Near my old house was a stream that was always available for cooling our feet on a hot summer day.
On most afternoons, we had to be careful of the 'opae, which had a tendency to pinch your toes if you didn't know where to step. For myself, I liked sitting on a pile of hand-sized stones which were worn smooth by years of the consistently flowing stream. The water came up chest high, and it was a nice way to relax. Today, I can hear the music from my brother's room, which means that he is up and about.He was probably going to make himself some lunch before he took off to work his 2 pm shift at the gas station. He's listening to Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells.
"Kua'ana, where's your brother?" I can hear my mother asking him.
"Probably in the stream, playing," he replies.
"Go get him out of there, please," she says. "There was heavy rain up mauka this morning; that stream is going to swell over."
" 'Īnea!" He shouts from his bedroom.
"Go and get him, Kua'ana," Mom scolds him. "We don't raise our voices in this house, and don't you dare grunt at me."
That's the sign for me to get myself out of the stream because by the time Kua'ana comes to get me, he'll be frustrated at having to take a second out of his day to retrieve me per our mother's orders. If I meet him halfway, it might not be too bad for me. I was wrong, of course. He wasn't happy at all.
"You heard Mom shit for brains," he puffed at me. "Get in the house."
I was soaking wet, dripping from head to toe. I walked toward the little concrete area where the water hose was.
"I'm not a shit for brains," I told Kua'ana. He flicked the back of my ear with his middle finger, making me jump and squeal out loud. "Owww!"
"It's not my job to have to watch you or go find you. Stay close to the house so that Mom doesn't have to worry," he told me. "You heard?"
"You huuuurd?" I mocked him. "You huuuurd? You huuuurd?"
I broke into a dead run, but I didn't make it far. Kua'ana caught up to me in seconds flat and nearly dislocated my right arm with a left cross at the back of my shoulder. I hated his bony knuckles. If he wasn't using his knuckles to punch me, he was digging and twisting his knuckles into my thighs. He never once broke his stride after the assault. He pulled his keys out of his pocket, headed straight to his car, and took off for work. His music was still playing on his phonograph. As soon as I washed off with the hose, I was going to dry off, get changed, go to Kua'ana's room, and smash his entire record collection. That was the plan until my Mom cut me off in the hallway.
"Don't even think about it, 'Īnea," she warned me. "Your father gave that record collection to your brother. It means a lot to him."
"It's just a record collection," I replied.
"It's the only thing your brother has left of your father," my Mom said.
"I don't have anything of Dad's," I said.
"You have his name, 'Īnea. " She fixed my hair with her fingertips. "You have his eyes and his temperament. Kua'ana has that record collection because he and your father would listen to it. At the same time, they worked on making puzzles together, or reading, or building something, but mostly when Kua'ana helped your father with fixing the car."
"That doesn't mean he can hit me all the time," I countered.
"I know he thinks it's an older brother privilege," she nodded. "I'll talk to him about it."
~
Years later, Kua'ana married his girlfriend Brenda near that stream. Their one year baby lu'au for my niece Luesa was celebrated near that stream. When her time came, our mother Āliamāmane Kauila's services were held near the stream. Many people attended. Cars were parked all the way down to the main road, and had it not been for people bringing food on their own accord, we might have exhausted our own resources three times over.
Kua'ana and Brenda took over the house, and I moved to town after graduating from college. As life would have it, I fell in love with an arts major, Sīla Tautopu. It was a long courtship and a lengthy feeling-out process, but when the time came to make it official and get married, Kua'ana insisted that we have the ceremony and reception at the old house near the stream. It was a lovely gathering of people who loved us and whom we loved. When the officiant pronounced Sīla and me as husbands, just for a moment, I saw my mother standing at the top of the backstairs, looking on with a warm smile. Kua'ana caught it too and looked in the same direction. He gasped for a second, and his tears came forth. We were back at the old house the following late afternoon for a family dinner. While everyone else prepared for the feast, Kua'ana, Sīla, and I went to sit in the stream and enjoy the crisp, cold water. In the house, music played from one of our fathers' record collections.
"You still have that old phonograph?" I asked my brother.
"No, it finally died," he laughed. "I had to transfer everything to a playlist."
"That's George Harrison, right?" Sīla asked.
Kua'ana was surprised. "You know this one?"
"Oh yeah, this is George Harrison's desire to get closer to a divine connection," Sīla shared. "It's a beautiful song."
"Makes sense," I nodded.
"How is that?" Kua'ana asked.
"This is from Dad's record collection; it's your divine connection to him." It was an observation, but for Kua'ana, it brought home a kind of truth. He sat there and cried like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He leaned over and gave Sīla a big hug.
"Hey, that was my revelation to you, you're hugging the wrong person!" I laughed.
Kua'ana reached over and dug his knuckles into my thighs, then gave me a big hug. We headed back to the house after, with me personally thanking the stream for seeing us through a lifetime of allowing us to sit in its waters and in exchange giving us a truth, and love that will last as long as its water flow consistently, endlessly from its inception through years of filtering through volcanic rock until it meets us where we always await its embrace.
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