My Pink Beach Hat

I Just Don’t Understand the Appeal of:

2005-06-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

White cars, white furniture, white shoes, white deodorant, tighty whities.
Small, poorly ventilated public restrooms.
Chain restaurants.
Hot Pockets.
SlimFast.
NASCAR.
Gigantic Breast Implants.
Botox.
Plastic Surgery to make you look like a celebrity.
The Engagement of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
Scientology
Fundamentalism.
Republicans
Intolerance/Hate
Speed Dating.
Paris Hilton.
Beer Nuts.

Somebody Answer the Phone!

2005-06-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

For real-real telephone call:

Pinkie: Hello
Unknown Caller: Yeah, is this 555-1212?

Pinkie: Yes, it is. Who is this and for whom are you calling?
Unknown Caller: You don’t know?

Pinkie: I’m afraid I don’t. Could you help me out here?
Unknown Caller: How you call yourself a psychic when you don’t even know who it is that’s calling’or who they callin’ for?

Pinkie: I don’t call myself a psychic, that’s my mother. She’s the real deal, but being psychic doesn’t work like that.
Unknown Caller: Well, how it work?

Pinkie: Every psychic is different, but my Mom has to tune into it kind of like tuning an old TV. She has to pick up the frequency of the person she’s doing the reading for or the thing she wants to know. She doesn’t walk around all day in psychic mode.
Unknown caller: That makes sense, how it works, hmmm. So she a for real-real psychic. My friend Landa say she is the best and she don’t charge no money only take donations whatever people can afford. Landa told me the psychic lady never charged her or asked for no money. Landa said she just pay her what she feel was fair. That true?

Pinkie: That’s how it works around here. Do you want to speak to my Mom or schedule an appointment to come see her?
Unknown Caller: Naw, I was just curious how it work. You tell your Mom she helped Landa a lot and I appreciate that. She’s my best friend and she had a lot of troubles, but your mom helped.

Pinkie: I’ll tell her that and I’m sure she’ll appreciate knowing she was able to help. Thank you for calling.
Unknown Caller: One more question, are you psychic? My grams was and she passed it down to one of my aunties., but she never did nothin’ with it.

Pinkie: I’m not as talented as my Mom is, but sometimes I have dreams that come true or feelings.
Unknown Caller: So guess my name just one try and then I’ll let you go?

Pinkie: Um, okay…Melissa.
Unknown Caller: [Laughing] You didn’t even try to be psychic. How many black woman you know named Melissa?

Pinkie: Just you, Melissa.
Unknown Caller: You’re crazy. I like you. My name’s Jenetta. Well, good-bye. Tell your Mom thanks for Landa.

Pinkie: I will, Melissa. Bye.
Unknown Caller: [Still laughing] Bye. Have a blessed day, crazy psychic girl.

Good Day, Sunshine!

2005-06-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

This morning at the oncologist, Mom and I knew something good was afoot as Dr. D came into the examination room with a HUGE smile on his face and quietly hummed "Don’t Worry, Be Happy!" under his breath during the initial check up. This coming from a man who, while naturally upbeat and positive, is not one to bubble over with effervescence. He maintains his professionalism at all times. When you're doling out life and death diagnosis, a poker face is always best.

"Diane, you’re responding much better and more quickly than expected to the chemotherapy. Your last scan shows no signs of the caner in the lymph nodes. It’s too soon to know for sure, but you’re giving this cancer a royal beating. We need to stay the course of treatment and finish out the next five weeks. After that, I want to keep a watchful eye on things and if there’s any recurrence at all we’ll have to consider radiation and chemotherapy. But as the Magic Eight Ball says, 'Outlook is good!'"

Instead of breaking into tears, Mom and I couldn't stop laughing.

Epilogue: Mom fired off e-mail to my Dad letting him know the good news. Dad's response:

"I knew before you did, Di. Do you think for one moment I'd be able to sit and wait for news about the love of my life? So long as I agree to let him make the diagnosis and deliver the news, Dr. D's been e-mailing your cat scans, x-rays and lab results since day one. Keep up the good work! Bald is beautiful on you, babe. Talk to you same bat time, same bat channel."

