Sisterchicks Do the Hula Read online

  “Is fire dancing not originally Hawaiian either?” I asked.

  Amy shook her head. “Sorry to ruin all this for you.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “We’d much rather have the inside scoop. You’re not ruining anything. It’s the opposite. You’re making this interesting for us.”

  “Exactly,” Laurie agreed.

  We were directed toward the buffet line, and again we were thankful for our personal guide. The tossed green salad and the macaroni salad were the only two items that looked familiar to me.

  “What is this?” Laurie pointed to what looked like pink salsa.

  “It’s lomi lomi salmon. You should try a little of everything,” Amy recommended. “I’ve heard they do a good job with the food here. And the kalua pork is actually cooked all day in an imu. At least that’s what it says in the brochure in our rooms here at the hotel.”

  “Do I want to know what an imu is?” I asked.

  “It’s an underground oven. Basically it’s just a hole in the ground. The whole pig is cooked all day on hot rocks and covered with ti leaves. The kalua pork is a typical part of an authentic luau.”

  I used the tongs to place some of the shredded pork on my plate. It looked good.

  “And you have to try the poi,” Amy said. “Not a lot, just enough to say you tried it.”

  “This is poi?” Laurie dipped her spoon into the small bowl of gray pudding. “It looks so sad. Like wallpaper paste that was left out a little too long. What does it taste like?”

  “Poi,” Amy said. “It grows on you after a while. You’re supposed to dip your first two fingers in it and eat it that way. I mix it with the lomi lomi, and it goes down nicely.”

  “You don’t happen to see any tortilla chips around here, do you?” Laurie asked.

  Amy laughed. “Let me guess; you’re from California.”

  “You got that right. Tortilla chips go with everything on the Left Coast, you know.”

  As we made our way back to the table, I wondered what my little Emilee would do with all the strange new foods I was about to send her way. To be on the safe side, I had taken one of the Hawaiian sweet dinner rolls. If nothing else, I could eat bread and salad and sip ginger ale.

  I enjoyed the shredded pork more than I thought I would. I only hoped Emilee would agree when she had the opportunity to cast her vote later that night. I did cautiously try a little of everything on my plate, but only finished the pork, the salad, and the dinner rolls. Delicious.

  Laurie was more adventurous and tried mixing her poi with the lomi lomi the way Amy showed her.

  Amy then advised us on the square portions of haupia we were served for dessert. “This coconut pudding is really great. But just so you know, it can sometimes have a rather cleansing effect on your system.”

  “That’s always a helpful bit of information,” I said.

  “You should hire yourself out for luaus,” Laurie said. “Believe me, this would have been a less enjoyable experience if you hadn’t joined us.”

  Amy looked appreciative of Laurie’s kind words.

  “I agree. I’m glad you sat with us.”

  “I’m glad, too,” Amy said.

  “You didn’t finish explaining about the hula,” I said. “Before the missionaries arrived, the Hawaiians didn’t have a written language, and you said they didn’t have music either.”

  “Not music as we know it today. They had drums and gourds and chants. But, yes, the Westerners brought musical instruments and songs. The Hawaiian culture changed so much in one generation. The hula came back in the form of dance that interpreted the mele, or you could say the poetry or the songs, that were being written about the land and the people and especially about love. The hula ’auana, or modern hula, interpreted those songs through more cheerful dancing.”

  “And that’s what we think of as the hula today,” Laurie surmised.

  Amy nodded. “When I was taking hula lessons, we had to memorize this saying from King Kalakaua: ‘Hula is the language of the heart and, therefore, the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people.’ ”

  “That’s beautiful,” Laurie said.

  “Did King Kalakaua happen to live during the same time as the last Hawaiian queen?” I asked.

  “You mean Lili’uokalani?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. The one who wrote ‘Aloha Oe.’ ”

  “Oh, very good!” Amy said. “I’m impressed that you knew that. Yes, Kalakaua was her brother. He’s known as the ‘Merrie Monarch,’ partly because he revived the hula. He also built the I’olani Palace where Lili’uokalani took over the throne after his death.”

