But as even the movie demonstrates, Family is also a very complicated thing. Sometimes it takes some time—decades, even—to reach that point where nobody is being left behind.

Two brides: Anela & Sarah!

Our family is a pretty good example, “All-American” in its complexity. Keoni and I have seven kids between us, from a total of three previous marriages, and with a rainbow of cultural backgrounds. (I’m the “token white person” in our family—Keoni’s kids are Hawai’ian-and-Mexican, and mine are half Filipino…)

The three oldest kids, Kulia, Anelahikialani, and Keoni—from Keoni’s second marriage—live close to one another in California with their respective partners and kids, and their mom, Diana. With these three kids, ours has been a journey of RE-connecting.  Keoni actually had very little contact with them for a long time, because his third ex-wife is one of those people who feels threatened by the idea of anyone else having a place in the heart of someone who “belongs” to her. She used to intercept calls from the other kids, block their attempts at contact, and keep them out of the picture by whatever means she could manage. When Keoni and I got together—just out of Rehab—one of the first things we did was to cash in my last free airline-miles to buy a ticket to California to see his kids. To put things in perspective here, he hadn’t seen his adult son since Keoni-the-younger was twelve.

our granddaughter Annalia (Kulia’s daughter), flower-girl at this month’s wedding

An important player in our extended family is Keoni’s second wife Diana, mother to the oldest three kids. Despite what could certainly be considered “bad history,” Diana always told the kids “keep the door open” for their dad, and have faith that he would come back into their lives. Quite honestly, we were overwhelmed by the genuine and heartfelt welcome we received—from Diana as well as from the kids. Diana is a wonderful and generous woman who did a great job of raising three amazing people—and I’m honored to count her among my friends!

A few years ago, when we owned our first restaurant, we told the Cali-kids that we’d like to provide them with Christmas dinner… They missed Daddy’s home-cooked Hawai’ian food, so we arranged  with them that we’d have food shipped and delivered at a specified time when they’d all be together. Only Diana knew the rest of the plan: that WE would be delivering! We packed the Prius with food and drove through a snow-storm from Idaho to California, calling Diana’s cell phone from a couple blocks away at the designated time. She opened up the garage door for us and told the kids “the food” had arrived. The expressions on the girls’ faces when Daddy walked through the door… That’s in my mental scrapbook of precious moments!

Sarah & Anela visiting us last winter–first time sledding for these California girls!

This month they knew we were coming, because this was an Occasion. Anelahikialani had dreamed for years—even when her Dad wasn’t actively involved in her life—that he’d be on hand to give her away at her wedding. When they visited us last winter, she and her fiancée Sarah asked us if Keoni would cook for their reception and if I would perform the ceremony. As the day approached, we teased the girls about the explosive potential of a wedding with TWO prospective “Bridezillas”… But in truth, they were both beaming. And beautiful!

Note to myself: if I ever perform another wedding for one of our own kids, I need to stock my pockets with KLEENEX!

I stood at the foot of the outdoor amphitheater on Mount Madonna and Anela appeared at the top of the stairs… Barefoot in a delightfully simple strapless gown and Hawai’ian Haku Lei, absolutely radiant, on the arms of both her parents…

Anela on the arms of her parents

Well, it’s just as well that all eyes were on her, because the minister was having a hard time stemming the runny nose I get when I cry. (The girls gave a thumbs-up to my short-sleeved clerical blouse—largely in giggly anticipation of the “shock-value effect” my tattoos would have on their older aunties—but it didn’t leave me with any options for subtle nose-wiping…)

A lot of OUR marriage went into the words I wrote for this ceremony—after all, it’s my “source material” when I reflect on Marriage…Which is why I choked up entirely when I got to these words: “From this day on you will have the joy of waking every morning in each other’s arms, and both of you in God’s hands.”  That right there is our bottom line—our joyful reminder to each other in our best moments, sometimes a tearful reminder in the tougher times. God gave us each other, and He’s got our backs.

Anela and Sarah’s first married kiss

“Gay Marriage” has been in the headlines a lot this month—absurd arguments about “protecting” Marriage, as if any marriage could actually be threatened by anything so completely unrelated as other people also being married. Any “threats to a marriage” come from within that marriage, end of story. Let me think… My marriage is not in any way threatened—in fact, not even affected—by any other pair getting married. Not the Republican couple I run into at the mailboxes, not the teens down the block with two kids, not Laura and Maria who lived across the street and raised a great kid… Okay, I’m done with the Soapbox now.

Usually when I perform a wedding ceremony, I finish by proclaiming a couple married “by the laws of this state”… But this time the statement isn’t true.

