Does your Barnes & Noble not serve Chili and Rice at their fake Starbies?
The Aloha sign at Ala Moana Center
That’s not what this post is about, but I did just get Chili and Rice at the fake Barnes & Noble Starbucks at Ala Moana. It was advertised as “So Ono!”
It was pretty ono but it was no Zippy’s Chili.
Yesterday I woke up early to walk my little sister to school. She’s a fifth grader, and in their equivalent of a Broadcast Club, so we had to be at the classroom by 7:15am. That wasn’t a probem, because I was essentially still on a Florida wake up schedule (I stayed up until 11:30pm last night playing a board game with my mom and brother, so now I am pretty solidly on Hawai’i time).
Sometimes thinking about Layla throws me for a loop. She’s technically my half sister, and because she’s so young and lived in Washington State until I had already moved off the island, we didn’t “grow up” together. I struggle with connections to other people, and because she wasn’t a part of my formative years, the fact that she’s related to me in the way that she is can be a bit baffling.
The thing that throws me for the biggest loop is that she’s not Native Hawaiian. There’s nothing wrong with that. Growing up and even now being Native Hawaiian has been such a big part of my identity, and having the opportunity to grow up in Hawai’i very much resonated with me. I don’t know what it must be like to grow up without that connection to your culture.
That’s a big assumption for me to make. I’m Mexican on my father’s side, and for all I know, he could be raising her to be proud of that part of her culture. Or her mom could be raising her to be proud of. . . whatever type of European her mom is?
It very possibly isn’t important to her. It’s very possible that she’s just growing up as Layla, and making that whatever truth she wants to make it. If that’s the case, I have a lot of respect for her, because that’s not something I think I could have done.
I don’t have a concept of loving someone because they’re related to me, or because I’m supposed to, so learning to love Layla has been a journey. Not a particularly hard one, but it’s a choice to pursue, if that makes sense. I don’t want to feel like I’m butting into a life that I haven’t really been a huge part of for the last eleven years, so reaching out myself is a bit stressful, but I think if I want to have a relationship with her it’s going to be my responsibility to extend that branch.
I want to love her. I don’t want her to feel othered by her family. I think, from what I’ve seen so far, she’s very worth getting to know.
From the left: Layla and Falcon in the news room at Layla’s school (I’m not sure why I said From the left here. If you’re reading this blog, you probably know which one is Falcon. I’m gonna leave it though, I think it’s fun)