A Study in Contrasts: Hawaii

A Study in Contrasts

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
(Christina Rossetti)

Miss Conley was older than God, and I’m pretty sure God did as Miss Conley said. So when Miss C. demanded that the congregation of our tiny Methodist church in the Shawnee Hills learn this haunting, bittersweet poem/hymn, we did. The grown up me is eternally grateful.

You thought I was off on yet another blathering treatise on the glory of poetry, but this one is about finding summer in the middle of the bleak midwinter. We have just returned from a trip to Hawaii. It was fascinating, and beautiful, and full of contradictions.

Tourism is an odd thing to base an entire economy on, but that seems to be the case, at least on Oahu, where we were (Waikiki Beach). We toured the North Shore, home of the big waves Hawaii is so famous for, with an angry young man who resented the intrusion even while he valued the job (and the tips). His monologue was interesting, equal parts local lore, history, and bullshit. But we saw a sea turtle and several endangered birds, coconut palms and tilapia ponds, Jimmy Buffet’s house and the Dole “plantation”. I loved the banyan trees with their Tarzan vines to swing on, and was disappointed to learn they aren’t native. Neither are the amazing rainbow bark eucalyptus trees. And neither are pineapples, according to our not-too-trustworthy angry young man. The “plantation” was a few fields and a maze and a huge tourist-trap gift shop. Inside you could buy just about any sort of stupid island-flavored piece of junk imaginable. Yep, good ol’ Yankee capitalism at its finest: Buy your crappy little souvenirs here in Hawaii, but we’ll grow those pineapples to garnish your $12 Mai Tai somewhere where labor is cheaper, somewhere where the prevailing wage is somewhat less than starvation level. That $12 Mai Tai seems somehow symbolic. Though we had a wonderful time, it felt like the “real” Hawaii has been smashed under the big handmade shoes of powerful white men.

We spent most of our time on the beach, within easy walking distance of our hotel, indulging—gorging—ourselves on the sensual feast the ocean offers. Nothing on God’s green earth smells or feels or tastes or sounds or looks like the sea. There is healing there, and power. Grace. Life.

The shelters in the parks along the beach are made from intertwining trees that completely engulf metal supports, for a protective cover that keeps rain and sun out. One particular shelter seemed to house a colony of happy homeless folks who smoked funny Hawaiian cigarettes by day and made music together by night. We learned about Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s “Ambassador of Aloha” who won some Michael Phelps-like number of Olympic medals over a career that spanned most of his life. He is also credited with bringing surfing to Hollywood. But his best accomplishment in our estimation was the restaurant that bears his name. The breakfast buffet at Duke’s was a highlight of our trip. We ate like Olympians, or at least like the wild pigs that roam Hawaii’s countryside.

I didn’t actually see any wild pigs, but I spotted several whales on the horizon as I walked toward the base of Diamond Head. I also saw a couple of mongooses (remember Rikki Tikki Tavi?), some odd looking bird with a bright red head, several wild chickens, and a lighthouse that has been lit for several hundred years.

The Pearl Harbor memorial, despite distracting construction, remains a moving tribute to the 2400 sailors and civilians who died in the attack on December 7, 1941. As the daughter of a World War II veteran and career sailor, I found this part of our trip very meaningful. Daddy wasn’t at Pearl, but only because he got lucky. So many were not. One display in particular struck me. It was the uniform and personal effects of one of the sailors killed there. His uniform, dress blues. His watch. His wife’s picture, a lovely, lively brunette. A high school diploma. He was 20. Except for a few bars, his uniform was identical to the one Daddy was buried in last year. The U.S.S. Arizona, hit broadside, suffered the most damage, and the remains of the battleship still ooze oil on the surface of the calm harbor. The wall where the names of the dead are recorded is a sobering reminder of the hell brought on by power-hungry nations at war.

