The Second Monday in October

Whatʻs in a name and whatʻs it got to do with me

I may start dropping this little “welcome or welcome back” weekly intro. Mainly I think I did it so Iʻd have some text before dropping in a “subscribe now” button. I also really did and do appreciate every single person who reads this though! Even though it was true that They (people) kept telling me I should write my memoir, it still astounds me that You continue to be interested in what I write. Mahalo.

And yes if you clicked through from social media or were sent here by a friend and want to keep reading my (usually weekly) essays, here is the link to subscribe so they come to you by email.

There is an argument in progress on my smart phone. A silent one. A standoff. Currently the outcome is a 50-50 tie. When I glance at my appointments for Monday, the screen shows this:

Color coded, multiple calendars, acknowledging both the U.S. federal holiday “Columbus Day” along with the alternative “Indigenous Peoplesʻ Day.” They are not particularly comfortable in the same room. Or in my brain.

I am paying attention for a practical reason, not only a philosophical one. I have a real estate closing this coming week and attendant confusion around how to count business days for contractual purposes. The post office and banks are closed. The Hawaiʻi Bureau of Conveyances and escrow offices are open. Adding to my confusion, on some local calendars Monday appears as something called “Discoverers Day” despite not being celebrated. My kitchen calendar, the one where we note upcoming events and travels, acknowledges that for my friends and readers north of the U.S. border, Monday is Thanksgiving. No ambiguity there.

Aside from navigating my transaction closing, why do I care about these warring declarations of importance? Why am I spending so much time thinking about the second Monday in October?

The answer is that it has everything to do with why They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir. It goes right back to my very first essay on my brand new Substack the Thanksgiving post in which I talked about my then five-year-old hanai granddaughter, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, bringing home Thanksgiving materials from preschool. Coloring books written from the perspective of people whose ancestral story matched mine, not hers, but assumed the young reader shared that perspective. This - the process of noticing, finding it uncomfortable, and discerning what it is my place, my role to say or do - this is a large part of my personal growth work and my professional life. What we call the second Monday in October matters in this exploration.

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Recently, upon learning of my work in conservation and noting my passion for saving places and culture in Hawaiʻi, someone asked me if I had always wanted to do that work. My quick, joking response was that it was only five years ago, well past my 60th birthday, that I began to realize that I was, in fact, finally doing what I was meant to be doing with my life. It is not like as a child I knew to respond that having a conservation practice within a real estate brokerage is what I would be when I grew up. And yet, those who followed my entire memoir through its first year here might have been like DUH.

What would I have answered as a child to the question “What do you want to do when you grow up”? Given that my two favorite books were A Wrinkle in Time and Four Ways of Being Human, I was good at math and writing, and loved animals, I thought vaguely I would be like Mrs Murray: a scientist who also mothered not only her own children but whatever strays walked in the door, human or otherwise (even supernatural beings). Or else if I really dreamed big, another Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist going to live in exotic places with people who thought and lived in very different ways than the suburban or rural Colorado neighborhoods of my childhood - and I would write about them. ¹

Both of those answers would have contained a germ of the truth that maybe I did always want to do this when I grew up; I just did not have the understanding of the shape “this” would take . Where I live and how I live are the pieces that had to unfold. The conviction in my core that we have to have courage and take action in difficult situations, we have to stand and even fight for whatʻs right with love, the absolute certainty that indigenous ways of knowing and thinking and relating are what the world needs - all of this my childhood self knew. All of this is what my childhood self put herself in service to, even though my young adult self had to gain ironically applicable skills through seemingly oppositional experiences in order to fulfill that pledge of service.

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Starting with this post at the beginning of 2024, I have been writing primarily about horses, horse wisdom, lessons I have learned from them. And if you click the link, that post was also about being a genuine ally rather than a vampire sucking on indigenous cultural wisdom traditions and their teachers and storytellers. In it I wrote:

The very ability horses have to draw out empathy and feelings of connection is what makes me think they can help teach humans how our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and behaviors can traumatize those we “other.” Maybe the horses can do it, when other humans and their endless “diversity equity and inclusion” trainings cannot.

And so my horses offered that I could share their experiences and insights. Until now. This week, Kūkūilama went silent. Hottie - she and I have barely begun our journey together. And Zaraʻs story has been told.

It is time I find my own voice on these matters. More irony, I went off in search of my lost voice during last Juneʻs 1,000 Words of Summer project. The only way to find a voice that sings resonantly, on key, with expanded range, whispering or belting as the lyrics demand - the only way to to find it is to sing. Well, find a good teacher, practice your scales, and sing sing sing.

Iʻm feeling as shy about writing about these topics as I am about singing in public. I know I will make mistakes. I know I will stumble over the words. I will sometimes be a bit tone deaf and not hit the right note. I will open myself to the judgment of others.

But I cannot put it off any longer. The time has come for me to stop rehearsing, to share the singing and the thoughts that happen mostly when Iʻm alone, driving through the beauty that is this island. Itʻs time to stand for something² and sing those words out loud.

1. I called that essay “What Happened Before What Happens Happens #1.” In it I also tell the story of how I came to take two semesters of Lakota to meet my college language requirement. The irony that studying Lakota would meet what was called a “foreign” language requirement, even though every student in the class except me was learning their native language and had no idea how many generations their people had lived on the “American” plains except that that the Keeper of the Pipe is 19th Generation and the people were there long before - yeah, that was pretty much the same irony that started me writing about the second Monday in October this week. “Discoverers Day?” - oh please.

2. I am also not unaware that October 7th marked the 10th anniversary of the first day I chose to stand as an ally at Puʻu Huluhulu. Some of you will know what that means. Or even remember that day. The dates we choose to memorialize and what we recall of them matters.