Family Stories, Part Two

The second and final part of my Family Stories project is up now in podcast form at the bottom of my blog. Check it out if you want. Although you'll be forced to hear my voice. Sorry about that part.


Anyways, happy Pi Day (March Fourteenth: 3/14: 3.14(159265etc.)). Have some pie to celebrate.

Magical Realism, Part 2

This is the second and final part of my magical realism project. In this version of the story, there is magical / unexplained stuff mixed in with the actual story.

When my dad was six years old, he went with his family—his sisters Laura and Susan and his parents Malcolm and Eleanor— to the New York World’s Fair. Afterwards, before heading home, they stopped at Jones Beach on Long Island. That was where my dad saw the ocean for the first time in his life. He and his sisters were fascinated by it, and, not having bathing suits, went wading as deep as their parents would allow them. But despite their efforts to keep dry, they quickly got soaked due to their inexperience with the ocean. After that, they gave up on wading and began playing around in the water, splashing each other and diving under crashing waves.

Their parents watched them, having long since given up on trying to keep them dry. After a few minutes, Eleanor noticed something strange about the water. Every time a wave rose up to break, it would—so fast it was almost impossible to see— become almost black in color. She pointed this out to her husband, who also began to watch carefully. They noticed that the flashes of black were only happening on their stretch of beach—there was nothing wrong with the whitecaps far out at sea or the other waves further down the beach. But then another family arrived, the parents settling down on the sand nearby as the children ran to the water. As soon as the first child leaped into the ocean, the waves there began to do the same thing. Nervously, Malcolm called Tom, Laura and Susan out of the water and told them to play in the sand.

So the children turned to fort-making and sand-ball fights. The grown-ups retreated up the beach so as to keep clean, but kept two pairs of wary eyes on their oblivious children. Within minutes the kids were covered with sand from head to toe. But to their parents’ consternation, they returned to the water after Laura got sand in her eyes.

Their parents watched the waves—which, in their area, had returned to normal after their children had left the water—as the three kids dove in. Sure enough, the black flashes started immediately. Just as their mother was going to call them out of the water again, there was a shriek from down the beach. Eleanor and Malcolm looked over to see the family who had been sitting near to them hurrying back to their car, the father carrying one of the girls, whose foot was bleeding very badly.

Eleanor and Malcolm looked at each other nervously. A bleeding foot could be caused by a rock, coral, broken glass… it was nothing that couldn’t be easily explained. But water flashing black was different.

So they gathered up their towels and umbrellas, and loaded their soaked and sandy children into the car. On the ride home, they patiently listened to the endless chatter about the sand, the waves, and the water, not saying anything about the strange things they had seen.

Magical Realism, Part 1

In English, we're currently learning and writing about magical realism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_realism) in connection to another theme; family stories. We were told to choose a family story and write it out, and then rewrite it adding elements of magical realism. This is the first part of my magical realism project-- the story as it happened, with no imaginary elements added.

When my dad was six years old, he went with his family—his sisters Laura and Susan and his parents— to the New York World’s Fair. Afterwards, before heading home, they stopped at Jones Beach on Long Island. That was where my dad saw the ocean for the first time in his life. He and his sisters were fascinated by it, and, not having bathing suits, went wading as deep as their parents would allow them. But despite their efforts to keep dry, they quickly got soaked due to their inexperience with the ocean. After that, they gave up on wading and began playing around in the water, splashing each other and diving under crashing waves.

Their parents watched them, having long since given up on trying to keep them dry.

Water fights quickly ensued, and then fort-making and sand-ball fights out of the water. The grown-ups retreated up the beach so as to keep clean, but the kids had no such intentions. Within minutes they were covered with sand from head to toe. After Laura got sand in her eyes, they returned to the water and the still-novel idea of waves, which they had never seen before.

Finally, after several hours, their parents intervened and reluctantly loaded their soaked and sandy children into the once-clean car. On the ride home, they patiently listened to the endless chatter about the sand, the waves, and the water, until finally the kids succumbed to their exhaustion, and fell asleep.

Essential Question Response: Family

In this semester of English I, the question guiding the course is ‘who am I?’ Everyone has chosen one or two Essential Questions, and we are to respond to the question or questions twice a cycle. My two Essential Questions are ‘How do others view me?’ and ‘What will make me happy?’ Today I am responding to question ‘What will make me happy?


