What does it take to change your story? SMART goals, and maybe T-rex tape.
Sometimes the really simple stuff is the hardest to get my hard head around… How is it, for example, that I can have a goal and know what it is and face no real impediments—yet it doesn’t materialize? When there’s not some external obstacle, why don’t I get that goal accomplished?
Well, it all comes down to ME, doesn’t it? But knowing that doesn’t magically move my goals to the “achieved” column—I still need to take action or make changes.
I was in a group therapy session last night where we were talking about changes. In this Season of Resolutions, it’s an apt topic. I tend to avoid “resolutions” with almost superstitious fervor, and even the list I made the other day was composed quickly and carelessly, comprised of things I’d already intended to be doing…
What’s on the horizon for 2017? I’m going to learn fly-fishing and rapelling, courtesy of my husband. I’m going to read a lot (as always). I’m going to keep writing, now that I’ve started again. I’m going to do some scuba diving in Idaho lakes. I’m going to enjoy hundreds of miles more on the motorcycle. I’m going to pray, and live Sober. I’m going to get new tattoos. I’m going to grin a lot.
Those hardly count as resolutions, do they? Resolutions are supposed to be game-changers, not stuff I already planned and am sure of crossing off. I don’t “do” resolutions… And yet, here I am thinking of the fresh calendar, the fresh journal I just started, the fresh opportunity to say, “THIS year I”…)
more lines on the face, more gray in the hair, more LIFE lived!
The New-Year mark is a time for lists, even for people who aren’t as obsessed with them as I am. In the spirit of “contained chaos” (see yesterday’s list and my underwear drawer) this is a rather random list of “Things About 2016,” as I experienced it… It’s not a comprehensive list of all the “big things” that happened, and it’s not a recap of my Facebook Timeline—it’s just things that stand out about the year as a whole… Continue reading “Things About My 2016 (List#6)”→
Toots is the teddy bear I’ve had since I was a year old. Well, we’ve always called him a teddy bear, though his actual shape is sort of open to interpretation…
He’s had several face-lifts in that time (in fact, he had a whole “body-lift” a couple years ago after a dog got to him and left only his head and one arm… Thank goodness my mother is an expert seamstress, and dedicated to the cause of beloved bears!)…
Toots has been with me on a lot of travels. When I was ten, my family drove around Europe for six months and eighteen countries (including behind the Iron Curtain, and through countries that don’t exist on today’s maps)—Toots was with me for the whole trip. He has earned a lot of passport-stamps.
He’s been present for my adult milestones too. Yes, that’s a photo of me with Toots on my [first] wedding-day. He has comforted me in hospitals and rehab (and I missed him in jail)…
In short, Toots has been a fixed point through the journey of my life… although until this year, he has often been relegated to closet-shelves while I was married.
Yup, until this year. My hubby, Jon, however, celebrates the kid in me (probably recognizes it because his own is near the surface!) and he has brought Toots back out of the closet with a flourish.
Salmon River, Idaho (Toots in the saddlebag!)
We started with a motorcycle trip to see my parents over Memorial Weekend, Toots riding along for 600 miles in a saddlebag. And when we stopped to visit my grandma for what would turn out to be the last time, I wasn’t sure she recognized me… but she definitely knew Toots! I was glad we’d brought him along.
Last summer Jon & I took our first vacation together, a camping road-trip to the Oregon Coast… and Jon not only made sure that Toots came along, he made a game of posing with him in as many places as we could think of. Toots cooked biscuits and gravy over our camp stove. Toots flew a kite on the beach. Toots enjoyed a bowl of clam chowder. Toots climbed the lighthouse tower… Continue reading “Travels with Toots”→
Yesterday my dad should have turned seventy. He passed away this year on my birthday, so this weekend we’ve been missing him on his.
daddy-daughter canoe trip, Northern Idaho 1987
Ironically, I could still practice my favorite joke-ritual, which was not to call my dad (whose depth of phone-phobia was rivaled only by my sister’s and my own) on his birthday. I even found him a card one year that offered a “no-call” option as a birthday present. (Actually, I usually did call anyway—and this week I’m glad of that.)
