8 a.m.

[ photo note: Sometime in the morning.... that's Luakini Street out in back, actually. I like the juxtaposition of the banana and plumeria trees in the foreground, the garish red and gold streetlamp candle in the middleground, and the mountains in the background. Click on pic to enlarge, 209k. ]

11 a.m.

There was that one Christmas where I was really upset because my mom couldn't buy green cloth to make into a pair of elf pants. The said trousers were for a skit that we Sunday school kids were presenting for the Christmas Eve service. All my other friends had nice, elf pants made out of regular cloth but my mom just got me some green crepe paper and made temporary pants out of those, cut with scissors and patched together with scotch-tape. I was mortified all during the skit, as when I walked around with the other elves, I made crinkly paper noises! I was about 7 or 8 years old then, and it was the first time I can remember being upset that we were so poor we couldn't afford stuff like the other kids' families did. I can remember my shame and embarrassment, but I also remember my mom telling me later how lucky we still were, as we did have some Christmas presents to open, unlike the janitor's kids. They didn't even have any tree or decorations in their little shack behind the church. That was the first time that I began seeing life in something of a bit more textured way, with some glimmer of perspective. I miss my mom this Christmas Day, and look forward to her return on the eve of the new year.

2 p.m.

It has been a solitary Christmas for me. Most of my family is back in the Philippines for a reunion, and I so wish I was there with them. Well, can't say I can blame anyone but me... I should've pursued my U.S. passport thing with more alacrity, and with timeliness. There's always next year though, and the clan will probably be even bigger 365 days hence (not that I'm contributing any children to it. HA! ^_^). I'm glad for the Internet and for the telephone; been online or on the phone since getting up this morning, talking to family in CA, Honolulu, the Philippines, and 'accessing' the family holiday spirit in that way. Telling stories, listening to many, racking up the phone bills. Haha. For Christmas lunch I cooked myself some champorado, a rice dish I love from my youth; various recipes and subtly different methods of preparation were told to me over the phone or IM, and this is how I did it, taking everyone's input into consideration:

Put a cup of glutinous rice (available at any Asian food store, or the "oriental foods" section of any respectable grocery store) into a cooking pot, add 3 cups of water, and then boil. Constant stirring will help the rice to "open" properly, which it does, after about 10 minutes. After the rice has opened, and the water level subsided quite a bit, drop in the chocolate tableya squares. Well, that's how it's done traditionally. Lacking such an ingredient, I made do with Ghirardelli brand baking chocolate (which is quite superior to Hershey's, imho)... 4 tbsps to the 1 cup of rice. Continue stirring, until the consistency is as you like it. Spoon the rice into a bowl, add some evaporated milk, some condensed milk for sweetening, and enjoy.

[ photo note: A Christmas visitor! No, not a wise man or king, not an angel singing hosanna in the highest, not even a sleepy shepherd. Just your typical Lahaina lounge lizard, out to sun itself on my lanai. Larger image, 129k. ]

5 p.m.

(cut the top of my left hand on some sharp, pink coral, and now there's a lovely gash on it, a raw red streak of torn-up skin which will take a while to fully heal, on account of the coral. something in the organism makes flesh wounds take longer to heal. no scars for life, though. wonder why, since i've had many serious cuts and scrapes in my day.)

My dad had the most beautiful baritone singing voice. I was about 11, perched on top of a piece of scaffolding on the outside back of the church, looking in at the packed sanctuary through the window. It was nighttime, and the church choir was putting on the Christmas Eve cantata/play, Amahl and the Night Visitors. Dad played the part of the black wise man, Melchior I think it was, and when his turn came to sing, tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. There he was, in wise man's robes and crown, in blackface, singing his heart out in a voice that would cause an angel to be envious (if dad hadn't become a minister, he'd probably have done well as a theater actor; in seminary school, he played major roles in university drama productions of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman [I think dad played the part of Willy Loman] and Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado).