Hawaii is the most remote place on earth, with its nearest neighbor island 2000 miles away, and the nearest land mass 2400 miles off. So how in the world did the original settlers get there? With canoes. That’s right, these guys ROWED to Hawaii, in about 900 A.D. And I think I’m hot stuff when I “row” three sets of ten on the rowing machine at the gym?

Waikiki offers great people-watching, too, from the homeless hippies to the Speedos to the designer-clad dames. I was astonished at the number of young families there—how on earth can these people afford Hawaii?? And I was equally astonished at the middle-aged women whose multiple cosmetic surgeries rendered them improbably, unnaturally “youthful”. I’ll keep my lines and jiggles.

It’s 5 degrees outside tonight. Bleak midwinter, for sure. But we’ll always have Waikiki.

Navel Gazing

Permit me a bit of navel-gazing?

Let me set the stage, first. From Tennessee Williams’ introduction to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955):

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.

I once saw a group of little girls on a Mississippi sidewalk, all dolled up in their mothers’ and sisters’ castoff finery, old raggedy ball gowns and plumed hats and high-heeled slippers, enacting a meeting of ladies in a parlor with a perfect mimicry of polite Southern gush and simper. But one child was not satisfied with the attention paid her enraptured performance by the others, they were too involved in their own performances to suit her, so she stretched out her skinny arms and threw back her skinny neck and shrieked to the deaf heavens and her equally oblivious playmates, “Look at me, look at me, look at me!”

And then her mother’s high-heeled slippers threw her off balance and she fell to the sidewalk in a great howling tangle of soiled white satin and torn pink net, and still nobody looked at her.

I wonder if she is not, now, a Southern writer.

I wonder if she is not, now, a misplaced Southerner living in Indiana.

The other night, my husband and I watched He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), a sweet but forgettable romantic comedy—the title says it all. Like the little girl in Williams’ anecdote, like Gigi in the movie, I tend to scream for attention. Sometimes I win a friend, but more often I “[fall] to the sidewalk in a great howling tangle”. I’ve chased after some characters in my time.

In second grade, I badgered Lisa*, voted “Most Popular”, until she finally relented and let me come home with her after school. I heard her whisper to someone on the bus that I had invited myself, that she didn’t want me to come. True enough, but it still stung. (Can you believe we actually voted for our favorite boy and girl classmates? And not only that, but dear old Mrs. Day tallied the votes ON THE BOARD, by name! I got zero votes.)

In high school, there was Emily, a lissome blond with perfectly straight hair, the kind we all strove for in the 1970s. She was fun and smart and a bit rebellious, creative and thoughtful and well-read. We rode horses and talked books, dreamed our weddings and careers and cars, ate cream horns and cookie dough. I did pretty much whatever she told me, and she enjoyed my company—unless someone more interesting was available. I was a perfect foil for Emily—pretty enough, but not likely to be noticed first; smart enough, but painfully easy to make fun of; available always and game for whatever she wanted from me. One summer we went to camp together, and she ignored me from the first day on. After camp ended, she acted the same as always, claiming that she hadn’t been ignoring me, merely enjoying new friends, knowing I’d be there when camp ended. I basked in her glory for several more years, standing in the wings so that she reflected off of me in the most flattering light possible. Finally, in college, she came to my house and announced that she could no longer be my friend. She just wasn’t that into me.

Janet drove a red Mustang (we looked great in it), and her husband wrote for a muscle car magazine. She was sexy and fun, and she loved Dan Fogelberg as much as I did. We’d drink beer before lunch and shop after, buying cheap, funky things that didn’t shout “Word Nerd” to innocent passersby. Distance did our friendship in—she just wasn’t that into me.

Professor Dan was a colleague, popular with students, and he taught my son for four consecutive semesters. When my son was killed the summer before his junior year, I turned to Dan in the vain hope that he could somehow give me what he had enjoyed—daily contact. I wanted stories; I wanted to connect with my son through this man. I relentlessly pursued the poor prof, using all my cyber-charms to ensnare him in an email connection (I failed). In retrospect, I can understand his fear and trembling—who the hell is this frantic, grieving mother who won’t leave me alone? What does she want from me? I wanted what he had, recent interaction with my son. I wanted a blow-by-blow replay of every moment of every class. I hounded him.

