When I lived in Hawaii I spent some time counselling my twin sister on a cordless phone with a calling card under the canopy of a large tree just outside of the Lanai.
She was struggling with a boss that didn't trust or value her, yet felt guilt for potentially quitting on him. I did what I would for any friend, told her she wasn't being realized, leaving was the right decision- she would survive, if not thrive, and they would get by without her.
This was largely what we discussed, it was pivotal to her at the time, so I gave her my ear.
When I asked about the rest of the family, there were strange, convoluted accounts of our older sister, and who I will refer to as her 'ghetto-boyfriend.'
Ghetto-boyfriend borrowed my dad's 4-wheeler with permission. My dad discovered he was using the quad to illegally night hunt and promptly confronted the situation. When he went to take back what was rightfully his, ghetto-boyfriend lost it, and pushed my dad off a truck bed (from where I assume he was trying to reclaim the machine).
This was the most redneck assault I had ever heard tell-of.
I was in Hawaii volunteering to pick fallen palm frawns off the retreat landscape in exchange for food, yoga and board. We chanted in Hawaiian before we put on our work gloves. I did yoga most days at 4:30pm in an ocean-facing studio, and at 6pm they literally blew a conch shell, literally, to notify us that our gourmet dinner was ready to be served in the Lanai.
Who were these people, how did they let this happen?
I was very far away. I was 21, it was an appropriate time to be far away.
I started Massage College 2 weeks after High School. Once graduated at 19, I jumped into the career. Once working, I saw a stable future and knew if I didn't take a hiatus then and there, I never would.
I could not have predicted that my timing would leave me so absent and removed from the violence at home.
It was bizarre. Their whole relationship was enabled, the violence taken passively. No one was standing up to this bully, this cancer on the family, and my dad is built like a grizzly bear. It didn't add up. They were protecting.
So I mowed the lawn. The yoga retreat 20-acre lawn. I borrowed Lance's iPod. Fell hard for Iron and Wine, first and foremost for their painfully real lyrics describing the southern states. I was just getting to know my fellow Americans, wanting to understand them; my biking buddy Taylor grew up near the Blue Ridges. My Ashtanga pal Amma was from Kentucky and talked real funny. Iron and Wine's lyrics discussed landscape, Jesus, and poverty. Perhaps in my dealing with a shameful narrative at home, I felt comfort knowing that famous people came from real places. The iconic communities highlighted in lyrics were full of abuse and disappointment; these places were simple and deep all at once.
"Mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry? Blood on the floor, fleas on their paws, and you cried 'til the morning."
On the nights I didn't go to yoga, I biked either direction on the 'red road,' named for the mango trees that bent to make the whole road a tunnel, and the lava rich soil that toyed with the color of the asphalt.
Before returning for dinner on those bike nights, I'd secretly stop at the point. I'd drop my forehead in the soil and talk to the Pacific Ocean. I would tell her everything. From the point, the ocean was absolutely landless in all directions.
I have better bikes and stronger legs now, but I'm certain if I pedaled that road again I would shatter.
My time ran out, my finances had long run out, and it was time to leave America.
I had no idea that my homecoming year would be one of the hardest recoveries I would ever experience.
My dad picked me up from the tiny Fredericton airport. He didn't want to talk about what I'd seen or done, no interest in pictures.
I now know that he was too full. He still is. Too many bills, too many kids, too many missed opportunities, so much time spent being misunderstood.
When I stepped through the kitchen door I don't think my mom said hi.
She punched the kitchen wall and yelped "enough!" at my older sister. Mom had her ugly face on, the under-bite of a bulldog, unblinking eyes.
I think my shoes were still on when my older sister came over to be shielded. She crumpled like a child. She stood crying in fetal position. I rubbed her back.
I missed something that I can never be caught up on.
I could never recreate the great conversations, the honest writing, and the wide-eyes Hawaii gave me. The already far away island parted more and more each time someone's half-interest and cynicism accumulated. I maintained.
There was this thing called YouTube, fairly new concept. Not on a phone, not on a laptop, but on my parents' desktop in the cluttered and carpeted office, I looked up "Upwards Over the Mountain."
The first hit was a live recording at Aquarius Records in San Francisco. The song already brought salvation, I was already invested. This live version made me insist Iron and Wine never make a studio album.
You can't capture the hard pauses, the difficult, eclectic breath it takes to get through a long line; the static. This unkempt man was at home making jokes and tuning his guitar.
7 years later I look up this track quarterly to be reminded.
To be reminded that we're all a bunch of rednecks, full of shame, full of brilliance we can not articulate. When I need a blade of what I worked through with those earbuds on that ride-on mower on a rock in the Pacific, I turn to YouTube.