So… The State can go to hell on this one. I don’t presume to know God’s mind, but I DO know a God who isn’t hateful or exclusionary—so when people try to put hateful or exclusionary words in God’s mouth, I’m not buying.

Bottom line: THESE words of the ceremony do stand: “By the authority vested in me as a minister of the Word of God”…  Anela and Sarah are married.

And we are SO joyful to see the joy they bring each other.

At the outdoor reception, the very first dance (“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole) featured the two brides dancing with their Dads. Diana and I stood with our arms around each other, crying and watching Keoni & Anela singing along with Izzy. Our ‘Ohana probably doesn’t fit any version of “traditional” labeling, but I have to think God approves of all the LOVE!

The first dance

Keoni & me in California this month with our three oldest grandkids: Annalia, Keoni, & Leland

I’ve been keeping journals since I was six years old. That first diary is a real gem, with one-sentence entries like: “Today I went crazy and thawt I was a frog.” I wish I remembered the story behind that…  The trouble with keeping journals, though, has always been the fact that when you have the most material to write about, that’s just the time when you have the least time in which to write it!

Traveling is a perfect example. Just when you’re experiencing the most new things that you’d like to record, you’re too busy experiencing them to write about them. So my junior-high journal records every detail of school days—even though I had 180 of those every year that were almost exactly alike—but it just hit the highlights of the weeks my parents took us to Europe.

For the last couple years this blog has replaced my journal, and that same principle applies to the last couple months. More stuff has happened in the six weeks since I last wrote than in the whole previous year when I was writing near-daily posts about whimsical every-day stuff… We’ve had momentous events and joyful events and serious events and exciting events.

our newest grandsons: me with Jacob (son of Keoni-the-younger) and Keoni-the-elder with Dominic (Kawika’s son)

Three of our kids had birthdays (hey, that’s a big deal when you’re under-eighteen!), two of our kids had new babies, one of our kids got married… The child who hasn’t spoken to us for a year since we “practiced tough love” and asked him to move out is talking to us again. (Yes, it’s because he wanted something from us. But—here’s progress—he’s still talking to us even though he didn’t get the thing he wanted.) We’ve been busy preparing for the opening of our restaurant. Keoni is recovering from two major surgeries (spine and knee replacement). Not one, but three in-family “feuds” have come to happy ends—the aforementioned son is back in our lives, my ex-husband and I are enjoying cordial communication after five years of near-war, and Keoni made peace with an uncle who’d been holding a grudge.  And some deeper currents that maybe won’t be up for public consumption (because it’s not just about me—and as open as I’m willing to be about myself, its not my call to make that choice for other people just because they happen to be in my family)… But with all that going on, I haven’t made the time at the keyboard.

our daughter Anelahikialani and her new wife, Sarah (and “Pastor Kana” presiding)

And… I miss it. So here I am again. But now there’s the second conundrum: when you’ve gotten behind and have a whole lot to say, it’s hard to figure out where to start or what to catch up on first… I guess I just have to remind myself that I won’t cover it all in a single post. Rather than trying to tackle all that today, I’ll just get the ball rolling with one funny little “small-world” story.

My A.A. Sponsor, Shannon, takes a trip to Mexico every year, to an off-the-beaten-path spot, and she has gotten to know some of the local folks (she attends A.A. meetings while she’s there) as well as some of the other visitors who come there regularly as she does. When she got back from her annual trip this year, she called me up with a story. She’d been chatting with one of her friends down there, another U.S. citizen who visits every year, and the topic of talk had turned to writing. The friend is a writer, and Shannon mentioned that she had a sponsee who’s also a writer. When she referred to me by name, her friend exclaimed, “Not ‘Kana’s Chronicles‘!” Turns out she’s a reader here. Is this a small world or what? :)

When I started out “journaling” here, I didn’t expect any readers aside from my husband and my parents—but I’ve come to love the connectedness of our community. And I’ve missed it over these last couple months! I have reading to catch up on, as well as writing—but I’d like to think I’m back. And clearly I have a lot of story-telling to get on with! Thanks to all of you who make it a PLEASURE to write here. I love you guys.

Kana Girl’s Hawaiian BBQ on a busy Friday night

Once Upon a Time…  Kana & Keoni owned a Hawai’ian barbecue restaurant.

For more than a year, Kana Girl’s Hawai’ian BBQ held UrbanSpoon’s #1 spot for “Best BBQ restaurant” in the Treasure Valley (home to one-third of Idaho’s population)…. And we had a kick-ass time of it, building a unique atmosphere with our combined knowledge of Hawai’ian culture and Keoni’s cooking—the authentic family recipes he learned from his Tutu Pa (grandfather) when he was a small kid. The word our guests most often used to describe Keoni’s food (a little ironic in view of our own alcoholic/addict backgrounds) was: ADDICTIVE.  We were closed Sundays & Mondays, which meant we’d have an onslaught of regular customers every Tuesday, jonesing for a “fix” because they’d had to go two days without his food. No joke.

