranes are involved.
Conservationists cry that the cost to historic antiquities is too high, so they advocate simply cementing me in place.
Environmentalists claim that leaving my body to rot will pollute the natural eco-system and cause an explosion in the rat and insect population. They advocate removing me in pieces.
Exercise gurus stand at the entrance and shout at me to do isometrics until the bacon grease and butter finally melts off my derriere and they slid me out like birthing the world’s biggest baby.
Stuck in the tunnel there is nowhere to pee. For days.
I’m encased in a tight tunnel, underground, buried in a grave.
In the dark with the spiders, worms, and rats.
And snakes.
This is much, much worse than hauling myself up a freakishly tall and rickety wooden ladder.
Don’t ask me what Ranger Perky says about the ruins or history or culture. I don’t hear anything except the sighs of everyone about to be inconvenienced by my chocolate-loving body. Small children are about to be traumatized. Their therapy bills alone are going to break the bank.
I’m puffing hard before we even get there.
At the tunnel, I realize it’s a bunny-sized hole in a man-made wall. My friend who weighs what she did in high school, nonchalantly stops, drops, and slithers in.
I feel my daughter press against my back.
I can’t see Keg Dude. Did he climb the ladder? Is he even here or did he wisely chicken out?
I don’t know.
Prescription sunglasses—on or off? Too dark to see with them, too blind without them. Screw it. I leave them on. No place to put them that won’t get squished. On my face is the safest bet.
I bend down and firmly banish a nightmare memory of the last time I tried on spanx.
With my friend in front, I figure I can grab her ankle and use pressure to communicate through Morse code that things are not right. I’m pretty sure three long squeezes, three short squeezes, and three long squeezes are S.O.S. Like Lassie, she’ll go for help—after all her family is still behind me, trapped on the other side of the tunnel from hell. She’ll be motivated to work hard to see them again.
Maybe they’ll get a helicopter ride. They’d like that.
I’m grateful my daughter’s behind me. She won’t be afraid to shove, pinch, or push whatever gets stuck. She won’t be dainty. She’s an uber fit jockette with a teenager’s natural abhorrence of both public humiliation and her parents.
If I were Catholic, I’d cross myself and say a final Hail Mary. Instead I console myself with the famous Hawaiian chant, no make A, no make A. No matter what. No. Make. A.
I wiggle through the first part and almost weep with joy to discover how open the middle section is.
Behind me my daughter shrieks. “Oh, gross! Somebody spit in the tunnel! Mom! Watch where you’re going!”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m wearing my sunglasses. I can’t see in the dark.”
“Did you crawl right through it? I bet you did!”
The only thought I have is to wonder how much spit reduces friction.
I see the light ahead. The opening at the end is narrower than what I’ve already slithered through. I try not to think of corks and bottles. I fight the urge to try to swing my legs around so I can go out feet first—there’s no way I can do that. I have a quick flash of being stuck and folded like a taco. It’s not pretty.
My knee grinds on a stone. I feel skin tear and blood wells. I twist my shoulders and finally go for the least graceful but quickest exit I can do.
As I plop out onto the ground, my friend looks at me with the oddest expression on her face. I stumble to my feet.
My daughter pops out behind me. “See, Mom, told you you’d fit.”
I’m breathing hard, much harder than I should for such a little thing.
Later, safely in the parking lot, my husband of thirty years hugs me. “That was rough. I didn’t want to say anything, but I know that hike hit all of your buttons.”
Oh, yeah. Heights. Climbing. Underground. Small spaces. Tight spaces. Darkness. Fear of public humiliation. Shame for a once athlete’s now lack of physical fitness.
Good times.
We can do hard things.
This is the part of a story where the heroine sees the error of her ways, knows she can accomplish great things, and decides to change her life by going on an exercise and diet program. The story ends with her successfully running a marathon in the fall and dedicating her life to rehabilitating adult couch potatoes and enforcing ADA rules at national parks.
But sadly, this isn’t fiction, at least not today.
Pass me the remote.
And the chips.
Turn up the AC. Mama needs a nap.
by Lehua Parker | May 16, 2017 | AAPI Books, Adult Fiction, Blog Tours, Guest Posts, & Interviews, Hawaiian Stories, Island Style, Lauele Fractured Folktales, Lauele Universe Stories, Pacific Literature
Nani’s Kiss
A Polynesians in Space Novella for
Fractured Beauty
eBook Boxed Set 99 Cents until June 1, 2017
Click on the Book Nerd graphic to enter a drawing for a free $25 Amazon gift card as our mahalo nui loa for supporting our series.
He opens his mouth, but doesn’t say what’s on the tip of his tongue. He pauses, then asks, “I know you think of me as a fishing hook. What’s your nattoo for Lolo?”
I hang my head. “Pua‘a,” I mutter.
He stops mid-rub. “No way. Your symbol for our sister is a pig? Where is it?”
I don’t want to answer, but Imi’s relentless.
“Tell me, Nani, or I’ll strip search you myself. You know I can.”
“Are you on my side or not?” I scowl.
“Where’s our sister’s nattoo, Nani?”
I sigh. “On my okole. Left cheek.”
~Nani’s Kiss, Fractured Beauty
Kakau is the Hawaiian tradition of tattoo. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of kakau throughout Polynesia and love to hear personal stories about the images people choose to wear on their skin. Challenged to write a series of stories about Polynesians in the future, I knew kakau had to be a part of it.
Long before Disney’s Moana and Maui’s dancing tattoo version of himself that functions in the story as his Jimmy Cricket conscience, I had the what if idea of nanobots as tattoo ink. What if tattoos weren’t permanent? What if nanobot technology could change tattoos? What if you had to learn how to control them? What if there was an app that controlled them and it was in the hands of a villain?
What if, what if, what if?
In Nani’s Kiss, a Fairy Tale Five novella in the boxed set Fractured Beauty, Nani’s secret thoughts are displayed on her body by her nattoos, nanobots that form images.
I gotta tell you, I’m loving this story device. It’s set to appear in other stories, including the second boxed set of novellas from the Fairy Tale Five, Fractured Slipper, available September 2017.
Nani’s Kiss in Fractured Beauty is available in eBook. On June 1, 2017, the price jumps to $4.99, so don’t miss out!
Four authors accepted a challenge from Tork Media Publishing: reimagine the classic western fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.
Angela Brimhall’s beast is a terrifying sea monster cursed by a scorned gypsy. He must risk all to save the strong-willed princess before losing his last chance at love and redemption, becoming forever damned to the briny deep.
Lehua Parker’s Nani is trapped by Indian and Hawaiian traditions and a fiancé locked in stasis in a medi-mod. Cultures and expectations collide in this sci-fi futuristic world where nano-bot tattoos and dreams reveal the secret of Nani’s heart.
Angela Corbett’s Ledger is determined to find out more about the mysterious woman who saved him from certain death and uncover the secrets of Withering Woods, but some beasts are better left caged.
Adrienne Monson’s Arabella rushes to an enchanted castle to pay her father’s debt, but is met with a burly beast with a mysterious past. It’s a howling paranormal regency romp that will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime.
Kino and the King by Jen Angeli is a middle grade adventure quest set in Hawaii. Cutting to the chase, we need more stories like this one where island kids see themselves as the heroes and Hawaiian culture as something both amazing and ordinary, rather than sensationally exotic.