As I said in my last post, my Pomper is in currently in the hospital with heart problems. This past Sunday he was flown out to California to have surgery in Stanford. My grandmother and uncle went with him, and my mom is flying out tonight to be there the day of the surgery, which is set for tomorrow—Friday.

Because of everyone's worry over Pomper, we've had more 'family time' in the past week than we've had in a while. And though I usually prefer hanging out with friends to being with family, this week it's been very welcome. And what I've realized is that I should spend more time with my family even when things are normal. If something had happened to my parents or my sister in the past year-- if one of them died-- I would have had too many regrets to count. Most of all I would regret not spending enough time with my family. Now I'm starting to realize that I need to be with them more.

I used to take my family for granted—I think most people do. We assume that our parents will always be there to forbid us from doing something, that our siblings will always be there to argue with, that our grandparents will always be there to spoil us. We don't want to be with them, and when we are with them we take them for granted. I don't want to have that kind of relationship with my family. So regardless of the outcome of my Pomper's surgery, I want to spend more quality time with my family, because I don't want to take anyone for granted again.

Family Stories, Part One

For English, we’ve all been assigned to tell family stories that we’ve heard from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so on. My grandfather is currently in the hospital with a heart aneurism, and will be flown out to Stanford tomorrow for an operation. In his honor, I’ve decided to center my three family stories on him and my grandmother.

When I was a bit less than two years old, I was able to call most of my family members by name: Mommy, Daddy, Gramma, Auntie Laura, Uncle Greg, and so on. The one person who I never called by name was my grandfather. He always said that I was saving a special name for him—and he was right. But when I pointed at him and dubbed him ‘Pomper,’ he looked—according to my mom—very taken aback, and a more than a bit disappointed. Everyone else thought it was adorable, and started calling him Pomper, too. He quickly got used to it, and now he refuses to respond to ‘grandpa.’ Everyone calls him Pomper now. It’s his license plate, and when people ask him ‘what’s a pomper?’ he likes to say that ‘only a little girl with blond hair and blue eyes knows that.’ Even now, after the little girl—me—has grown from 2 to 14, he and I are still close, and I still call him Pomper.

Pomper’s real name is Paul, but he’s always been called Mickey by his friends. Because of this nickname, he named his construction business Mouse Builders. He started his business in California, but after a few years he was offered a one-year job in Hawaii. He, my grandmother Cynthia, and their three children (my uncles David and Peter and my mom), came to Hawaii, intending to stay only until my Pomper wasn’t needed for contracting anymore—but they liked it so much that they decided to live there. Pomper continued his business in Hawaii, and renovated many buildings in Chinatown, and won an award for one of the construction jobs he did there. Since starting Mouse Builders, my Pomper has always run his own business, and enjoys it very much. He says that he isn’t happy unless he’s working, and he’s not happy working unless he’s working for himself.

My grandmother left college when she was 19 to marry my Pomper. When she left school, she promised her mother that she’d go back one day to graduate. Four children later, she carried out her promise, and went back to school at age 40. She went on to law school afterwards, and 9 days after she got her lawyer’s degree she helped to win the Protect the Koho’olawe Ohana case. In 1990 she began a political career, and has been elected House Representative for her district every single time she has run. Like my Pomper, she has no intentions of retiring any time soon.

Although they both work hard, my grandparents love to travel, and almost every summer they go to Europe together. One trip to France was particularly memorable to my mom, who went with them. She always loves to tell this story about the trip:

My grandparents and my mom were at a small hotel in Southern France. The day they were going to leave, my mom and Pomper took the bags out of the hotel room while my grandma was preparing to leave. They waited for her at the end of the hall, but when she came out of the room, she stood just outside the doorway, and began—as my mom puts it—yakking at Pomper about the room key, the condition of the room, and so on. She didn’t stop, and my Pomper, starting to get annoyed by her lack of mobility, suddenly had an epiphany. There was a long rug that ran down the middle of the hall, and while neither my mom nor my Pomper was standing on it, my grandmother was. While she continued to jabber away, Pomper bent down and yanked the rug out from under her feet.

She got up quickly, and erupted against my Pomper, who was doing his best not to snicker, and then against my mom, who was almost crying because she was laughing so hard. Even now, when my mom tells the story, my grandmother gets a bit indignant about it.

I chose to tell these particular stories about my grandparents because they illustrate their love for family, work ethic, dedication, and sense of humor. I very much look up to both of them, and hope that I have inherited some of their qualities.