Na wai ke kupu o ʻoe? Whose sprout are you? Whose child are you?
As I prepare to start fall semester in a few weeks, I go through the same motions that I have for the past 28 years. I create my syllabus, gather my resources, go over my notes from the year before, create my semester plan, my units, my day one lesson. This rhythm is familiar. But there is nothing familiar about this school year. In this year of pandemic, the new normal is that there is no normal. When our leaders shut the schools down at spring break, when planes stopped flying, businesses closed, when all we had was each other on the other end of a Zoom call to understand that there was a world outside of our house, we were just playing at normalcy because the end of the tunnel was summer when schools would be out, when we would flatten the curve, when we could start opening up again. As long as we could see the light at the end of the tunnel (June 1, July 1, August 1. . .) we could talk ourselves into the idea that things would go back to normal.
That was not the light at the end of the tunnel. It was indeed another train coming towards us.
The challenge is that I cannot fully prepare for an unknown future when I cannot use the lessons I learned from the past. My 28 years of “first days of school” does not help me. Instead, I need to start with me. . I must answer the question in the ‘ōlelo noʻeau: na wai ke kupu o ʻoe? In order to answer that, I need to go further back to the women that made me in order to reacquaint myself with the tools for survivance that I inherited from my mothers. In this same way, I will start my new semester with these teacher candidates also starting with themselves in order to use their identity and their lineage of survivors to find solace.
I cannot tell all of my mothers' stories. It would take me another lifetime. But I can offer a metaphor that talks about their ability to push back against absenteeism, victimry, erasure. . .their ability to grow “despite concrete” (Cisneros, Four Skinny Trees).
My mothers are the white ginger patch of Lahaina.
White ginger likes the rain forest middle lands where it is lush and it can spread its shoots out to catch the rain. Even in ideal situations, though, they are rare because they must compete with the more aggressive yellow ginger. Lahaina is neither rainforest nor middle lands. Lahaina is on the dry, west side of Maui, red dirt, ocean, no “wai” in its name. But I was born on Waineʻe Road, two blocks up from the famous Front Street in my maternal grandmother’s house. On the side of the garage was a thriving white ginger clump fed by the wash water that emptied into the red dirt yard. I get a headache from the smell of yellow ginger leis. It is more cloying and strong. When you leave a room with your yellow ginger lei, the smell clings to the furniture. But the white ginger is a subtle, shy smell just for the wearer. My mothers are that white ginger patch thriving in places that may not be ideal, may not be glamorous, may not even be logical. But they thrived, and survived, and they remind me everyday with their subtle presence – we are still here. I come from my mothers, my ʻawapuhi keʻokeo, survivors, teachers, leaders. . .and that gives me hope.
Na wai ke kupu o ʻoe? Whose sprout are you? Whose child are you?
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