Page 2 - MidWeek - July 20, 2022

2 MIDWEEK JULY 20, 2022
Homemade Memories Of Childhood
“The meaning of life is to discover your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” — David Viscott
IGrowing Up
Back in the old days, nearly everything we gave to neighbors or received from friends was homemade. Mrs. Taguma grew her own vegetables and shared her best, crispy Mā- noa lettuce with us. Once in a while, her husband brought canned pineapple home from his work, so she’d bake her famous pineapple up- side-down cake and always sent the extra one over, just before dinner. The thick, brown sugar formed a car- amelized crust on the top, and the sweet, sticky juices soaked deep into the warm cake. Wonderful!
Ma loved making jams and jellies. I still recall the unfor- gettable smells in the kitchen as I watched her pour each scalding batch of jelly into empty baby food jars and seal them with paraffin.
grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. While the wind- ward side of O‘ahu has been my home for many de- cades, I grew up in Highland Park, attended middle
write, bake, sew, knit, plant, weave, sing, paint, draw and share those wondrous ex- tensions of themselves, for I came to believe that in the very act of creating some- thing, they’ d exercise their inner beings and the results would reflect their pulsing souls. Over the course of a lifetime, an awareness of the person they were becoming would evolve, and a pro- found sense of self-appreci- ation would grow along with a heartfelt gratitude to those whose lives they touched along the way.
Linda Tagawa is a retired school teacher, and enjoys writing about island life.
Chasing The Light is pro- duced by Robin Stephens Rohr and Lynne Johnson.
and high school there, and learned bucketloads of those important life lessons we’re supposed to learn during our formative years. Thus, this Fourth of July took a wrenching twist for me. I’d planned a fun day ending with a family trek to watch Kailua Beach fireworks. As we hear over and over after “incidents” occur, no one would have thought that Highland Park, Illinois, would become simply one more tragic footnote along our vast American highway of mass shootings. Seven killed, dozens injured, thousands traumatized, millions upset. And we shrug.
Community values each individual by the unique skills peculiar to each respective person, like the lady who the author remembers made ‘ono pickled mango.
Not every person who’s been marginalized, ignored, dumped on or worse ends up taking out his or her aggres- sions by indiscriminately firing away. Not every para- noid person who writes bad things repeatedly on social media ends up shooting up a church, school, parade, concert, shopping mall, party, celebration, workplace, hospital or home; but to let this continue with the min- imal efforts we see in this nation to fix things in some way, well, that in and of itself just seems insane.
juicy lychee tree, and the aunty who made ‘ono pick- led mango. Then, there was the uncle who lived across the street who taught Ma how to drive, and during tax season, there was always someone waiting in our living room for dad to do their taxes, manua- hi (for free). We valued one another by the unique skills peculiar to each respective person.
and diverse skills, and this, in turn, led to a genuine sense of fellowship that permeated our surroundings, connected one person to another and one neighborhood to the next, as people gained feelings of self-worth and wellness.
We don’t live in a world of black or white, but things do seem dark gray when incidents like this happen and we simply move on. Collateral damage? Good grief. We don’t live in world of blue and red, it’s various shades of purple nationwide, so get used to it. We don’t seem to be doing too well in basic civics these days (P.S., teach it in school), as we hunker down in a world where we rationalize via ethics of convenience — whatever works for my world, even if it seems to contradict some basic rules of order. My world, my view, my needs, my tribe, my 401(k), my fears. My goodness ...
KELLEY
We remembered people in
Year in and year out, I watched as homemade cre- ations bonded communities and caused the essence of our humanity to thrive. And so, when I began raising chil- dren, I naturally encouraged them to create, build, invent, produce, construct, perform,
our community by the fruits and vegetables they raised, items they made, or things they sewed and shared. There was the man with the sweet,
New Century Schoolbook bold (scaled H 73.6)
A sense of worthiness flourished and grew in our neighborhoods as people shared their homemade goods
with Linda Tagawa
The New York Times columnist extraordinaire, Frank Bruni, recently wrote about current American politics and its wave of “moral elasticity.” So, just how far are we willing to stretch? Pretty far, it seems, on far too many issues. As the pall lifts from COVID, we shift away (hopefully) from an airborne pandemic, which caused understandable safety concerns and paranoia as we witness heartbreak in America, where hard-fought freedoms valued by so many get tested on a weekly ba- sis. And we shrug.
I’m so sorry, Highland Park. Think about it ...
john@thinkaboutithawaii.com