My most recent attempt to conscript a consort was with a charismatic charmer who guarded his heart with steel bars. I filed at them tirelessly for several years, but never got inside. He reminded me a lot of Emily, all grown up. Like Emily, he was articulate and acerbic, witty and winsome. We didn’t eat junk food or dream weddings, but we talked animatedly of Big Ideas and Big Dreams. He was insightful and astute, and our conversations and contact helped me through the spiritual abyss that followed my son's death. Poetry, especially, called to us both. And he made me laugh. I wanted him to want me in his world.

I have played ankle-biter, tripped over my dress-up dress—choose your metaphor—in a pattern that leads to self-doubt and sorrow, borders on masochism, and frustrates the hell out of me and those who love me, including sometimes those who just aren’t that into me. And yet, to borrow from Garth Brooks, “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance”. Cheesy but apt. In the movie, Gigi says of her long struggle to find love, “Maybe the happy ending is just moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope.”

They just aren’t that into me. But I am ever-hopesome.

* All names are fictitious. Look at me, I’m writing fiction now!

Of Mousetraps and Men

Tom leaves tomorrow for an intense three-week training session with a new guide dog, his third. Seems a logical time to pay tribute to the first two.

Blake, Tom’s first guide dog, was a tough act to follow. A yellow Labrador retriever with all of his instincts intact, Blake loved water, balls, Frisbees, and food. Especially food. He was impossible—always sneaking a cookie (or ten) from the cooling rack, or pulling out a loaf of bread (and eating it) while I was unloading groceries, that sort of thing. And he raided the garbage anytime it smelled interesting. Finally, Tom called the guide dog school for advice. How could he teach Blake to be polite about food? The shocking answer was to put a set mousetrap on the top of the garbage, then leave it overnight. One sprung trap, and Blake would learn a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget. We were reluctant—it seemed so mean! But after Blake ate a two pound package of Velveeta cheese and a loaf of bread, then gassed the entire P.E. Dept., we gave it a shot. Tom carefully set the trap on top of the garbage and we went to bed. The next morning, the garbage was all over the floor, with the still-unsprung trap in the midst of it. Sheer luck protected Tom’s bare feet from learning that lesson Blake wouldn’t soon forget. We learned to secure the garbage with clothespins and lock Blake in the bedroom. Tom ran with Blake for several years, training him to jog on leash while guiding, and it was Blake who got to take Tom around Brussels, Belgium, including a lovely cathedral with a grumpy priest who insisted that we get the “hoond” “oot” of his church. We never did get the poor guy to see Blake’s side of things. Blake was rather vocal, too, sighing audibly (to Tom’s students’ delight) when class lectures became too boring.

But dogs don’t live as long as people, and Blake got old. Tom went back for Guide Dog #2, David. Blake’s puppyhood had been spent hiking, kayaking, camping, canoeing. David went on cruises, had a Frequent Flyer card, attended Mass every week, and loved going to the mall. The first night Tom had David, as is the rule, Tom tied him to the end of the bed. David cried all night, and by the second night, Tom was breaking the rules in order to sleep.

Food has never been the way to David’s heart. Whenever he feels the least bit out of sorts—it’s too hot, or too cold, or Daddy yelled at him and his feelings are hurt, or any number of other little irritants, David simply refuses to eat. This can become a problem, especially when Tom is on a tight travel schedule and needs for David to be at his best. We have discovered that singing like Mickey Mouse motivates David to eat, and so on any given trip, at one point or another, you’re likely to hear nonsense songs, sung loudly and in a high-pitched voice: “Eat your foodsies, eat your foodsies, yumyumyum!” and other silly variations. Sorta gives the lie to all that dignity and pomp and intelligence we credit guide dogs with….