Mom is seeing her first client since she started chemo. She's a little nervous, but Rodge is an old friend and has been seeing my Mom for years. She makes no guarantees that she'll be able to see anything, but she wants to try. Having psychic ability is no different than any other natural born talent, the more you use it the ability the better you get. Practice and application keep your senses sharp. And if you feel like crap and you're energy is low, you're not going to perform at peak level.

The key for a psychic is learning how to keep your intuition and your imagination separate. Having a vision isn't any different than the daydreams we all experience in when we’re driving down the road and sort of "check out" for a while. Two miles later you can't remember how you got there or the passing scenery, but you know you've been driving the whole time. It's like your conscious and unconscious mind are co-pilots. When you zone out the mind goes on autopilot keeping you on course, the unconscious and conscious mind step away for a smoke, a cup of coffee and a water cooler discussion about all the random stuff floating around in your head. A good psychic can switch to autopilot at will and can remain aware enough while in this state to pick out the things that seem real and likely to happen versus random bits of imaginary flotsam and jetsam. Does that make sense?

You Got Any Pics?

2005-06-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Someone out there in cyberspace e-mailed me to ask me what I look. I'm not intentionally being mysterious--though I have changed the names of everyone I mention in the blog as a courtesy. Here are a few random digital photos that I found on my laptop. Nothing special, just an ordinary chick.

Jack took this photo right before I left for Cincinnati. My T-Zone be shiny!

The rickety old dock is where we tie our fishing boat. That's me in the foreground lying on the beach in front of the famous house on stilts.

The quality's not so great, but that's me on the beach in Bora Bora.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

2005-06-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

Jack wrote me last night with interesting news. Lani, his Polynesian business partner, is getting married in a month to a French woman he met in Papeete (the capital of French Polynesia on Tahiti). Over the next two months, Lani wants to move the business to Tahiti and combine forces with his brother who has an established scuba boat that caters to more typical tourists—less adventure scuba, more snorkel and dives in less remote areas. Lani's made no secret of his desire to move to Papeete. He grew up on one of the most remote islands in French Polynesia and finds no novelty in being a partial castaway. What's surprising is his desire to end the extreme scuba business and move into more moderate waters so to speak.

Lani's one of the craziest, coolest, bravest and the finest specimen of manhood you could ever meet (Yes, Jack's hot, but even he agrees Lani is truly God's gift to woman). He stands 6 ft. 5 in. tall and is 250 lbs. of solid muscle. Combine this with a mouth full of perfect teeth; rippling muscles; six-pack abs; dark wavy hair; brown and gold-flecked, almond-shaped eyes; and a lantern jaw and you’d call him the Polynesian David. He packs a triple threat by also being extremely smart, honest, hardworking, kind, generous, funny, charming and he loves his Mom, children and animals. Long story short, Lani is a helluva guy and we both love him dearly. Jack says his betrothed, who I’ll call Brigitte, is every bit as great as Lani and that he truly has met his match.

So what does closing the scuba business on our island mean to Jack and me? Well, it means we can stay on the island and live off my teaching stipend that ain’t much, or we can move to Papeete and work for Lani and his brother. Jack would make more money as a dive master in Tahiti than he does as a silent and unofficial partner now (it's all those darn French regulations about foreigners working and owning in the islands). We would also have to give up the house on stilts, the garden, the beach right below our front door and being far removed from the rat race. Papeete is Tahiti's version of New York City.

Jack and I have been talking about moving back to the States for a year now. We both love the island love, but we miss our families, the convenience and the cost of living back home. My Mom getting sick shook us both up and made us realize how long we’ve been away. We want to see our families more than once a year and we want to be able to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice if there’s a family emergency. So we talked and we talked and we talked and we decided to move back to the mainland. Jack will stay on the island for the next two months and help Lani move the boat and the business to Papeete. Gus, our dear German ex-patriot friend, will give our sweet beach cats a good home and Taranga will start recruiting for an art and English teacher right away. Out landlord Tiki will rent out the house on stilts to one of the locals.

We don't have a lot of material things we need to ship home. We really did live simply and we managed to save some money in the process. Lani will give Jack a decent sum of cash as buyout for his part of the boat and the business. We start our new life in the States in the black. We’ll live with my Mom and Dad for a until the end of the year and then move to Key West. Jack's brother runs a dive and jet ski business in the Keyes (the ocean is in their family blood) and can use the help. There's even a job or two waiting for me one as a part-time curator in a museum and the second as 2nd chief cook and bottle washer in my sister-in-law's restaurant.