One of the horrible ironies of memorial services is the fact that grieving people are expected (worse: expect themselves) to brilliantly and eruditely sum up LOVE, as it applies to a suddenly-missing person, at a point in time when their hearts are most broken and their brains are most fried. In such a case, the best you can hope for is that God will get some of the right words into your mouth (or out of your pen), and that the other people missing him will be able to fill in the rest through their love and memories.
The single story I most wanted to share about my dad didn’t seem appropriate for either the obituary I wrote nor the eulogy at his service. Somehow, alcoholism (in either the speaker or the deceased) doesn’t seem like a welcome subject in those venues… But this story says SO much about my dad, and here’s a place where I can tell it. Continue reading “Addendum to a Eulogy”→
leaning on my original “Scubaru”—at northern Idaho’s Lake Pend Orielle,1993
Dad took me car-shopping my Senior year of high school, explaining that although he’d drive the new car for a while, it was intended eventually for my use. I pictured myself in a Jeep Cherokee: four-wheel-drive, room in the back for dive gear and camping kit, a rack on top for my parents’ old orange canoe, and plenty of under-carriage clearance for the treacherous Forest-Service roads I enjoyed exploring. Instead of a Jeep, though, we drove away in a 1990 Subaru Loyale wagon—less expensive (even new), and with the same 4WD, clearance, and room in the back for all the stuff I imagined packing for my upcoming Life Adventures.
As planned, my dad drove the wagon for a couple years, periodically taking me to an empty lot at the edge of town for lessons in driving the stick-shift. And eventually—once I’d learned not to lurch around the lot or assassinate the engine—he turned over the keys.
Set for Adventure, 1996
I’d thought myself clever to come up with “SCUBARU” as a personalized plate—but someone else had beat me to it! With sailing, scuba-diving, and canoeing in mind, I settled on WTRLOGD for the plates… Still, I come from a family that names cars, and this one would always be “Scubaru” to me.
I loaded her up at various times with Forest Service maps, tent and camp-stove, hiking boots, canoe paddles, picnic blanket, books and camera and journal… And over the years my trusty vehicle & I ventured forth to “fill in” the Idaho atlas with tracks of where-we’d-been. A five-foot map of the state hung on my wall, with all my roaming & rambles marked in highlighter pen—and at every opportunity I interspersed those outings with forays to the Pacific coast.
Scubaru proved her worth over and over again. In a blinding snowstorm atop Washington’s Snoqualmie pass, when most of the cars on the road were either pulled over or slid onto the shoulders, I put on my chains and kept right on going. An ice storm in Oregon’s Colombia Gorge encased trees, signs, and roadway in inches of solid ice, but Scubaru crept cautiously all the way to Portland, accompanied by the explosive acoustics of bursting trees alongside the road.
Camping “off-road” in the Sawtooth National Forest, 1998
After one particularly hairy drive in the Sawtooths (a pot-holed and washed-out dirt road, no wider than the car and without turn-outs for passing—just a sheer drop, inches from the passenger tires) I spotted a warning sign: “NO passenger vehicles.” (Oops. If there were a companion sign at the other end of the road where I started, I’d missed it!) I had to peel my fingers off the steering wheel to pat Scubaru’s dashboard and congratulate her with a heartfelt “Good girl!”
Of course, even four-wheel-drive isn’t foolproof. (Though Dad also taught me not to BE a fool; specifically, not to drive into tricky conditions with the 4WD already engaged—because if you get stuck when you’re in 4WD, you’re really stuck!) Nevertheless, I had to dig her out of a couple spots. I used a snowshoe to scoop a back tire out of a snowbank in the Boise National Forest, and in the Salmon-Challis Forest put my grandpa’s collapsible Army shovel to use, extracting her from a mire of mud where a beaver dam had flooded the road…
Washington Coast “beach highway,” 1997
When a downpour threatened a planned picnic along the Snake River, I popped open the tailgate and happily set my spread in the back of the car. Sheltered by the overhanging door, I savored my strawberries & brie to the soundtrack of raindrops pelting the roof. On a couple occasions, with lightning storms too close for comfort in an exposed tent, I folded down the back seats and stretched out to sleep.