And yet, David has been a terrific dog, especially in unusual or unfamiliar situations. He can take Tom straight to the cigar area of Heorot to get a stogy, or to the bathroom next door. In the San Antonio airport, where inexperienced security workers completely denuded David of harness, leash, and collar, leaving the dog free to roam naked through the area, David acted like the classy professional he is, helping Tom get through while the gear was elsewhere.

He has always been eccentric, though. The first time we took him swimming, in the placid Guadalupe River in Texas’ Hill Country, he cowered at the shore. Finally, he timidly stuck a toe in, and eventually—since it seemed so important to his family that he do so—he paddled out to my sister and jumped into her arms, 80 lbs. of frightened Labrador. I don’t believe he has set foot in water since, except his bath, which he accepts with an air of resignation.

He has earned his rest, and his old man sweater.

merely musing

I watched a movie last night, Smoke (1995). The gritty human stories at the center of this ensemble piece are wonderfully satisfying. It isn’t steak and potatoes, but it is sweet without being cloying, ice cream without the brain freeze, Jujubes without the toothache.

The opening scene shows an elevated train with the New York skyline behind it, complete with the then-intact Twin Towers. It stops you cold, 14 years after the movie was filmed.

Politics and patriotism notwithstanding, I’ll tell you exactly what my first thought was when I heard that the Twin Towers had collapsed. It was nothing heroic. Nothing selfless. I called my 19 year old son. I wanted to hear his voice, to know he was okay. Granted, that’s not a real rational reaction to a national emergency hundreds of miles from my home, where the tallest building is the 7-story Teachers College on the campus of Ball State University. But that was my reaction: “Oh my God, they’ll reinstate the draft, is Andy going to have to go to war??” Mine. That was where my mind went, not (I’m ashamed to admit) to the victims or their families or the heroes, but to my cherished son, then a sophomore in college, new to living on his own.

The human tendency to limit perspective to the personal isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consider Anne Frank, for instance, whose intimate view into her own small slice of the Holocaust has been a catalyst for the entire world to mourn Hitler's atrocities and excesses.

Perhaps sometimes the epic, the heroic, is encased within the personal--Oskar Schindler, or the parable about the guy who throws starfish back in the ocean. "Made a difference to that one." Can Sylvia Plath enfold Dante's Hell in her own?

Ironically, my son was killed less than a year after 9/11, the victim of corporate and individual irresponsibility, a virulent combination as lethal as war. Personal. And epic.

A Day in the Life of a Blind Man

Move over, Milton. These days, the daughters (or the wife) can't be expected to laboriously copy out your every dictated word, and the servants joined the union. Let's watch a bit, make like voyeurs into Tom's world, a world that, like Milton's, must be navigated by fingers and ears, faith and grit. We'll watch my husband tackle some of the ordinary chores of living.

 

He sets the alarm by listening, one number at a time; then checks to be sure he has the correct time—a.m. or p.m.? Alarm, CD, or radio? Did he get the alarm button or did he accidentally hit the time? He checks all of the above, patiently listening to the clock: "Hour setting, 5, 6:00. It's 6:00 a.m. Minute setting, 0, minute 5, minute 10, minute 15, alarm off, it's 6:15 a.m. Alarm on, it's 6:15 a.m."

 

Morning; he shuts off the alarm and moves toward the bathroom, but dammit, the kids left a Lego block on the floor—ouch! Flinching at the pain in the arch of his foot, he bangs his nose on the bathroom door. And he hasn't even peed yet. True, anyone can fall prey to renegade Legos and diabolical doors, but for the blind, these petty frustrations become routine. Continuing through the rest of his morning ablutions: take a shower (what's the difference between liquid soap and shampoo, between shampoo and conditioner, between shaving cream and hair mousse?); get dressed (pants to the left of the tie hanger, tie hung around shirt, shirt hung next to pants, isn't that how you decide what to wear to work?); have some coffee (pour to finger, burn finger, rinse finger); eat breakfast (instant oatmeal again, it has more flavor than dry toast and is easier than trying to land the butter in the right place). Oh, and the dog requires morning ablutions as well, because s/he, too, must be socially acceptable.

