Na Aumakua

 I’m writing with my feet immersed in a Rubbermaid tub filled with dried Mullein leaves and warm water. I wait for the hot water to cool enough to soak my swollen feet. Ahh… maybe now.

Earlier this week I drove our trusty 2004 Forrester Subaru, Scout into Seattle to get Pete to an orthopedic surgeon at the V.A. Hospital on Beacon Hill. It was the first time we’ve gone into the city in about 5 years. Neither Scout nor these two tutu go very far from our South Whidbey home, this drive was a needed reality check. 

Replacing a part for humans is a common thing in today’s society; friends talk about a hip replacement as an “easy peasy” procedure much better than a knee replacement is often something I’ve heard. 

While we ride the ferry between Clinton and Mukilteo I walked to the rail to look out. Many fisherfolk were out hoping to catch Brother Salmon. Looking up and into the sky I began to chant Na Aumakua. This is a chant beckoning my ancestors. A chant calling first on ancestors “from the east while the sun rises, to the west where he sets.” Next, the oli calls on the position directly over head “Mai ka ho’oku’i” to the horizon. 

Systemically, and with intention I called on my ancestors in a hei shaped (net shaped) prayer of sacredness. Sacred space.This oli continues with the sound of my voice calling the ancestors who are my “Mana Trust Fund.” I heard reference to my generational wealth in that form for the first time yesterday as I listened to a Keep It Aloha podcast with Kuha’o Kanaka’ole Zane. Kuha’o Zane is the son of a Pake(Chinese) artist-businessman and a Hawaiian Kumu Hula Master with a multi-generational lineage to the mo’olelo stories of ‘aina and man’s (kanaka) interdependency to the places that feed us. As we rode across the Salish Sea my oli was a prayer to put me in the right place in this journey; not my will but “theirs”. They have a better angle on the episodes on earth. 

So this is the part where I split open from the stunning reality of the hospital experience. We were not playing the same game nor following the rules for accessing a replacement part. My astrologer, Elsa P has been writing about the erasure of truth in the world— reshaped and sanded reality. No one wanted the raw truth of your story. 

With an x-ray that showed a hip with no cartilage left to cushion a leg bone but a man able to walk without pain medication we were given the solution at this point: take a Tylenol and call us in a month.

Ha? There’s more to the episode but I’m run out of blog steam. My right foot is “pissed off” and my truth meter needed to call on my Tea Pot Monk ancestor to help me find a way that is not this nor that. 

You know what this feels like? Dare to say?