The years passed and eventually dad and I mellowed out, and we became friends. A few years ago, I altered my lifestyle radically to include being at home with my mother and father for half the year... before they retire back to the Philippines for good, and before they pass on into starstuff. I'm glad it came to this, as life is too short to spend in conflict with one's parent. Now, when I consider my dad, I think of him in terms of the man with the beautiful voice, who spoke with great conviction from the pulpit, and who sang with joy and sweet elegance, on Christmas Eves past. He still sings like that. I miss my dad this Christmas Day, and look forward to his return on the eve of the new year.

8 p.m.

It is awfully weird to think about this, but it occurs to me anyway: when I will be on my deathbed (or if I'm slowly dying stuck on some underwater reef cave, or having fallen from a high mountain cliff, etc.) I will be thinking, if only fleetingly (since death may come quickly), of having spent most of my adult life as a mentor, and the one mentee whom I believe will be on my mind at that last moment, would be Angel Sanchez. It is he who would stand as a symbol for me, for the host of kids whom I would have accompanied on their way from adolescence to adulthood. My own personal 'cloud of witnesses.' (The phrase is from the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, reprised below. The link is to a random, yet fitting, sermon that I found on the Net.)

When you say someone lives "on the other side of the train tracks," it's a euphemism for: they're poor, uneducated, ignorant. Angel's family lived on the other side of the train tracks, literally, in the town of Huron, in the very heart of the Central Valley of California. Take a map of California, put your finger on where you believe the literal center of it is, and chances are your finger will land on the spot encompassing Huron and Coalinga. Huron is itself a very poor, small town comprised of migrant and resident Mexican farm laborers, looked down upon by the people of its larger sister town of Coalinga, where mostly white folks live (many descended, ironically, from immigrants from Oklahoma who had fled the dust bowl and Depression years)... so, if you live on the other side of the tracks in Huron, you're really quite poor.

And you might also be uneducated, as were Angel's parents, but "ignorant" you would not be. They had ancient wisdom in them about life and what it might offer, and they were open to the possibilities of what a better life might be like for their children. They were, for instance, open to the possibility of some seemingly random person in the guise of a short, earnest Filipino man coming into the life of their eldest son and opening a door or two for him, in the realms of education and learning. In short, Angel's parents had hearts of gold. I would be hard pressed to find people more generous than Angel and his family... certainly none more so, relative to their wealth in life and in America. In essence, when I became Angel's mentor, they in turn opened their family up to me and considered me one of their own. I found, in the Sanchezes of Huron, the family I didn't know I had been seeking, and found in them and their small, humble town, the familiar resonances of the other small towns I grew up in long ago and far away, in another culture.

I am telling what is really a long (and for me, wonderful) story in a few short-hand paragraphs, as I wanted to conclude this Christmas weblog on a very personal note, having talked about my mom and dad in the previous updates above. And that note is this: if I were to have had a child of my own in this life, he would probably be like Angel. Or, strange as it is to think this way, he would have reminded me of Angel. Or even stranger, Angel would have reminded me of him. More straightforwardly: part of what Angel and I experienced as mentor and mentee was a sense of being family. It was first with him, many years ago now, that I knew it was possible for that dynamic to happen with a given mentee. And which has happened again, with others who have followed in time. And that, my friends, is a kind of gift: not one that I myself am giving, but one I am receiving. From whom? My dad and mom would say, it was a gift from God. I wouldn't absolutely concur, but say it in another way: I would say it's a gift of grace from the universe itself. If God is the universe, then so be it.

We are children of the universe and there is grace and beauty around us, along with everything else, and we should always, always be open to receiving grace in our lives.

[ photo note: Went out to watch the sunset this evening. Biked north to the Mala ramp (where fishermen can launch their boats off of a pier). You can see part of the old pier in this picture; it's falling apart, and is closed off with a warning sign. So, naturally, kids go in there and play on it, and fish with long bamboo poles. ]

Hebrews 12:1 -- "Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us."

{ net.casting }
^