On the shore of Big Trinity Lake, I woke one morning to drifts of snow piled against my tent-corners, and had to chip my solid-frozen bacon from the cooler with a hatchet… but Scubaru scooted me safely back down the mountain, heater blasting.
Along the Washington Coast where stretches of beach serve as legally designated “highway,” I misjudged the incoming tide and dashed the last leg with waves licking the tires and wipers warding off wads of sea-foam blowing against the glass. Scubaru served staunchly through many a scrape and adventure.
With a little love and care, a Subaru will run forEVER. I drove that one for close to twenty years, and I might still be driving her… But when I departed my first marriage, I didn’t stop to quibble about any of the community-property stuff. Not long after I moved out, the wagon was also absent from her accustomed spot in front of my ex’s house… I never inquired about her fate.
2014: “Kana Girl’s Hawai’ian BBQ” license-plate holder on the NEW (old) Scubaru
Fast forward a few years… My husband started making noises this summer about the red 1989 Subaru Loyale parked in front of our neighbor’s house: I wonder if they’d consider selling it. I countered with “practical” negatives—we work together and don’t need a second car, they’d have posted a sign if they wanted to sell… But Keoni recognized what I hadn’t acknowledged even to myself: my affectionate nostalgia for that whacky wandering wagon. In no time at all he had negotiated a sale-price, payable primarily in the form of a sizable certificate to our restaurant.
20-odd years later: the SCUBARU plates!
Next thing I knew, I was slipping into the driver’s seat of a car that felt as familiar and comfortable as a favorite old pair of jeans.
Keoni and our son Kapena are plotting “improvements” to the engine and paint and upholstery… Fixing her up will be a fun family project, but I’m content already. I’m “back” in my very first car, and behind her wheel I’ve come full circle. This time with the SCUBARU plates!
Once Upon a Time… Kana & Keoni owned a Hawai’ian barbecue restaurant.
For more than a year, Kana Girl’s Hawai’ian BBQ held UrbanSpoon’s #1 spot for “Best BBQ restaurant” in the Treasure Valley (home to one-third of Idaho’s population)…. And we had a kick-ass time of it, building a unique atmosphere with our combined knowledge of Hawai’ian culture and Keoni’s cooking—the authentic family recipes he learned from his Tutu Pa (grandfather) when he was a small kid. The word our guests most often used to describe Keoni’s food (a little ironic in view of our own alcoholic/addict backgrounds) was: ADDICTIVE. We were closed Sundays & Mondays, which meant we’d have an onslaught of regular customers every Tuesday, jonesing for a “fix” because they’d had to go two days without his food. No joke.
A photo featured in “Boise Weekly” with a rave review of our restaurant… Keoni & me displaying a couple “Plate Lunches”…
When we first opened the restaurant, we hadn’t realized what an abundant number of Hawai’ians and Pacific Islanders lived in this area, but word quickly spread among the “Local” community (“Local” being a word Hawai’ians use to refer to other Islanders, regardless of their current location) and we quickly had a flood of folks looking to test us to see if Keoni’s food were the “real thing.” He passed the authenticity test, hands down—his “plate lunch” (a to-go container with sticky rice, mac salad, and favorite Island entrees) is precisely what the Local folks remember from back home. Word-of-Mouth served us well; most months we didn’t spend a dime on advertising—but business was booming.
The two of us ran the place by ourselves–the original “Mom & Pop” approach—so we had the pleasure of getting to know our many Regulars, and after a while we couldn’t go anywhere in town without being pounced on and identified as “the Hawai’ian BBQ people.” No doubt it’s the closest we’ll ever come to experiencing “celebrity” status. (Keoni follows the Hawai’ian custom of addressing everyone as “Bruddah” or “Sistah”–a personable habit that came in handy in the occasional encounter when we were unable to put names to the faces of people who obviously recognized US…)
Wally & Esther—a friendship that began with “Howzit”… Enjoying Lau Lau, an ULTRA-traditional Hawai’ian dish
It led to some interesting social dynamics at times… During our first week of business a gentleman came in the front door and I greeted him with “Howzit“–the Island version of “Hey, how’s it going?” He literally stopped dead in his tracks and repeated the word with a question mark. He looked “Local” to me, but I expanded with an explanation: “Howzit–How’s it going?” He looked askance at my haole (white!) self and retorted, “I know Howzit. How do you know Howzit?” I explained that I went to school on the Big Island, and that I’m married to a Hawai’ian (the cook)—and once he tasted (or should I say tested) his first Plate Lunch order, he was hooked. In fact, he and his wife became some of our closest friends in the years that followed.
