The Bones of “What We Forget”
Jas looked at the single-story plantation home, at its open porch and unlit string lights, and the panels of wood purposefully stained. She wondered how much of the story was true and how much was a flaw in her mother’s memory, or an intersection of both, time overlapping in untraceable detail. She thought about her grandfather, a handyman, and her grandmother, a teacher’s aide. Both were dead before Whole Foods and Target found a place on tourist maps of historic Kailua Town. Both were dead before the house was fitted with its etched windows and its porch swing, and the brand-new Camry parked in the driveway.
Originally, Blood Work and Other Stories was What we Forget: Stories. This was before “Blood Work” existed, and so I went with the title and story that spoke best to one of the central themes of the collection.
I wrote “What we Forget” after walking Kawainui Canal for the first time. We had just returned after a year away and driving through Kailua afterward to get shave ice was a trip. Tourists were riding around on beach cruisers, Lanikai was closed off to everyone except area residents, local spots were replaced with upscale merchants, and it was clear by the merchandise and signage who the new shops were appealing to. Then, a week later, while looking at apartments to rent, a landlord flat out told us who could afford to live there, and it wasn’t us.
Of course, the same things were happening in Kāneʻohe (see “Closing Costs,” the story that follows this one in the collection) and across the state, and it just made me think about that conflict everyone born and raised here faces at some point, stay or go? (side note: next time you see Misty Sanico, ask her to share her brilliant slam poem about this topic).
It’s no easy decision, but if you’re like my wife and me, if you stay, you stay because of family. Of course, if you leave, it’s often about that too. You do what you think is best, and that’s all you can do.
With so much change, what remains? What’s recognizable when nothing is?
My late grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, and losing my memory is one of my greatest fears. It’s probably because I grew up watching her forget the people that mattered most to her. But you know, during those times, there were moments where the faces and names would come back to her, like when she bit into a cracker and the sweet tang of guava jelly brought her into her kitchen where she often served the neon-orange spread to us.
Photo credit: Donald Carreira Ching
It was kind of like getting shave ice at the spot in Kailua we used to go to when we cut class. They changed locations, but the dome was still powder soft and as sweet as the memory of those days.
With this story, I tried to bring back that sweetness.
Donald
P.S. Join me Saturday, August 16th for a special reading at 10 AM at Mānoa Public Library. It’s the last one until probably September or October. I hope you can make it.
Talk story