A Year in Waipahu

Our Waipahu home is 54 feet above sea level.  Work is at 16 feet, our Credit Union is at 162 feet, and the Okinawan Cultural Center is near the top at 414 feet.   The land slopes gently downward into Pearl Harbor (Hawaiian terms are Wai Momi or Puʻuloa), ending just above sea level. The nearest peak to my home is Pālehua.  I see it everyday walking out my back door.  The peak is just over 5 miles as the hawk flies, about 12 miles by road, and approximately 2600 feet above sea level.   Everyone who lives here lives on a volcano.  For most of the islands, including O`ahu, the volcanoes are inactive. On the Island of Hawai`i, there are still active volcanoes. Please enjoy a favorite song made in honor of, and blessing for, this peak:  Pālehua . Waipahu can be considered part of the outermost edge of the Waianae Volcano range. Pālehua is the end of that range.  Having erupted 3.9 million years ago, the Waianae range now forms the b...

I first read Kiana Davenport's sweeping Hawaiian novel in 1996.  I was living on O’ahu and doing my clinical residency at The Queen's Medical Center.   At the time, reading the book added considerably to my change in spirit and perspective. So when I moved back (this time to Waipahu), I picked up the book again at my local library.   In reading it a second time, I wondered what might have changed.   What I found was the story and writing hold up all these years later. The book could be called “historical fiction,” though it defies the typical category.  It might be safe under the word “novel,” which is on its cover.  But I would argue that word also doesn’t capture the book’s essence.  Perhaps it should be placed under the spirituality or intercultural relations categories, but it defies these as well. I’m convinced the Waipahu library has the best category for it: Hawai`i.   The book captures some things about life h...

Privacy.   One of the vows of a board certified chaplain is to honor the boundaries of personal information.  While I spent about half of my career in health care, I always followed both the HIPAA guidelines around patient information (basically don’t share) and the Hippocratic oath of do no harm.   It was the same in higher education, where I spent the other half of my career.  I always followed FERPA guidelines around student information (basically don’t share) and the ethics of teachers. As a clergy member, my denomination, The United Church of Christ, required regular boundary training.  I helped to teach this within some chaplaincy programs, and always followed the training of my mentors. All this is to say, I have realized INTERVIEWS ARE COMPLICATED.  It’s not just the boundaries of Hawaiian culture which I describe in a prior post.   It’s the intense feeling of protection I have over the people I meet.  I don’t (and they don’t) know wh...

Our abode replete with rainbows It had to happen.  At some point, any place you move to, stops being completely new and starts to be your residence.  This is true whether you move across the street or across the world.     A year is plenty of time to allow this transition.   For us, this transition to "resident" has definitely been underway.   In this transition, things are experienced differently.   Instead of finding a new doctor, we are scheduling appointments and refilling prescriptions.   Instead of always looking things up on GPS, I know my way around more intuitively.   Instead of meeting new people all the time at work, there are the beginning of familiarity and patterns.   There are even the beginnings of familiar routines, such as shopping at Costco.       Even my weekly role on our KNDI 1270 AM radio show feels less awkward; I am starting to relax and enjoy the experience more.   Transitioning Perspect...