  I smiled to myself. I had just found another one of Juliette’s royal students. I told Amy the little bit of history I had learned about how Juliette taught these children and gave them music lessons.

  “She must have had a strong influence on them,” Amy said. “Because Kalakaua and Lili’uokalani helped bring a new era of music and dance to the Hawaiian culture. The first wave of missionaries tried to bury the hula; it sounds as if she helped to give new breath and life to the culture, whether she meant to or not.”

  “The one who came with aloha,” I said.

  “Yes,” Amy said. “There were definitely some of those. We usually only hear about the Westerners during that era who came to capture this land and destroy the ancient arts of the Hawaiian people.”

  “The ones who came as haoles,” I said.

  “That’s it,” Amy agreed. “You certainly picked up a lot in only a few days.”

  “Thanks to people like you,” Laurie said. “We have met the most amazing people here. I’m so glad we didn’t go to the other luau because we wouldn’t have met you, and we wouldn’t have learned about the hula.”

  “I’m not an expert. I only know a little history and only a little hula. I can tell you this, though. Hula is something that comes out of the deep place in your heart when you listen to the poetry—the mele. You listen to the mele, and then you move in a way that gracefully interprets that truth.”

  I let Amy’s words sink in.

  God has been writing a new mele for my life. The Artist is writing a poem and stringing it together, making something beautiful and fragrant. This is His gift to me.

  Before I had found a cleared place inside my soul to put such a powerful thought, the lights lowered, and the hula show began on the stage. The dancers were skilled, and their graceful motions captivated me. Even the silly and flamboyant parts of the show seemed interesting in light of Amy’s earlier comments.

  “You know what?” I said to Laurie the next morning, as we sat on the lanai enjoying the sparkling, clean new day. “I think the luau last night would have seemed like a Las Vegas show if Amy hadn’t been with us.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yesterday was an amazing day. The leis, the hula, the language. I love all the layers of this place.”

  Laurie agreed and turned her attention back to where she was reading in her new Bible. I stared out at the glistening, sapphire sea. The unfurling white waves looked freshly scrubbed after yesterday’s rain. They seemed to be tumbling over each other like a litter of puppies, full of mischief.

  “Listen to this,” Laurie said. “It’s from Matthew 11. Jesus is speaking.”

  “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

  “ ‘The unforced rhythms of grace,’ ” I repeated.

  “Does that describe our vacation and the whole hula thing, or what?”

  I tried to tell Laurie the thought I had last night about God writing a new mele for my life and how I needed to learn to move with it gracefully.

  “You are moving gracefully, Hope. You’re embracing this new baby and all the changes to your body with a lot of grace. I’m the one who needs to figure out the unforced rhythms part. I’m resistant to
change, especially moving.”

  “Are you still feeling hesitant about the house?”

  “More than hesitant. But you know what? I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ll wait until I hear more from Gabe. Let’s make some plans. You still have the tour book, right?”

  “It’s inside on the desk.”

  “Good, because I need to look up a beach I wanted to visit.”

  “Are you thinking we should rent a car?”

  Laurie didn’t answer. She had stepped inside. I thought about the two of us tootling around the island. Laurie had a thing about muscle cars and driving fast. The ‘68 Camaro she had driven that memorable afternoon in 1983 after she kissed Gabe in front of her parents’ café was her baby. She still had the car and had paid a bundle over the years to keep it charged up in running condition.

  The most exasperating phone conversations I’d had with Laurie over the past few years had been when she was roaring down her familiar wine country roads. She would put me on speakerphone, so at least I had reason to believe she was driving with both hands. However, every now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would let out a “whoo-hooo!” and I never knew what that meant. Did she just miss hitting a jackrabbit while taking a curve at sixty miles per hour? One of these days I would work up the courage to ask her.

