Arrival (a Wish - part 2)

Another airplane - but then it landed, fussed in the usual airplane fashion before opening a door. Humid air swept in, oddly character-rich with humus, maybe? and salt. We had arrived at Kona.

Kona's airport is an outdoors affair, with little roofed walkways. We meandered towards the baggage claim, where a lovely lady with an armful of flora - and a clipboard - met us.



Oh, said the Eldest as he bent his head for the lei she offered. The more cautious Toddles fingered his, declining to wear it.. It is soft, he informed me. And lovely, I agreed. Flowers draped around our necks, we took lungfuls of air, scented with sea and green. We waited, sitting on small puddles of green grasslike matted stuff, while birds swooped around us, competing for seeds, perhaps? They were utterly different from any in Boston, and therefore, wonderful.

We gathered up bags, a rental car and headed off. Around us, Hawai'i unfolded, a stark landscape of lava in patchworked stretches of black, brown and even rusty red. A few twisting, low trees grew on the lava, alongside tufts of African fountain grass, a plant whose presence speaks much to Hawai'ian ecological challenges, as we'd learn. In places, the lava looked like thick crusts, cracked and sometimes fallen, revealing surprisingly deep holes. Elsewhere, it was jumbled and lumpy, but always a tribute to the volcano's implacable presence. Even the graffiti by the highway seemed to be a metaphor of the landscape, words spelled out in white coral on the dark lava rock. This is an island of the volcano, I thought, brutal and strong.



When we arrived at our rented condo, the kids ran outside as quickly as they'd run in - laughing, they rolled on the grass outside, gathering armfuls of fallen, scent-rich white flowers, and waxy long, green leaves. A golf course unrolled outside of our back door, crisply manicured and lovely, but with tufts of the inevitable fountain grass insinuating itself throughout the landscaping. Drying it up, almost, with poufs in a flammable shade of straw - and inevitably echoing the starkness that lies a mere birdie away. At night and in the early morning, we'd hear the sprinklers going, reminding me of the Negev. If they turn the water off, what will happen?





Unpacking my armfuls of avocadoes, pineapples, mangoes and greenery, I sniffed at human hubris. Bah - insisting on making so thinly veneered a paradise where none is meant to be. Bunch'a idjits wasting water, and who's buying it, anyway? Not us, that's for sure. The Man and the Eldest talked geology, volcanoes, and fingered bits of porous rock. The Toddles lined up his rocks, murmuring about colors and the size of the air bubbles. Stark and brutal, we reminded ourselves.

But then, we had not yet met the overlapping, teeming life at the volcano's
rim.

a chariot - and a glow - await (a Wish - part 1)

There comes a moment when any experienced belly-acher recognizes that it is time to shut the hell up. Mine came at 4.20 am, after 47 hours of packing, staring at the itinerary, repacking, checking the various elevations of our activities, weather reports and oh yes, repacking. Pausing, then flinging
my hands up, tossing things at bags. Tetrising food into the cooler, too tired by then to remember that crucial note I had meant to write down, but, oh never mind because -

Is it time? Do we leave now? Are they here? a burble of boys tumbled in to our room, alarmingly bright-eyed. Bouncing, even.

Almost, I told them, and woke up their father.

It was full dark outside when we closed the door behind us. The street was quiet, the lamps glowing, and there was a long white limousine. The door was held open by a smiling gentleman, who also insisted on carrying our bags. Inside, a bar curved along one side, holding crystal glassware - and spring water. Are you ready? he asked, and as he started the engine, tiny lights began to twinkle from the ceiling.

Were we ready? Sitting in that improbable car, I felt adrift from reality. Anything could happen now, it seemed, and perhaps that was the point.

Driving through a silent, sleeping city, the Eldest looked out the windows, at the shining lights of the ceiling, and leaned towards me.

Mum, he whispered, oh Mum, my Wish is coming true.

I looked at his face, and threw away any squirms or wriggles I might have. Dug out the gigantic blue pins. Attached them to the boys' bags. We were a Wish family, the buttons announced. Something special was happening here, said the buttons, and we wore that specialness on our faces, and on our bags in a language that anyone could read.

The boys bounced through the airport, wrapped in a fog of their pleasure. People looked quickly, almost wincingly at their buttons, I thought, but some smiled and met our eyes. Wrapped in their glow, the boys didn't notice. When the plane took off, the Eldest's eyes were alight. It is happening, he breathed. My Wish!

It was a glow hard to sustain over the next 15 hours, but a quiet word with an airline attendant, and we relit the kid.

We are beginning our final descent, said the captain, and told us the local time and other bits of useful information. And I know you will join me in wishing the best of luck to one of our passengers....seated in this row, the Eldest is on his way to Hawaii, thanks to the Make A Wish foundation. His Wish is to climb a volcano and save some endangered species, and we wish him the best of luck.

