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My mom's house

Mom’s House

We’re back from our short Hawaii trip and I have lots to share! Even though my whole family (except me) was sick with colds, we had a great time. We didn’t leave the house much, but the purpose of the trip was to spend time with family, which we did.

Road to Kalihi Valley

My mom lives in a neighborhood called Kalihi Valley (you might know the area from HGTV. They recently featured a home there, which is currently for sale). The valley is nestled between a lush mountain range, so it gets lots of rain and is very green. She lives in the lower level of a cinder block house and my Auntie and Grandma live up top.

My sister and her family live a few blocks down from my moms, at the bottom of a really steep hill (that used to be steeper before the city paved it a few years ago), in the same house where my grandparents lived when they settled on Oahu. My mom, sister and I lived in the smaller back house until my grandpa had the duplex built (early 80s?).

momsginger

Loads of ginger flowers.

Looking up at mountain range

My grandpa was a natural gardener; it was in his blood. The plants liked him, too. They listened to him and gave back to him. Sadly, he’s no longer around to pass his secrets on to me, now that I’m willing and eager to pay attention. My 90-year-old grandma still tends to her plants when she can. She loves orchids especially.

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Grandma

Every inch of the small front yard has a flowering or edible plant on it and the perimeters around the house are filled as well. There’s ginger, ginger root (which my mom dug up for me to take home), papaya, malunggay (also called moringa. found in lots of Filipino dishes), tomatoes, bananas, eggplant, chives, green onions, edible ferns, bitter melon, bird of paradise, orchids, poinsettias, gardenias, succulents and aloe (I’m  sure I’m forgetting some!).

The green thumb gene may have skipped a generation (my mom is an excellent gardener. me, not so much), but I’m still going to try my hand at it in Michigan (we’ll have a backyard all to ourselves!).

momspapaya

Papaya and bitter melon vines.

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Ginger Root

momsaloe

Aloe

I never realized how different Hawaii was from the rest of the country until I left home and came back to visit. I know it seems pretty obvious. It’s an island with island culture, but it was simply just “home” to me. Each time I go back, I am more grateful that I grew up there and have roots there. It will always be home, just as San Francisco will always be home, long after I move.

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Welcome to the Blog: the What and Why

the Golden Gate A quick Google search reveals that Grosse Pointe is a 10.4 square mile “coastal area in Metro Detroit…that comprises five adjacent individual cities.” Its dwellers are “urban sophisticates” who benefit from a “small-town atmosphere” and “strong sense of community.”

Scroll further down and you’ll find this:  “GP, as it is called by some, is a hotbed for money, teenage marijuana smoking and a prodigious amount of alcohol, thanks to expensive fake IDs.”  And “rich white people” and so forth. Did I mention Detroit? I started this blog as a way to process our family’s move from San Francisco to Grosse Pointe, my husband’s hometown.

When we first tossed the idea around, I was elated. Get me the bleep out of this child-hating, downstairs-neighbor-yelling, summer-is-winter-but-winter-is-also-winter, no-parking-spots-ever city. Enter the panic attacks. I’d be on a run in the Presidio looking down at the stormy grey Pacific Ocean…and in front of me the ever majestic Golden Gate Bridge. Then BOOM. Weakness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, nausea, tears, etcetera. The truth is that I looooove this place. I freaking love it. I love its insane beauty, its crazy people (hippie, yuppie, techie, LGBTQ, homeless, I’ll take them all), its quaint and quirky neighborhoods, its progressiveness, its intensity, its demand for equality and betterment…there’s no place like it.

Map of Detroit

Note: Lake Huron is mislabeled. It is Lake St. Clair.

Still, I sanction the move. I’m ready for a change. For the comforts of suburbia. A suburbia that shares a border with one of the most turmoil-ridden cities in the country. Let’s do this thing.