Keoni “playing ukelele” on a taro root
And then there were my Friday-morning rounds to the Asian markets in town… We made our fries from the taro root (the Hawai’ian staple from which they make poi)–but taro is understandably difficult to come by in Idaho. All the Asian markets got their produce shipments on Friday mornings, which meant that every Friday the markets would be swamped with lovely ladies who came up to my shoulder… And every Friday I made the rounds of all those markets, buying up their taro root. I’m not sure what the Chinese words would be for “tattooed white lady who buys the taro,” but chances are that I’d recognize the phrase if I ever heard it again… The taro fries were a hit—and we noticed that although people occasionally asked if we had poi, very few people actually asked for it. Let’s just say that poi is an acquired taste.
Keoni on a “charm walk,” sharing a shaka with a connoisseur of the keiki (kids’) menu
Whenever Keoni had a few minutes of down-time in the kitchen, he’d wend his way through the dining room (I called it his “Charm Walk”) speaking Hawai’ian Pidgin with the Local folks and “talking story” with other diners. (Pidgin is a recognized language in the Islands, so Keoni was considered a Bilingual Officer when he worked in the prisons there…) He also sang in the kitchen all day long–he’s got a gorgeous tenor voice and knows all the classic Hawai’ian songs by heart… His Tutu Pa was a musician, and taught Keoni to sing as well as to cook–and also to blend the things he’s passionate about.
Piko (one of our regulars) kicking back for some kanikapila after a meal
Our restaurant was the kind of place where diners (who didn’t know each other) would chat among tables, where people would bring ukeleles and indulge in an impromptu kanikapila (“jam session”) when they finished eating, where a couple might get up and dance in the middle of the floor to one of Keoni’s solos, where regular customers would drop in to say Aloha and give us a hug even when they weren’t there to eat, where people brought in all kinds of Hawai’ian mementos until our decor was a wonderfully collaborative clutter, where we could get to know people’s regular requests and personalize their orders (that’s also how we ended up with Vegetarian and Gluten-Free menus), where people could slow down from the hectic pace of their lives and enjoy a mini-vacation in our “ISLAND TIME zone” (as the sign above the door proclaimed)… We liked to think of it as an embassy of sorts—a few hundred square feet of Hawai’ian soil in the middle of Idaho.
We loved being able to work together—we were happy to go to work together every morning, and we were happy to go home together every evening. We were only half joking when we’d say that Keoni was afraid of the cash register and I was afraid of the smoker—but together we made a Most Excellent Team. And Keoni liked to boast that he got “paid in kisses and tattoos.” Whenever a diner told me I should give the cook a raise, I’d lay a big ol’ smooch on him!
evidently this chick doesn’t look like a business owner…
We regularly ran up against sexist stereotypes when dealing with salespeople and the like; very few people made their first approach with the idea that I might be the “businessperson” of the operation. One salesman came in while Keoni was out picking up supplies, and insisted on sitting and waiting until my husband returned, rather than talking to me. When Keoni came back half an hour later, you can imagine the guy’s chagrin when Keoni told him, “You’ll have to talk to Kana Girl about that. She’s the owner—I just cook.” Needless to say, this guy had already lost any chance of making a sale. Other people would ask me if they could talk to the owner (never mind my apron with “Kana” across the front, and the “Kana Girl’s” name across the front door)—and one fellow went so far as to ask me if I knew who the owner was. (Surely it couldn’t be the tattooed chick in the miniskirt!)
Keoni at the restaurant with the youngest 4 of our 7 kids: Christian, Kapena, Elena Grace, & Kawika
We were also both very happy about NOT having to work for anybody else. It was one of our favorite jokes, whenever anyone asked if we could make a substitution or fulfill a special request—Keoni would answer, “Well, I’ll have to check with Corporate…” Then he’d turn to me with the question: “So what do you think, Babe?” (We also joked that if I were “Corporate,” that made Keoni my “Corporate Man-date”…) We loved being able to do things the way WE thought they should be done, and we loved being able to involve our keikis (kids) in the family business.
