Final Entry: Celebration

"Memory is a funny thing, young man.  And, as you grow Kai memories will stretch making it possible to include things, people, who were not part of the memory in the first place."  She looked at her son for a read on the idea and saw that it had already crossed the boy's mind, his experiences so much broader than boys his age." - Madeline

Max finished the stories. I lingered in the space absent of his pace and purpose not so much waiting for the next word, just savoring the images and people we had been with.  The old Rosehill library clock with large black numbers and a second hand kept the heartbeat of time like vinyl recalls memory of sound in its grooves. Absently my eyes looked at the big time piece. The hour hand held steady between the twelve and the one. The minute hand pointed straight down. The slender second hand tickled steadily. Twelve thirty. Only thirty minutes had passed since we sat for tea. I thought of Max's third set of teeth. I flexed my hands and felt the age of eight decades, blinked to clear my eyes of the clouds that persisted like a foggy hand mirror.

"How comfortable are you with the memories that stretch the way Madeline suggested her young son would experience as he grew?" Max tested my listening muscles. I knew what he was asking. People and events were becoming as cloudy as the vision I have on a clear day. Sometimes, when I sit to write it's not so much the flow of story that hesitates as much as a word that was once as familiar as salt.

"Uncle, I wonder how flexible I am now that some memories are foggy."

"All memories Pale? Are all the images illusive?" Max rode time without gluing any one moment but was at the same time a teacher who gently, but informatively, made me consider my choice of words.

"No Uncle. Some images are so clear and stayed purely in the body other than my head. The woman Madeline she is so familiar to me. Family is she?"

"She is." The research I do for my storytelling include venturing into the splintering voyages of Kanaka who left the piko -- the original island source. That research and the connections become a mythic plot of imaginings and loose webs. The interlaced fingers Max and I created that day he showed up before the twins were born: that image tickled me.

"Madeline is an aunty, at least three, if not four, generations removed from yours. Her father was one of those sea-loving men whose venturous soul was captivated by the tall ships of the haole in early Maui harbors. Like the stories you have written, Madeline is a woman who knew some things while other memories are foggy like that worn and cloudy mirror."

Max continued. "You are eighty years, today, Pale. Your family and in particular your children will bring you presents today. They are even bringing you dinner and cake!" I nodded and considered my luck. Max stopped to reach for my face which must have been a sight of perplexity. He rubbed my ears, ran his fingertips across my eyebrows, kissed my cheeks and then joined his broad forehead to mine. We exchanged the breath as he held my shoulders, and I held his.

"But it is the gifts for them that makes this birthday party special. Your stories. Tell them the stories, these stories, all the stories. It is your face, your voice that animates and brings the story to life. Am I assuming too much to say in your former incarnation as a young mother, you believed it was kapu, forbidden to be the center of attention?"

"When I was a young woman with wings still wet from my first voyage, and mother of two children I shunned attention seeking or affirmation. I had so little confidence in my decisions. Fencing myself in I thought I could separate a past that frightened me.  My history: an incomplete story. My lineage kept secret.  With so much Scorpio I felt ill-prepared for life. Deeply unprepared."

"Now? Are you as deeply unsure today?" After all the years of being on the border of cultures, my life in Salish has been my initiation into the deep comfort with my body, satisfying my soul's yearning, accepting my human mistakes. Most important though I have come to know the wisdom of Papa Hanau Moku -- Earth, and Mo'okiha,  dragon mother, my 'aumakua. The twins born decades after my monthly blood had ceased opened up the vastness of a woman's awesome power; her choice to embrace a loyal lover of any species. Who said the division of ancient values would cease because the conqueror made new rules? My mind was swimming with implications.

I answered the kahuna this way, "Today I love that my gut has space for traveling with you." Smiling at both his queries and my habits of being far too serious for my best good a roaring belly laugh erupted. This beloved time traveling ancient spirit, my Max, had led me through the many levels of reconnection. This male energy has made connection with Wahine Nui, The women.  Max has brought me home to myself.

"No residual?" He asked. His attention now poised on my head that hard, large space that spends such long periods of worrying over things beyond my reach. I swept my hands through my hair and looks for the strands that always collected between my fingers. Silver thread tangled my fingers.

"A little." Dream travel had become as easy if not easier for me to do while awake as I aged physically. I laughed at myself and said "It's probably all these thick wiry gray hairs. All that electrical connectivity. Easier to take my body through the portals birthing myself over and over again. Making up for that C-section when I was a purple tiny girl gasping for breath.

A loud ruckus broke the spell for us. In the tree just outside the door it was Raven Clan, the first arrivals. My Raven, silver-haired master of service at The Safety Pin Cafe had the family busy in the cafe kitchen. My need to make soup for dinner was a habit that dies hard. Like my mother who baked her own birthday cakes, I would not be baking my own birthday cake, but soup? I would make soup.

"Nearly party time," he was not staying. Max reached into his coat pocket and pulled a parcel about the size of a medium size book but bumpy, not rectangular. A rough paper wrapping weathered the way old books turn yellow was wound with a length of simple string."When they ask you, or think it only to themselves "Is that really true" open this for the children. Let them decide for themselves."

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I did enjoy a festive and jolly eightieth birthday party. Food, music, dancing, more food and stories. I told many stories that night. And the children did ask the question. I handed them Max's gift. 

Sugar mice.

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I want to acknowledge, and celebrate, the contributions of audience members who gave me feedback that fit and wove into this final entry and ending for The Joy Weed Journal. Thank you Morgana for reminding me that the live telling animates the story for you. Your words gives me the ball of enthusiasm to fuel a performance of the story; Gail you bless me with your observation that I have 'birthed my power' with these medicine stories; and Teri, long-time girl friend and now crone-elder together, your mirror serves me at so many different levels.  

The story may change as I edit and play with it to prepare the live telling but for now the magic and medicine has been grand. The participation has made all the difference in my world. Thank you!

A hui hou,

Mokihana