When I told my Mom we were moving back, she didn’t ask me why, she didn’t cry, she didn't say I told you so. She held my face in her hands and said,"I always knew you’d be back, that made it easier to let you go." August is going to be crazy month in the House of the Hairless Psychic. Jack comes home and is bringing Taranga along for her visit to the mainland. My father comes home from his tour of duty in South India for Doctors Without Borders. Little sis and the kids are driving down from Chicago for three weeks before school starts.

I said my good-byes before I left. Somehow I knew they might be my last. I hope I go back someday. Change is good. Being with the people you love is even better.

Hannah and Her Sisters

2005-05-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hannah is my oldest and dearest friend. We've known one another since our first day of Montessori kindergarten in 1976. She snatched my coveted violet blue crayola while I was in the midst of coloring my artistic interpretation of Pewpie, the tiny, bubble-breathing dragon. who lived in my belly button.. With her short boy haircut, Sears Tough Skin Denims, Red Chuck Taylor's and Spiderman t-shirt, Hannah appeared destined to be the class bully. The truth is she was a total girly girl being raised by a widowed construction executive and the youngest of four childrenand the only girl. I punched Hannah hard in the shoulder and snatched the crayola backthat's how you earned respect in a house full of boys. Hannah shrugged, grabbed the blue violet crayola from the box and continued drawing flowers and butterflies. We've been kindred spirits ever since. Three months younger than me and two years older than Jenna, my baby sis, Hannah filled the role of middle sister and honorary daughter in my family.

Unlike her brothers and "honorary" sisters, Hannah stayed in Cincinnati. She majored in architecture at UC and is now a principal partner in her father's construction company. She kicks ass on the job all while wearing a construction helmet and manages to look graceful and feminine doing it. Ironically, her two oldest brothers pursued careers traditionally dominated by women as nursesdarn good ones, too. Brother #3 is a computer programmer. Her father is proud of all his children, but he nearly burst with pride when Hannah joined his firm.

Hannah isn't taking my Mom's cancer well. She cries every time my Mom is out of ear and eyeshot. Agreeably, Mom looks sick with no hair, pale nearly translucent skin and her always-slight figure made slighter by the cancer diet. Last night, Hannah cooked dinner for Mom and I while we played with Amelie and Amelia, her two-year twin girls. Smack dab in the middle of dinner, Hannah has a breakdown and starts telling my Mom how much she means to her and how she is the mother she never had. True to form, Mom folded Hannah up in her tiny little arms and rocked her until the tears subsided. The twins kept asking "Grammy, why Mommy cry? Grammy, why Mommy cry?" to which she answered, "Mommy just needed a hug, baby girls."

We all piled around Hannah and hugged her for a few minutes. The twins in unison said, "We hug Mommy good, Grammy. Squuuuuuueeeeezeeeeee."

Hannah's mother died from breast cancer when she was three. That makes watching my Mom go through her struggle with cancer that much harder. She thinks I'm a tower of strength because I don't cry. Truth is, I'm terrified of losing my Mom. I just choose to do my crying in private. Mom needs to see my strength and resilience right now, not my tears.

Taranga, the Polynesian Sea-God(dess)

2005-05-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

Taranga is my best friend in all of French Polynesian. She is the feminine namesake of Tarangoa, the Polynesian sea-god, who separated the sky from the earth. He is the son of the earth-goddess Papa, who had so much water in her body that it swelled one day and burst forth, becoming the ocean. Taranga's mother loves to tell the story of her birth in the middle of the rainy season. She explains that each contraction coincided with violent lightning and loud claps of thunder and with each push to free Taranga from her womb the winds blew harder shaking walls and rattling the windows of the midwife's tiny office. Moments after Taranga was born and she let out her first cry, the storm settled, the clouds cleared, the sun came out and a rainbow appeared. How much of this is true and how much of it is embellished with a mother's love is up for discussion, but I choose to believe that the whole story is fact.

