It pains me to publicly reveal my life story for two reasons:
1. I can no longer pick and choose which parts to leave out in accordance with my audience. I can’t simultaneously stay true to myself while guarding myself and filtering what I say. I must divulge the darkest secrets.
2. I don’t want to dishonor my mother or father or seem ungrateful. I love everyone in this story; they helped make me who I am today.
It would take 100 blogs to say everything, so these are the hard-hitting points in the synopsis of my child years:
Mother and father were raised in Hawaii.
Brother, Justin, was born in Hawaii on 1/19/1990 (the reason I love #’s).
I was born in Washington on 1/17/1992.
Parents divorced when I was 9 months old.
From the stories I hear, there is a lot of yelling, abandonment, sadness, and some violence on both sides at this time.
Dad gets custody.
Dad and Omi (his mom) move us back home to Hawai’i.
Dad raises us on his own.
He reads parenting books; proves to be a loving, patient, caring father.
Alcoholism is his only downfall. (Which I don’t blame him for either, he had a rough childhood that must have been hard to process and cope. Raised by a neglectful, sometimes violent self made millionaire mother who made it out of Germany before the wall went up; her parents were affiliated w/Nazi regime if that tells you anything. She had 7 husbands, a ton of diff careers, and now has Alzheimers. A book should be written on her life.)
We were poor, “American poor”: welfare, WIC, foodstamps, clothes drives, food drives, etc. (Nothing like the poor I’m about to experience around the world.)
Between the three of us we shared one or two towels that always seemed to be dirty between home and beach.
I spent a lot of time in my brothers hand-me-down clothes.
I have cooked, done laundry, and cleaned after the 3 of us since I can remember.
I remember the way I hated standing on that stool at the sink when water would drip down my arms because I was too short to reach the dirty dishes. I used the same stool to cook breakfast on the stove and jump up on the washing machine to fill it.
Life circumstances put me in the position of “mother” at a young age.
I remember my dad blasting the radio, because it was time for all of us to clean the house together, because “the people” were coming, I later realized those were CPS.
I remember waking up, getting ourselves ready, walking to school w/Justin, eating free breakfast at school, free lunch, then walking home w/Justin, trying to wake dad up after school-he’d grumble and ask us not to wake him, Justin and I do our own thing, have a few solidly sober hours with him before he’d start drinking around 4pm.
Dad works hard as a handyman and on days he has work, he takes me with him and I get to help him paint, work with tools, or mow. Its liberating.
We move every year or two, I can remember the routine by heart: come home from school see the letter stamped “EVICTED” on the door and call my current best friend to say goodbye, I’m moving again.
We had several roommates to help us pay the high price of Honolulu rent. (They were usually my dad’s friends or someone he found in the newspaper. They were always guys and it was kind of like a bachelor pad with two kids; which was fun for us, because we’d stay up late and watch Rated R movies.)
This is the routine from K-8th.
In the midst of all this, I fall in love with every animal I can find and take home. My love for the mountains and ocean grows as well.
We visit mom in Washington every other summer; she usually has a different house in a different city.
She overfeeds us, sometimes snaps, spoils us, and sends us back to Hawai’i.
We boogie board, play sand volleyball, and camp almost every weekend with our Bellows Beach ohana (Dad’s HS friends and their keiki.)
We move to the other side of the island around 6th grade- from Hawaii Kai to Aiea.
Sometimes life is wonderful and Hawai’i is one of the most beautiful and spiritual places in the world, but Justin, Dad, and I are not happy in Aiea.
We rarely leave the house, schools are rougher, we face a more dangerous walk to school, mild prejudice, Dad is living on the couch (because CPS requires Justin and I to each have our own rooms and we still need a roommate to help pay rent.)
We’re ready to leave this stress…to leave Hawai’i.
We sit down at the computer and pick a spot on the map together- so we decide we should move to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (Omi always spoke of this glorious land-lol if you’ve seen CDA) but no HS’s in Idaho have ROTC programs. ROTC changed Justin’s life, so decide to move 20 min west to Spokane, Washington.
Next we hit rock bottom; our lease is up in Aiea and we don’t have enough $ to move to the mainland.
We move to a family friends house…well, not their house…their yard.
I live on a mattress on the back porch area (the mosquitos are fierce and I cope by listening to Green Day’s Nimrod CD on repeat) and Justin, Dad, and our cat Marina live in a 4 person tent in the backyard.
Dad’s out of work and we’re out of school for a couple months. The days were long and hot and we didn’t know if we’d get enough money to move to the mainland.
Dad started drinking more and the family friend we were staying with threatened to call my mom and have us move with her. It’s a new low.
On the brink of failure, an uncle gave my Dad money to ship our car overseas and my dad somehow made it work.
We made it! We were home free to “the good life.”
Or so we thought…
I’m leaving out a million details that comprise my childhood and from where you’re sitting, it probably looks 110% different. I write this in hopes that in knowing how God has watched over me and turned me into who I am today will inspire others and reflect how beautiful and redemptive God’s heart really is. He makes all things work together for His good.
See my next blog Kanaka Makua Days for part two of my story. It will encompass my teenage and adult years and how God helped me progress.