  But not today. Today was too perfect.

  “How about if we rent a car tomorrow and spend today lounging on the beach?” Laurie said, returning with the tour book and finally answering my question. “How does that sound to you?”

  “Sounds great.”

  We didn’t have to walk very far down the beach before we found a small structure that rented chairs and umbrellas. The smooth white sand felt cool on the feet. I guessed that was because the sun hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly dry up the water from yesterday. We rented two beach chairs along with one blue and yellow striped umbrella and two straw mats. We were ready for anything. Both of us had stuffed our beach bags with towels, books, and sunscreen. (I had given up on the idea of a tan and had settled for moderation.) All we needed was for the rain clouds to stay far away, and we could clock out for the rest of the day.

  “The weather’s perfect,” Laurie said. “Look at all the surfers out there. They make it look so easy.”

  I watched as the surfers rode the curling waves to shore, looking like action figures with posable arms bent every which way.

  We watched the free show contentedly from our beach chairs, wiggling our toes in the warming sand.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” Laurie asked.

  “What?”

  “Gidget.” Laurie turned and looked at me over the top of her sunglasses. “Tell me you saw at least one of the Gidget movies.”

  I shook my head.

  “You never saw Gidget or Moondoggie or the Big Kahuna?”

  “What can I say?”

  Laurie sighed. “Deborah Walley played Gidget in Gidget Goes Hawaiian. I don’t remember who played Gidget in the first movie, but she got right out there and showed Moondoggie and the rest of them that she could surf as good as any of the boys.”

  Leaning back in her chair, Laurie said, “I must have watched that first movie a half dozen times when I was twelve. I wanted to be Gidget. I wanted to get up on that surfboard and show those boys that I could do it.”

  She laughed. “One time my mom caught me standing on top of the ironing board with my arms out, balancing back and forth.”

  “That’s a story I never heard before.”

  “My mom was so mad. I left a permanent dent in the middle of her board.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, what? That’s the end of the story.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Yes, really. That’s the end of my surfing story.”

  Lowering my sunglasses, I gave Laurie the X-ray stare she seemed to enjoy using on me. With thoughts of hula and stringing leis still floating inside, I said, “It doesn’t have to be the end of your story, you know.”

  Hope, if I were going to learn to surf like Gidget, I would have done it thirty years ago,” Laurie said.

  “Are you saying you think you’re too old to try surfing at forty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you really will be too old at fifty. And by the time you’re sixty? Forget it.”

  Laurie scowled at me.

  “Don’t you see? You have to try new things while you can. You have to tell yourself you can do anything. Otherwise, you will get old. Fast. There’s no reason you can’t get out there and hang ten. Or at least hang on for dear life.”

  Laurie laughed. “That’s more accurate.”

  “I’m serious, Laurie. Neither of us is going home from this trip regretting that we didn’t do something because we were chicken. We are not chickens. We’re chicks, remember? Sisterchicks. There is a difference.”

  Laurie kept laughing.

  It took me almost half an hour, but I finally convinced her that if she passed up this opportunity, the “wish” would be there the rest of her life, but every year the “swish” would diminish a little more until it would be physically impossible.

  “Okay, okay.” She raised her hands in surrender. “You win.”

  “No, you’re the one who’s going to win. I’m the one who will be taking the pictures.”

  “My husband is never going to believe this.” Laurie started to get up. Looking around she said, “If you’re going to take pictures, you should be over there and turn so that you angle the shots up the beach, toward our hotel. Not toward Diamond Head.”

  “Okay, you know what, Little-Miss-All-Quiet-on-the-Set? Why don’t you move stuff so that my chair is angled just right, and I’ll go over to the beach shack to find out how to sign you up.”

  “Thanks, Hope. And see if they have an age limit for their insurance coverage.”

  I shooed away her comment and trudged through the sand wearing only my bathing suit, my dinosaur-tracking sandals, and my tangerine traumatized skin.