Looking back now… Opening that restaurant when we did looks in retrospect like a totally harebrained idea. We were deep in a recession and eateries were closing left and right. Neither of us had ever owned a business, we’d only known each other for half a year, and only been Sober for that same half-year. Launching a restaurant just then was a crazy-ass thing to do. And we had a lot to learn! But all in all, it went beautifully. In fact, in some ways it was an advantage to be new to the restaurant business, because we weren’t hidebound by “The Way Things Are Done.” (Take the zero-dollar advertising budget, for example…) Although I also have to say that there were plenty of other things, learned along the way, that we would definitely handle differently if we ever had a “do-over.”
Keoni with another Keoni, who gave us his old license plate to hang on the wall
In the end, we threw our beautiful restaurant away. We didn’t lose it; we threw it away. After a year and a half of booming business, we drank again. In a mere matter of weeks, we threw away absolutely everything that was important to our Sober Selves. Custody of our kids, our restaurant, our house, our car, and almost our marriage. (People regularly ask us if we ever fight—a question usually accompanied by the observation that we clearly have a lot of fun together. The honest answer is that we don’t argue… when we’re Sober. When we drank, we didn’t even like each other.)
Keoni cooking on his smoker—in sunshine, rain, sleet, or snow… And always in shorts! Crazy Hawai’ian.
That was a little more than two years ago. If we could take back the hurt we caused to the people who love us—particularly our kids and our parents—we’d do it in a heartbeat. But at the same time… There are a lot of things about our journey of the last couple years that we wouldn’t want to trade. (In fact, that’s probably a whole post in its own right.) Bottom line, though: despite the financial struggles and various challenges of the last 27 months, we’re in a better place now than we’ve ever been—spiritually, emotionally, in terms of our Sobriety and our family relationships… in every way, actually, except financially.
And then… An unexpected blessing fell into our laps. Keoni had a retirement account from his career in Corrections; we’d been trying to avoid tapping into that resource, but we’d been falling behind on our rent, and he had a couple surgeries to get through (last week’s spine surgery, and another knee replacement coming up) before he could get back to working… So we finally decided we’d better go ahead and cash out his retirement. We thought it would be just enough to catch up on our rent and pay ahead a few months while we figured out “what next”… But when the check arrived, it turned out to be quite a lot more than we’d expected. In fact…
a wakeboard made for us (and autographed) by one of our regular customers
It turned out to be enough to re-open our restaurant. Seriously, how often in life do we actually get a “do-over”? Well, we just got handed one. To quote one of our favorite A.A. guys: “How cool is THAT?!”
Things have been falling into place the way only God’s plans do. (One of the things we’ve learned in Sobriety is that when we’re working too hard to try and make something happen, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate whether “our plan” is really the best thing to be doing. Not surprisingly, God’s ideas are better than ours.)
“Coming Soon!”
We found the perfect location almost immediately. It’s ideally situated from a business perspective, and it’s right next door to Elena Grace’s school and within walking distance of Christian’s junior high. There’s even a private space upstairs that we can use as a “family room” when the younger kids are there with us.
This time around we also have the advantage of some eager extra hands within the family. Our teenage son Kapena has already been working full-time between two jobs, and he can’t wait to quit those jobs to work with us. Even Christian is gung-ho about being part of the venture. And we have the chance this time to put into practice all the things we learned the “hard way” the last time around. I can’t even begin to describe how excited we are.
We’re set to open April 13 (our lucky number 13!), giving the landlord time to do some remodeling and updating of the building, and giving us time to “remodel” the cook (those surgeries I mentioned). The restaurant website is still under construction, but I do have the menus posted: www.KanaGirlBBQ.com. And so… The next adventure begins! Stay tuned…
A Princess Robe with Ferret Accents: Elena Grace, just out of the tub & wearing my robe
I used to think that my sister and I had the best-ever outlet for playing with our bath toys. We grew up in an Idaho farm-town that practiced irrigation-watering for the lawns in town, so our front yard was flooded in several inches of water for a couple evenings every week.