 

Before our Peeping Tom day ends, countless other obstacles will bedevil him—a laundry basket trips him up as he gets the dog's dishes; the dog has diarrhea; the secretary is sick; the meeting has been moved to a cramped room across campus, in an unfamiliar building; construction blocks the dog's usual grassy area for doing business….

 

You get the picture. Do you really, though? Let's take a little trip, say to a conference in Any City, U.S.A. He gets out at the curb, engaging a bellhop to carry his suitcase, in which the professional clothes are meticulously arranged to avoid wearing the black shirt with the navy blazer, or the brown jacket with the gray suit pants. Remember, he has only one hand free, the other one is working a dog. "Find the counter," he tells the dog. Alas, the dog goes to the wrong counter, so someone leads the duo to the registration desk. "Follow!" is the dog's command, this time a bit curt. Tom produces his hotel confirmation, credit card, etc. He then asks for a couple of pieces of Scotch tape, and requests help finding a grassy spot for the dog's relief area. Tape? Grass? Not on your list of travel necessities? The tape goes on the cardkey for the door, so that he can feel which way to insert the card; another piece goes on the door itself, so that he can be sure he's trying to open the right door. And then there's the grass, always the best part. In San Francisco, the nearest grass was six blocks from the conference hotel. In Anaheim, there was a four-foot square gravel area near a utility hook-up. In St. Louis, we found a tree in a pot—the dog jumped into the pot(ty?) and could just exactly squat, hitting the mulch most of the time.

 

Over the years, Tom has developed a philosophical sense of humor, necessary to maintain sanity and smooth his bumpy path through life. He quips one-liners to the travel professionals whose job it is to ensure that he finds the restroom (or the grassy area), gets on the right airplane, figures out the various routes to and from meeting rooms. He jokes easily and frequently with students, colleagues, and assorted strangers, helping those around him to be more comfortable with his blindness. The guide dog—intelligent, dignified, clean, alert—the dog helps bridge the awkward spaces, too. The two of them, dog and man, smile bravely and believably, if sometimes through gritted teeth. Yet there remains a subterranean frustration, helplessness, even humiliation, in needing assistance
for everyday activities, activities most of us take for granted.

 

Blindness doesn't prevent one from leading a rich, joyful, varied life filled with those universal human energizers that keep us going: love, faith, optimism, hope, fun. And yet, in Dr. Nelson's darkly honest words, "Blindness is a grievous disability." Difficult to hear. Even more difficult to live. In our politically-correct world, where we like to pretend that all differences are surface-level only and that all obstacles can be surmounted with a little Yankee ingenuity, disability in general and blindness in particular present a unique challenge.

In the Beginning

In the Beginning

Everyone recognized Dr. Nelson. A political science professor at Southern Illinois University, the man was a campus fixture, kind and gentlemanly, impeccably dressed. We marveled at the dignity and ease with which he and his guide dog navigated the hilly, wooded campus. He was exotic, intriguing, Other. He was conspicuous.

This was in the late 1970s. Fast-forward to Dr. Nelson’s Ball State counterpart and my husband of 29 years, Dr. Tom Weidner. When we married at the ripe old age of 21, we both knew he had a slowly progressive eye disease, but the potential that he could become blind, the ramifications of living day-to-day with a disability, these were merely Star Trek holograms, no more real than old age or parenthood. By 1993, Tom was a full professor and well-established scholar, father of three lively children. And he was blind—I found myself married to the man everyone recognized, the guy with the dog. I took refuge in memories of Dr. Nelson’s classy attitude and demeanor. I wrote him a letter, and he responded with a stark honesty that gives me pause still: “Blindness is a grievous disability.”

