A thin flock of little green parrots chatters by overhead.
Morning in my driveway, there is the big traveler’s palm with its 10 flat fingers reaching up high, green all around and our banana trees, their leaves drooping like in a postcard.
Bromeliads, light blue Impatiens, the twisting Aloe plant, and shooting up from the lawn, the tall palm tree with its precarious coconuts waiting to fall.
The breeze starts up shuddering a million leaves, a dove sits calmly on the warm driveway. All is silent and golden in the first morning light.
Somewhere there are freeways and cars honking, an election with loud obnoxious people trying to represent me. They are shouting their way to the presidency and one wants to build a wall to keep people out.
Somewhere people push and punch each other because they don’t like the color of the other’s skin. People fight to their last breath because they disagree with another’s choice of a book to read in church. Somewhere it is always crazy and loud.
Another flock of green parrots flies by overhead.
The sun is rising higher, turning the sky whitish blue. The breeze is stronger now and the palm trees wave and sigh, the dove gets up and starts walking slowly across the driveway. All is still silent and golden. Somewhere a dog barks, that’s about it.
Here in Hawaii people are quiet in the stores, no shouting except to tell a joke and laugh. Here people don’t even notice different colored skin and if they do they make light of it, da haole guy, da local guy, da popolo, so polite and sensitive, we know how far to go about race.
We tell Portagee jokes and the Portuguese forgive and laugh along. We know which jokes to make, and not make.
And who we love doesn’t matter, men and women, men and men, women and women, not our business.
We accept each other, you might call us civilized here in Kona and all around this big social club we call Hawaii. We even have our own secret hand signal, the shakka.
Somewhere people are shouting and punching each other, they are fighting over Bibles and Buddha, crosses and crescent moons. They drive fast on freeways, yell in stores and are downright rude.
Faraway, the candidates wanting to represent us somehow never made it here, never shook our hand, never gave us one lei. They shout out hate and pound on podiums, screaming about somewhere called America. And one of them wants to build a wall.
The flock of green parrots will come again tomorrow, the dove flew up already, and here there are no walls between us in paradise.
Dennis Gregory is a writer, artist, singer, teacher and Kailua-Kona resident who mixes truth, humor and aloha in his bi-weekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com