To know Taranga is to experience first hand the human equivalent of the eye of the storm. She has more energy, strength and presence than any person I've ever met. All of this wrapped up in a tiny body standing five feet three in flipfops with long black hair shiny as an oil slick and honey-brown eyes that look right through you. Taranga is the first in her family to go to college and attended the Université de la Polynésie Française where she majored in education. For almost 20 years, she taught at a primary school in Papeete. Taranga never liked Papeete and describes living there as "a tropical version of New York City with all the crowds and congestions but none of the culture." At the age of 42, she found her true calling and now runs the tiny atoll school. Taranga is the person who hired** me to teach English and Art to the 102 students at her school. The best job I have ever had.

**The term "hired" is used loosely due to the fact that work visa's are not granted in the islands by the French government. Unemployment is a huge problem--though in my case, Taranga has been looking for someone to teach Art and English for three years. It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

More later...

Taste of the Tropics

2005-05-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

Mom and I visited Krohn Conservatory on Thursday. It was a rainy, gloomy day. Mom was feeling a bit defeated by the fatigue-inducing chemo. I was having tropical climate withdrawal. The tropical room at the conseratory did the trick for both of us-lots of thick palms and succulents. The conservatory houses a large variety of ferns and unusual cycads. Bromeliad and begonia surrounds a koi pond. There's even a waterfall and cave. The tropical room maintains a high humidity and feels like the atoll in the cool season which happens to be right now. My favorites plants are the chocolate tree, pomengranite, vanilla vine and the dwarf banana. It even smelled like home. The trip did us both good.

What Will This Blog Be When It Grows Up?

2005-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

It will be a month tomorrow since I dipped my barefeet in the lovely lagoon near my house on stilts. I'm adjusting fairly well. Seven of my 34 years have been lived in the South Pacific. All the rest were here in Cincinnati living on a hill overlooking the Ohio River or a hippy enclave in Northern California during the college years. And I don't know what direction I want this journal to take. Would you find it more interesting to read a thoughtful (even humorous) account about how different mainland life is to island life? Or, would you prefer to read about my Mother's struggle with cancer and whiny, bratty entries about how I'm such a martyr/saint for giving up my love and my "happy-go-lucky" life in paradise?

That last question was of the rhetorical and more of a scolding to myself. I'd give up living on the atoll forever it meant my mother would be well. Jack would move back to the states with me without question. It was my desire that he stay behind while I'm here and keep things going with the diving business and our life in general. I am so lucky to have this time with my Mom. Seeing my family once or twice a year for the past seven years leaves a lot of space for catching up. Folks, if I sound like I'm whining, let me know. Smack me up side the head a few times with the mouse cursor even.

An Island to Oneself

2005-05-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

"I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking; but though I came to know most of the islands, for the life of me I sometimes wonder what it was in my blood that had brought me to live among them." - Tom Neale

One of my favorite novellas and part of what inspired Jack and I to move to French Polynesia (besides the trip we took there after college) is Tom Neale's story "An Island to Oneself" about his life living on a uninhabited atoll in the Cook Islands. It's a great read and the complete version is available on line. Enjoy!

An Island to Onself

My Pictures of You

2005-05-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Big, bad Gus gazing out to sea. You don't see sights like this in Ohio. Bald is beautiful.

Coconut Les

Jack of All Tradewinds

The Tale of the Hairless Psychic and the Mysterious Big Drip

2005-05-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

The last post on the old blog reads "to be continued". I know it isn't cool to up and leave people hanging and, if a former reader finds me here, I'm sorry. I really will continue things, but right now life's about caring for my mother and having my feet firmly planted on dry land. It's not about the little beach house on stilts, Jack's sun-browned skin, trips to the big island for food and supplies and the miserably slow and expensive dial-up access that made "live blogging from the beach" possible.

At the moment, I'm sitting next to my mom while an evil, red chemical drips slowly into her veins. The nurse said it may cause an acute burning sensation at the point of first contact. Mom doesn't complain, but I can tell it hurts her. It's a nasty chemical called Amsacrine, but it kills the cancer by blocking an enzyme called topoisomerase II. If this enzyme is blocked then the cell's DNA gets tangled up and the cell cannot split into two new cancer cells. If I saw that stuff oozing toward me, I'd run, too.

