Typically, when ‘Iokepa and I return home after our annual book and speaking tour, our neighbors (effortlessly adapting to the Native Hawaiian ideal of community) rally to prepare for our homecoming. The folks just up the street pick us up from the airport and deliver us (and our collected mail) to the doorstep. The couple next door fill our fridge with essentials: milk, eggs, bread, coffee. The lovely lady around the corner dusts and sweeps and freshens-up three-months of neglect. Her coup de grace is the annual gift of a living, breathing, blooming orchid atop our coffee table.
Last year’s orchid set a record for continual bloom - an amazing three months. After the blossoms fade each year, I have transplanted each orchid into the flower bed directly in front of our home. It’s become - after nine years in this house - a bit of a ritual, and a pretty darned flashy little collection. The donor, dear Olivia, typically looks at that flower bed and smiles to herself: “Those are my orchids.”
Last month, we returned as usual to the exceeding kindness of our neighborhood. We’ve never been tempted to take their thoughtfulness for granted, and we’ve tried over the years to be worthy of the generosity. As the Native Hawaiians says: “Giving and receiving are a single motion. There are equal blessings in each.” No one gets to hold fast to the seeming-superiority of being just the giver.
As usual, we were met at the airport. As usual our frig was filled and our home was spotless. As usual, atop the coffee table was the most magnificent orchid I’d ever seen outside the County Fair. This magnificent orchid had 20 huge deep pink blossoms and another nine about-to-burst buds, nestled among nine thick, succulent, flawless green leaves. To the touch, leaf and blossom felt sublime. For days, that potted orchid filled our home and my heart with a deep gratitude for the return to the home where orchids flourish. That can’t be said of the places we visit on our winter tour.
Not Really an Orchid
Maybe you saw this coming, maybe you did not. I, for one, did not. Orchids never need much watering. Years ago, I learned that the hard way, after I’d demolished several that I’d volunteered to care for. So for this beauty, I drizzled drop by drop into my magnificent gift. Then, drop by drop, I watched the water roll over the edge of the ceramic pot.. I felt for the soil moisture; my finger hit a hard flat surface that resembled soil only in as much as a plastic Christmas tree resembles Spruce. I can’t describe my level of disbelief. Again, I felt the blossom and the leaf. Again, they felt like every other orchid I’d nurtured.
Now the dilemma. I live in the tropics; exotic things grow here that will not grow elsewhere. Certain plantings that I’d formerly grown on the East or West Coasts do not thrive here. That’s just Gardening 101. I’ve never felt the need for artificial flowers. I moved my new “orchid” (now in quotation marks) off the coffee table onto the window seat by the deep Bay Window. There it sat. But with each passing day, it was less a source of pleasure.
Olivia stopped by, full of devilish mirth: “Did I fool you?” she wanted to know. Then, assured me that she’d bought an identical one for herself. Hers, she told me, sat outside.
Soon after, it was my husband’s birthday, and I planned a lavish brunch for assorted friends to celebrate ‘Iokepa. It was an almost perfect day. Throughout the festivities, every single guest complimented that “orchid.” To every compliment, I felt the absolute necessity to answer with the story of my own deception, and my angst and shame over deceiving others. Each guest had their own placement solution:. That “orchid” moved from window seat to guest room to front porch - to the realization that it would never find a home in mine.
Not Really About Orchids
Leave it to my friend Frank - the only other writer at the table. “Oh Inette” he said, “It’s just the perfect metaphor!”
Here, I can only hope that some among our regular readers might cut me some slack with the interminable intro to this story, and realize, I just may be going somewhere cultural. That fake “orchid” was as beautiful as any real one - and yet…
How many ways can we - and do we - corrupt the authentic? How many times do we take something pure, honest, and real - and then mimic its central qualities. We caricature the most familiar features until we no longer are able to discern what originally delighted us. The confusion is the point. We’re groomed to accept imitation: a disposable, Bank of Hawaii labelled ballpoint for a Mont Blanc fountain pen; a loaf of white sliced for thick crusted out-of-the oven. This isn’t about elitism - it’s about being cheated of the original.
Yes, I am talking about more than an orchid, and I’m referencing much more than my husband’s besieged Islands. But for the purpose of this story, my focus is here in the land of Lahui - the actual name of what we insist on calling, Hawa'i’i.
There was a vibrant and meaningful Native Hawaiian culture here for thousands of years - rich in language, ritual, community, and a depth of wisdom that would certainly serve us well in our 2023 era of: war, earthly abuse, and disharmony of every discernible shade. But now, even a well-meaning visitor would struggle to see over the commercial wall of fakery.
These Indigenous people - and their matriarchal, non-hierarchical, ancestor-revering, nature-entwined traditions - were abruptly crushed with laws imposed by American sugar and pineapple titans that forbade every shred of Native cultural practice for four generations. This nation and it’s people were - and remain still - the victims of American colonialism, fundamentalist Christianity, and commercially-bred greed,
We have made a vibrant indigenous people invisible. The success of tourism now depends on it.
As a result.
*Instead of the kahiko - a transcendent, ancient hula danced only as sacred prayer - we are offered something still called hula, but danced to Pop melody and lyric, by non-Natives and Natives alike,at commercial lu’au for a price.
*Instead of ho’oponopono - the empowered women-led, community-based mediation - we have western-imposed patriarchal laws and punishments. Children who were formerly treasured in the care of an entire community are now often, the legal responsibility of a distant state and federal government.
*Instead of the solemn practice of la’u lapa’au - the harvesting of endemic herbs and plants for healing - those diminishing herbs are now products for sale in health food stores, and verboten in hospitals.
*Instead of birth names - spoken across the grave from the ancestors to prophesize the destiny of that child - we have an Indigenous people who (after a century’s legal prohibition against the use of Hawaiian names) are habituated to protecting their children from abuse with an English name. And we have Caucasian kids running around with Hawaiian names lifted out of an American name-book because, “They sound adorable."
* Instead of the ancient chants orally and precisely repeating the history, genealogy, and language (with a child at an elder’s knee for half a lifetime, and then becoming that elder for the other half) - now we have Western academic versions of someone else’s story with a point of view that celebrates the colonists, the Christians, science, and America.
Removed from context, lifted out of community, the kahiko, the ho’oponopono, the la’au lapa’au, and the chants are meaningless and inauthentic - empty words and hollow actions. Not unlike that colorful, confusing, and pretend orchid - vibrant to my eyes, smooth to my touch - yet missing the essential essence of a living plant that never fails to startle with a new flower. Without the authenticity of a living culture, every commercial lu’au is a costumed masquerade, perhaps convincing to a visitor on a two-week vacation, but guaranteed to leave those of us, who know what’s actually possible, hungering for more. Can we, Native Hawaiians and malihini alike, find common ground here, and refuse to settle?