Playing with pie pans and a silver faced moon

"The Venus Mars sextile holds all weekend long. This is a great time to play and create bonds. Saturn sits between then, helping these bonds take hold ...The ideal is to have an adventure and enjoy. The object should not be to corral or tether; the bond is chemical, attractive, not restrictive. Enjoy each other (or yourself) and the bond will emerge. Act to attract. " - Satori

Pete and I are playing with the details and props to use tomorrow when we pitch our story tents. The wind, the weather is changeable as it can be. I have fresh-ground 'olena (turmeric)-garlic and olive oil brew working its medicinal magic in my inner ears. The 'olena is from Kalihi Valley on O'ahu grown and harvested by the young people who are 'caring for my grandmother.' The people and the place are called Ho'ouluAina. My cousin Kaliko and her friend harvested, Kaliko dehydrated and ground pungent yellow-orange root rendering me a triple-wrapped Ziploc roll of fragrant turmeric. I opened my Priority Mail EXPRESS parcel yesterday. Wow, what a smell. Earth. Spice. Yellow. In the chants and stories of Hawaii Haumea (Earth Mother also known as Papahamoku) and her husband Wakea make their home in Kalihi Valley. My blood grandmother Mokihana Daniels Amona lived, birthed and raised my mother Helen Mokihana in Kalihi Valley. In many meaningful ways I am tapping into the roots of my ancestors and wear the color of Haumea (yellow) in my ears. I need the caring Creatrix to help hear what I need to hear.

When I was a young woman just out of college, my first work was that of teacher. My first classroom was on the slope of Wilhelmina Rise in Ka'imuki. The old wooden building was held together by the thousands of termites who alternated eating the wood while holding it together. Sweet and young four year olds filled that first classroom. I was probably as sweet and young on the scale of womanhood, unseasoned as a teacher, but already practicing the craft of all teachers -- resourcefulness. That was 1970. I was twenty-three years old. Between then and now the classrooms have changed, and I have traveled with my net of resources. The nets have expanded with props to make a point, brighten a story and convince decision-makers of the value of play even in the serious agenda of profit-driven business.

Tomorrow my tall white-haired partner will help me tell stories. One of the stories will involve the full silver-face of Mahealani the Full Moon. We will need to call on the audience, and the elements to join in to make the story real. We will invite the ancestors, and invite as well the willingness to imagine. Pete and I have rooted ourselves in the community of South Whidbey and have bonded with people who come to sit under the tent. We like to play even though some serious moments make people say, "I would never have imagined ...!" Between us we have one hundred-and-thirty years of experience being resourceful. We rattle the pie tin that once held a Granny Smith Apple pie, snip a postcard of a glass faced shining moon, use a dowel off of a drying rack to hold up a mask, and cut lengths of net used to keep the robins (unsuccessfully) out of the blueberries to replicate a once-greedy man's attempt at hording.

It's a grand and fully-lived life when two old dears of 130 between them can be tickled by the silver face of a pie-pan moon and look forward to telling stories that hold life together. Thank you Grandmother!