The oncologist's office has WiFi. The nurses lends laptops to chemo patients with the energy and desire to compute or surf. Mom's playing an online game of Texas Hold 'Em against two other patients and some guy in Arkansas with the screen name Thumper1961. She curses under her breath when she loses.

She's starting to lose her hair. This is her third chemo session. She did the first one solo. I caught the earliest flight I could out of the islands as soon as I got the news. I still feel guilty for not being here from day one. I should have trusted my dreams. I gave Mom my "lucky" pink beach hat to protect her naked head from the sun. It's always served me well. Mom likes the way it smell, like the atoll. She says she can close her eyes and smell the salt air and hear the pounding of the surf. Mom has an appointment with the hairdresser to get her head shaved next week. She doesn't want a wig. Can't say I blame her. One of her friends gave her a shirt that says "Bald is beautiful." She's looking foward to wearing it.

She said something sad and funny yesterday, "I don't know how good of a psychic I'll be without hair on at least some part of my body. How will I know I'm getting one of those feelings if there's no hair to stands up on the back of my neck? Can you get goosebumps without hair?"

"I don't know, Mom."

Jack e-mailed me late last night:

Coconut Les [our neutered male cat] misses you ferociously. He cries and mewsm looking all over the house trying to find you. Sissy Fuss is indifferent. So long as she is fed, she seems happy. I know how Coco feels. I miss you ferociously, too.

I miss you all.

The Gift

2005-05-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's funny-hmmm, not funny-haha, how my status in cyberspace and meatspace has flipflopped. Two weeks ago I was living in a remote, tropical climate far removed from civilization--at least civilization as we know it in the suburbs and urban centers of the Midwest. Two weeks ago, I had a popular weblog and knew more people online than inhabitated the tiny "atoll" I called home. It's not really an atoll, merely one of many small islands several miles of the coast of the "big island". Now, I'm back in Cincinnati surrounded by so many people who know me that I can't walk out to get the mail without a neighbor striking up a conversation, aksing me how my mother is doing.

I miss Jack like a bird would miss its wings. I know that he needed to stay put. He would have suffocated on land. He's part fish, part pelican, part man. We are better being apart for now. I need to do this by myself and he needs to maintain the way of life we worked so hard to establish. I knew that my homecoming was only a matter of time when I started having the dreams about taking care of my mother. The dreams gave me time to prepare and to make my peace with leaving the place and the person I love most in the whole world. Jack will still be there taking intrepid tourists on dive adventures. Our little house on stilts will still be there unless a hurricane hits and even then Jack and our neighbors would rebuild it. The ocean, the sand, the palms and the sun will all be there when I return. It's just a matter of when not if.

For now, my mother is my focus--caring for her as she goes through the chemo and the radiation. She's fighting for her life though she "senses" everything will be okay in six months to a year. I want to believe her, but my dreams are different than hers. My dreams don't have a happy ending, they just show release. I wish I could turn the dreaming off, but whenever I am around my mother it kicks in to high gear. She magnifies my dreams like a giant lens. Everything is bigger, brighter, close up and real. She's always affected me this way. Since I was very small and able to understand that my dreams were more then just dreams, something that falls somewhere between premonition and vision.

My mother's had the gift since she was four and she's made her living telling people the future. She is honest and fair with her gift. She doesn't squander her second sight like a cheap carnival fortuneteller. She uses it to help people. Her pay has always been by donation. She never sets a price or asks for a cent. Some people can't pay her that's why they seek her, for hope that things will get better. She's always been okay with how that worked. She only asks that they call her and let he know when things go better and they usually do--the people and things. Mom always said that as long as she can provide for her family, she can afford not to charge.

My grandmother had the gift and so did her mother. I come from a long line of "psychics". I hate that term, but it works in a world where people want labels. I believe we all have second sight, some of us just don't know it, some of us can't do the interpretation. I've chosen to shut that part of myself down as much as possible.

Living on the atoll with Jack helped. People, not places give me the dreams. Now here, in a medium-sized city in the midwest with my mother and so many people around me, the dreams are back full tilt and I'm worried. There are some of us who don't want to know the future. There are some like me, who just want to live in the here and now.

Always Start at the Beginning

2005-05-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

The old blog is tired. The new one feels great like sand between my toes and salt water in my hair. Many happy returns. Life's a beach, right? More to come. Don't say I didn't warn you.