Wait a minute! Excuse me, sir, but that’s the wrong answer. You’re supposed to tell me how utterly normal and ordinary you are, how your life is just like everyone else’s, how the dog gets you everywhere you want to go. You’re supposed to make me feel better, gild the disability, paste on a smiley face.

Grievous? As in loss? The relentless pain of the not-there? Well, yes.

Blindness is relentless. Beth Finke, a Chicago-based commentator for National Public Radio, states, “People think… that everything’s okay now, that I’ve ‘overcome’ my blindness. But it’s just not true. The only people who conquer disabilities are those who are cured. The rest of us…live with our disabilities, not despite them.”

It sounds so deceptively simple, so positive, so politically correct: “living with disabilities.” To quote Finke again, “On good days, I think of this as a blessing: Not everyone gets a chance to live life from such completely different perspectives. On bad days, I grieve.”[1] That word again, with its connotations of burden and heaviness and pain.

Despite the magic of computers and other adaptive technologies; despite beautiful, polite, dependable guide dogs; despite the rebellious, resilient human spirit; despite intellectual or marital status; despite elaborate coping mechanisms and soul-deep joie de vivre, people’s lives are diminished by blindness.

I’m not saying that blind people don’t lead full, productive, joyful lives. Of course they do—any cursory internet search turns up all sorts of successful blind folks (Beth Finke, for example, or Tom Weidner. Homer, John Milton, Ray Charles). What I am saying is that we tend to gloss over, ignore, paint in pretty colors the difficulties that just plain do attend blindness.

[next time: watch "overcoming blindness" from the sidelines]

[1] Used by permission. Quoted from Beth Finke’s radio essay “Christopher Reeve’s Legacy for the Disabled,” available at http://www.bethfinke.com/media.html. Ms. Finke’s gracious, astute comments concerning blindness, guide dogs, fashion, and whatever else is on her mind can be found there as well.

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or His own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and waite.

(John Milton,1608-1674, c. 1652)

Milton was a fire-eater, surely lacking any trace of 21st Century post-modern sensitivity. He campaigned tirelessly for the execution of assorted papist heretics, including clergy of all stripes and even the King himself. Milton probably attended the public execution of Charles—perhaps not your emblem of empathy.

But man’s fire cannot be satisfied by ink alone. Johny married 17 year old Mary when he was 34; but she left—fled—within a few weeks, and he turned his poison pen toward relaxing divorce laws. Her family, loyal to that lousy idol-worshiping Catholic king, sent her back to Milton. I wonder how much say young Mary got? She bore him two children, a boy and a girl, then died a few days after the daughter was born. The little boy died the following month, and within the year, John Milton was completely blind.

Four years later, he married Katherine, and I don’t know how old she was, but she died a year after their marriage, in childbirth (another daughter for John). In 1656, 54 years old, still blind, this brilliant, passionate man married for the last time, to 24 year old Elizabeth, who outlived him by 50 years (shades of Anna, the prophet in the temple where Jesus was dedicated?).

John Milton must have had a great deal of personal magnetism, a spark of fun to go with the intellect, a glimmer, perhaps, of spiritual depth belied by the rigid outer persona. I don’t care much for him, really, or for his black-and-white world view. And yet, he is venerated, practically sanctified, along with Chaucer and Shakespeare, by word nerds through the ages.

His magnum opus, Paradise Lost, required reading for English majors everywhere, is a staple in the Dead White Guy canon of Western literature. And I suspect many have used the last line of this sonnet to whip reluctant kids to action, as my dad used to do, barbed tongue firm in his cheek, whenever we were not being as industrious as he thought we needed to be.

I'd bet ol' Johny was a curmudgeon, though. I don't envy his women--or his children.

[If you are interested in more of me and less of Milton, stay tuned. I know a thing or two about living with a blind man...]