Back and forth

"Before you know it __________. Fill in the blank."  Eleanor Moss leaned on her walking stick, her thick white hair bundled onto her substantial head. "It was all I could do to get from the front yard here." Dumpling strained to hear but nodded blinking to clear her eyes from sleep still sticking her lashes together. Apples lay on the orchard floor, Today was a day for gathering the fallen apples, that was what she'd been doing before her friend and neighbor surprised her. Dumpling set the fruit down on the old picnic table and walked over to the woman seated outside in front of the Praying Virgin.

"I was thinking about the Molina girl," it was difficult for Eleanor Moss to say more than a few words at a time. There was no rush. Dumpling stood and waited her own thoughts of Shine softening her. "There's another chair around the side there," Eleanor pointed behind her.

Seated now, Dumpling considered. "I think of Shine every day." These two women were friends, close neighbors but there were differences in what made their everyday. A cautious or respectful hedge kept them from deepening the intimacy. Still, both of them were well into their eighties and they were on the subject of a Being that had disappeared from their community.

"How could something like that really happen?" Eleanor Moss was a registered nurse and scientist with degrees that bridged caregiving from many angles. It was her earliest of beliefs as a Catholic that just couldn't quite swallow some of Dumpling's explanations. Esoteric? Probably the word for it. As the conversation waited as all good conversation will, Dumpling knew the nurse referred to the unsuccessful search for their young friend off the bow of a Washington State Ferry in the waters of Puget Sound.

"Lots of strange things happen, and the reasons aren't clear. Those ferry workers never got the blame. They did everything they do on any other work day." Dumpling was hedging. "Explanations are sometimes not what matters." There was a potential portal. Dumpling blinked. Her Familiar appeared in the corner of her eye, the small black cat wavy in the light of the orchard in late morning. Dumpling wondered whether Eleanor Moss could see Spirit Cat, she wondered how Familiars were allowed to make themselves known to others.

"But, I bet they have nightmares all the same. Thousands of ferry crossings happen in a month, a hundred thousand in a decade. There had never been a lost passenger, ever." The scientist and care-giver seated beside her was pulling on the stops she suspected held Dumpling in check. Eleanor Moss didn't probe, waiting instead for more oxygen to return to her heart.

Until now

Her's had become a life of precious discoveries. Her audiences: loved her Sonics, displacing the memory of basketballs and Slick Watts when posters of her performances were Twittered and shared on Facebook. Or, maybe it's because I am one of those aged Boomers who remember the basketball team that any cross-over would even exist. Linda M. and the extended family Molinas: grew both the girl and the bakeries a full decade, well nearly full. More than sandwiches and scones it was the music that led to Molinas' being a place of sounds that enraptured.

I watch as the beautiful InBetweener held to the Log, floating for awhile. I watch and wonder how she could have been pulled from the bow of that huge and powerful ferry. And disappeared. Until now. But then that is the nature of medicine being decanted, the whole process is done with knowledge and reverence for what the Medicine is. To go forward we must look back and step on that narrow path.

The sign still read Molinas', though it was now more accurately the Alvarez family who baked the breads, served the sandwiches and owned the business. A lot changed when Linda Molinas died suddenly, just as her father did. Shine was seventeen. What cryptic message had Spider left that summer afternoon as both women dangled from the hammock? "Chance," the Spider told the blond baker.  It was and is the most cryptic of all messages. There is, or there is no, chance. 

I watch my beautiful InBetweener daughter floating on the Log, and listen as Whales sing to her in her first language. I from my place that can, and do, access her to assure her of her path, can do so only when I too hear the Record Keeper's tales. So many mornings spent making food for others, yet there were those nine years where I remembered who I really am. There is always the chance I remembered soon enough. The tide shifts significantly, I ride the wave of change from my place. "Float for awhile my muli. Float for awhile," I sing.

Rest

It wasn't very big. Her arms dangled over the top of the Log barely reaching the tops of the rock of waves, she had enough strength to hold on. They watched, not far below, but far enough to give the ocean time to balance her. Soft songs pulsed through the waves toward her.

"Float for awhile, float for awhile," they sang. They were a family, and had been for millions of memories, millions of years of memories. Between the rise and fall of the sounds that became song, The Family folded the floating woman in wrapping her tired body with 'ike.

"She will need the possibility. So lost does she feel right now. But, no never mind, nothing goes away for ever. Float for awhile, float for awhile." Koholanui was the Ancient One, ceaselessly generous her brain equal to the size of her heart.

When The Family had sung their newly growing song through the passage of noon bright sun to near set, a question came. "Why this one?" asked one of the young ones. "Can you feel something about her that drew us here?" Curiosity was honorable, and even whales have a learning curve.


This is the first of the 'Ole po. Mid-afternoon on 'Ole Kukahi to be specific. The medicine of story comes ... I take a small dose of it. I write. I rest. I float for awhile.