There was silence for a moment. Then, applause. The Eldest's face shifted from startled to thrilled, and he waved at the cheering people around him. And graciously accepted the invitation to the flight deck, where he and the Toddles asked enough questions about the workings of the wings and navigation system to give the captain pause. He recovered swiftly, and offered thoughtful, crisp answers - but the boys could barely hear him over their determination to push every button and knob within reach. Not, thankfully, including the parking brakes. The Man and I fielded eager hands, redirected eyes towards the answers being given, and used the butterfly net to collect and direct the boys towards thank-you and our next flight.

That's quite a pair you have there, the captain told me. Something special? Behind him, an airline attendant raised her eyebrows and looked sympathetic. He grinned. Must keep you busy, eh?

Oh, yes, I nodded. And zipped off, following the Eldest and his glow.

note to the abandoned (a Wish and a sidestep)

Okay, so it's slightly evil to do this while building narrative momentum - I did, after all, just say the words "Eldest" and Wish" in the same sentence - but the Eldest's Wish needs to wait while I settle something.

There are two misconceptions that you might have at this moment:

1. that the Eldest is terminally ill

2. that this is the most extraordinary gift that we could possibly be given, and that bubbling clouds of delight are whisking us far, far up beyond the mundane.

Well, 1. most certainly, he is NOT - and we're grateful for that. The Make-A-Wish foundation grants Wishes to children who are terminally ill, as well as to children with certain life-threatening conditions. The Eldest was such a child some years ago, but he is nothing of the sort now. And 2., well, look at the superlatives. Consider the tone that goes with them. Nod slowly as you realize that, in fact, this Wish makes me deeply uncomfortable.

There is something both humbling and deeply invasive about having a child with a chronic illness, and watching healthcare professionals gather, ready to offer you their time and help. The family home shifts towards being a place of socially constructed pretenses of privacy, whose social patterns are known all too well to those who support it. So, fine. There are other people involved. It was the loss of independence was harder to adjust to, and the ongoing sense of social obligation.

It's not like I can go to an infusion nurse's home and pop an IV into her kid, or cook her dinner. (Although I did try to feed them at every opportunity, and they were very tolerant of my efforts. Oddly, the nurses had always "just eaten something, oh, not fifteen minutes before I arrived." Um, right.) I know that they get paid for their work, and that it is work, and not a personal favor. But their job is inside the family sphere and part of something so very intimate and central to the heart of me - of us - to the point where I can't always treat them as professionals. We force, ask, push, hope them into becoming people, and then relax a bit.

You can have a social exchange, or build a relationship of mutual caring with people. Use it to discharge debt to the point necessary. You can't do either, really, with a professional maintaining an appropriate emotional distance.

And a Wish is a gift bigger than anything we've seen yet, and given by people that don't have a relationship with either the Eldest or me. Yes, there's someone being paid somewhere, but we see the volunteers, the people giving of their time and representing those who gave of their wallet. It's the waving of a wand, held by people we don't know and who are careful to stay remote, and who will happily vanish, post-wave.

And it's just too damned big.

I just can't get comfortable with the idea. After all, look at my kid - he's the kid who throws rocks into the river, irritating painters who've driven wayyyy up to a scenic view.
He's the clown that mugs for the camera with his robotic Lego-thing.
And he's the quiet kid, relaxing post-swim with a book while the light falls just so.
He just doesn't need this. His life is full, rich with pleasures and replete with met needs. It's not uncomplicated, I'll grant you - but he doesn't need a magic wand. Nor can does he need a reward for the twisted, edged complexities of his early years - the kid doesn't remember them, and the Man and I flinch at the idea of a door prize.

Congratulations, your kid got knocked around, so he gets this.

or

Congratulations, you were battered while your kid was sick, so he gets this.

It's unnerving to have the societal powers-that-be offer this as a palliative, whether to their sense of justice or to my own. It's unsettling to have a wand waved to lift the Eldest out of his world, and into a fantastic place where Wishes are granted. Or, perhaps, to argue that he lives in this place, regardless of my stubborn hymns to ordinariness. And it seems ungrateful to be shifting in my seat when the fairy godmother(s) come to call. Or, hell, asking her to produce some ID.

But I am, regardless. I have a wonderful, vibrant son. He is enough, and beyond enough - and replete with our good fortune, the Man and I should gracefully decline the Wish.

But this is not our Wish - it's his. Which might just be why it is going to come true. And it might also be why at some point a mosaic of joy, gratitude and yes, tears, is going to sweep up behind me and smack me on the nose. Because maybe, at heart, my mutterings about not being deserving, not needing or wanting to ameliorate another's sense of guilt/need to act/memory - maybe? Maybe that's all just me, trying to insist that the past stay in the past.

And hoping that this Wish doesn't carry with it too great a burden of memory.