I still have memories (and I’m sure my mom has photos) of the two of us prancing around the flooded grass just before bedtime, lifting the hems of our nightgowns above the water and pushing around all the toy boats that usually lived in the bathroom-drawer by the tub. Those were some great summer evenings.
I think, though, that my son has us beat when it comes to bath toys, thanks to the discovery that ferrets (not unlike kids!) require bathing. On his last weekend with us, he wore his swim trunks in the tub so I could give him another scalp scrub, and then I brought out Niele the ferret for her first shampoo in our household.
best bath toy ever: a FERRET
I confess I braced myself for a ruckus (imagining what would happen, for example, if we tried to bathe our CAT), but evidently ferrets don’t have an aversion to water. At least this one doesn’t!
Christian and Niele happily played in the tub for a good half-hour before I scooped her out to dry her off. I had the bright idea of using the “low” setting on my hairdryer so she wouldn’t get chilled, so I can report that this ferret DOES have an aversion to the hair dryer. Lesson learned—I did the best I could with our newly-designated “ferret towel”…
On the topic of “wildlife sightings” (moving now to wildlife living OUTside our home), our country neighborhood been visited in the last couple weeks by:
Christian wearing a (clean!) fur hat
A skunk, which waddled right up on the porch with me one afternoon while I was reading…
A flock of wild turkeys. which had us thinking about the bow-hunting classes in which Christian has expressed an interest, and in which I’d like to join him… He took a “Hunter Education” class this fall–and has the card (and the shot-up target!) to prove it. Keoni paid him the compliment of remarking that he “shoots like his mom.” Maybe next Thanksgiving we’ll snag our own turkey for the table… We wake every morning to the sound of shots from nearby duck-hunters (there’s a duck-blind in the cow pasture right across the country-road from our place), so turkey-hunting doesn’t seem too fantastic.
A raccoon, which (after checking online to see how raccoons and chickens get along) had me checking the chicken-house at obsessive intervals for an entire night. Our “girls” have been providing us with four or five eggs every day, and our Thanksgiving table included both Yorkshire Pudding and Pumpkin Pie made with our own big, brown eggs.
a day’s eggs from our chickens… (bowl made by Elena Grace from salt dough)
A red fox (ditto the above reaction regarding the chicken-house)
Barn owls (not unusual at all here, but meriting a place in the list purely because of my affinity for my “totem”)
A beaver, hanging out in the lake at the State Park right by our home, and…
A mountain lion, which we are happy not to have encountered for ourselves! It has been hanging around the river for a number of weeks, and sighted in numerous locations nearby, but hasn’t made a house-call. As much as I enjoy living out of town and encountering some of Idaho’s wildlife up close and personal, I’m happy to take a pass on this one.
I do love Idaho. AND I’m still enjoying Keoni’s pumpkin pie, so I’ll leave you with his new recipe (adjusted for the “regular” ingredients we didn’t have on hand, and for how he “tastes things in his head”—the mark of a Born Cook)…
Keoni’s pumpkin pie
1~1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
3 tsp Chinese five-spice (that’s one of his “tasted-it-in-my-head” additions)
5 large eggs (from OUR chickens, of course!)
1~3/4 pounds (equivalent to one large can) pureed baked pumpkin (from our neighbor’s garden!)
2 cans coconut milk (most recipes call for evaporated milk; we didn’t have any on hand, but—because of our habits of Hawai’ian cooking—we did have coconut milk)
2 pie crusts (of course, he makes his own from scratch)
Beat the eggs, mix in the dry ingredients and pumpkin, slowly stir in the milk, and pour the mixture into the pie crusts. Bake for the first fifteen minutes at 425, then another forty-five minutes at 350. He sprinkled the top with shredded coconut and a dollop of sour cream (I’ve always used whipped cream, but my hubby’s taste-it-in-his-head instinct never ceases to surprise me—pleasantly!) Speaking as a pumpkin pie aficionado (aficionada?), this is the BEST I’ve ever enjoyed!
Kana's Chronicles 