  Oh yeah, I thought, composing a postcard for the mirror maven back home. Check it out. Strutting along the beach at Waikiki. Turning heads. Making my monster-sized footprints on the sands of time. This Mother with a capital M is really going places now. Wish you were here! Ha!

  “Hi there,” I said confidently to the white-haired youth standing beside the surf shack. “Is this where people sign up for surfing lessons?”

  The beach boy looked at my belly and then tried to catch a glimpse from another angle. I guess he wanted to make sure I was really pregnant and not just hiding a beach ball under there. “We, um, like, have some restrictions.”

  “I’m collecting the information for my friend. The sign says you have a class every day at noon, but what can you tell me about private lessons?”

  “Those are, like, more expensive.”

  “Oh-kay. And what else can you tell me?”

  “About what?”

  “About the private surfing lessons.”

  Did the peroxide solution he used on his hair soak through to his brain matter and bleach out a few essential cells?

  “Oh, those. Yeah. Sure. You can get private lessons. From a private instructor. We have a paper here you have to sign and everything.”

  “Good. May I have one of those papers? My friend would like to take a private lesson. The sooner the better.”

  “Okay, here you go. I’ll call the Big Kahuna and tell him we got a live one.”

  I did a good job holding in my laughter all the way back to Laurie and the beach chairs. I couldn’t give away to her any of the details of my conversation. If she had just experienced what I did at the beach shack, complete with an off-site “Big Kahuna,” she might have backed out. The details of my encounter could wait.

  Laurie had pulled up her hair in a clip. Her mouth twitched back and forth, and she scanned the papers I handed her to sign.

  “It says here they won’t let pregnant women take lessons,” Laurie said
, looking up. “Did you see that part of the agreement? How discriminating!”

  “Too bad. So sad. Oh well, it’s all up to you, Gidget.”

  A half grin started in the corner of Laurie’s face and came over her like a Honolulu sunrise. “Okay,” she said resolutely. “You’re right. Time to go for the wish while I still have some swish. I’m going to do this.”

  “Yes, you are! Get out there and show those boys how it’s done.” I realized I sounded like Darren when he launched into one of his coaching jags. “I’m with you all the way, Laurie. I’ll be right here, taking lots of pictures.”

  “You better.” She rose to her feet. “Because the plastic surgeon is going to want proof of how my nose got broken in so many places.”

  I settled comfortably in my front-row seat and made sure the camera was loaded and ready to go. Laurie had slipped on a pair of swim shorts over the bottom of her bathing suit and was standing by the surf shack, waiting for her private surf instructor to show up.

  What would he look like? Would she get the bleached blond “dude” with sand permanently lodged in his brain? Or a huge, weight-lifting island boy who would hoist her onto the surfboard with the ever-popular knee in the back and arm support under the armpits? I secretly wished for the latter.

  I’m happy to say I got my wish.

  Laurie’s Big Kahuna, her private surf instructor, was as solid as a pillar and had a great, roaring laugh that I could hear from my sheltered position under the beach umbrella.

  Laurie’s camera had a fantastic zoom. I could sit back and watch it all. Every so often I’d give the camera a click to capture Laurie trying out her stance on the board while it was still on the sand.

  I knew Laurie would take to this sport right away. She had great balance and a skillful determination that I saw in college when she tried skateboarding for a relay event. It really was too bad she hadn’t tried to surf during the two years she and I lived in Santa Barbara. We knew lots of guys at school who surfed, but I guess neither of us was exactly beach-babe material. This trip would change that stigma for Laurie.

  She hoisted the sunny yellow surfboard under her arm and followed the instructor and his surfboard down to the water’s edge. That’s when I realized this was my chance to confiscate her film. She kept all the rolls in a zippered pouch that had a special metallic lining. I guessed the lining was to protect the film from the X-ray machines at the airport. All I had to do was snag the pouch, put it in my bag, and the deed would be done.