A photo featured in “Boise Weekly” with a rave review of our restaurant… Keoni & me displaying a couple “Plate Lunches”…

When we first opened the restaurant, we hadn’t realized what an abundant number of Hawai’ians and Pacific Islanders lived in this area, but word quickly spread among the “Local” community (“Local” being a word Hawai’ians use to refer to other Islanders, regardless of their current location) and we quickly had a flood of folks looking to test us to see if Keoni’s food were the “real thing.” He passed the authenticity test, hands down—his “plate lunch” (a to-go container with sticky rice, mac salad, and favorite Island entrees) is precisely what the Local folks remember from back home. Word-of-Mouth served us well; most months we didn’t spend a dime on advertising—but business was booming.

The two of us ran the place by ourselves–the original “Mom & Pop” approach—so we had the pleasure of getting to know our many Regulars, and after a while we couldn’t go anywhere in town without being pounced on and identified as “the Hawai’ian BBQ people.” No doubt it’s the closest we’ll ever come to experiencing “celebrity” status. (Keoni follows the Hawai’ian custom of addressing everyone as “Bruddah” or “Sistah”–a personable habit that came in handy in the occasional encounter when we were unable to put names to the faces of people who obviously recognized US…)

Wally & Esther—a friendship that began with “Howzit”… Enjoying Lau Lau, an ULTRA-traditional Hawai’ian dish

It led to some interesting social dynamics at times… During our first week of business a gentleman came in the front door and I greeted him with “Howzit“–the Island version of “Hey, how’s it going?” He literally stopped dead in his tracks and repeated the word with a question mark. He looked “Local” to me, but I expanded with an explanation: “Howzit–How’s it going?” He looked askance at my haole (white!) self and retorted, “I know Howzit. How do you know Howzit?” I explained that I went to school on the Big Island, and that I’m married to a Hawai’ian (the cook)—and once he tasted (or should I say tested) his first Plate Lunch order, he was hooked. In fact, he and his wife became some of our closest friends in the years that followed.

Keoni  ”playing ukelele” on a taro root

And then there were my Friday-morning rounds to the Asian markets in town… We made our fries from the taro root (the Hawai’ian staple from which they make poi)–but taro is understandably difficult to come by in Idaho. All the Asian markets got their produce shipments on Friday mornings, which meant that every Friday the markets would be swamped with lovely ladies who came up to my shoulder… And every Friday I made the rounds of all those markets, buying up their taro root. I’m not sure what the Chinese words would be for “tattooed white lady who buys the taro,” but chances are that I’d recognize the phrase if I ever heard it again… The taro fries were a hit—and we noticed that although people occasionally asked if we had poi, very few people actually asked for it. Let’s just say that poi is an acquired taste.

Keoni on a “charm walk,” sharing a shaka with a connoisseur of the keiki (kids’) menu

Whenever Keoni had a few minutes of down-time in the kitchen, he’d wend his way through the dining room (I called it his “Charm Walk”) speaking Hawai’ian Pidgin with the Local folks and “talking story” with other diners.  (Pidgin is a recognized language in the Islands, so Keoni was considered a Bilingual Officer when he worked in the prisons there…) He also sang in the kitchen all day long–he’s got a gorgeous tenor voice and knows all the classic Hawai’ian songs by heart… His Tutu Pa was a musician, and taught Keoni to sing as well as to cook–and also to blend the things he’s passionate about.

Piko (one of our regulars) kicking back for some kanikapila after a meal

Our restaurant was the kind of place where diners (who didn’t know each other) would chat among tables, where people would bring ukeleles and indulge in an impromptu kanikapila (“jam session”) when they finished eating, where a couple might get up and dance in the middle of the floor to one of Keoni’s solos, where regular customers would drop in to say Aloha and give us a hug even when they weren’t there to eat, where people brought in all kinds of Hawai’ian mementos until our decor was a wonderfully collaborative clutter, where we could get to know people’s regular requests and personalize their orders (that’s also how we ended up with Vegetarian and Gluten-Free menus), where people could slow down from the hectic pace of their lives and enjoy a mini-vacation in our “ISLAND TIME zone” (as the sign above the door proclaimed)… We liked to think of it as an embassy of sorts—a few hundred square feet of Hawai’ian soil in the middle of Idaho.

We loved being able to work together—we were happy to go to work together every morning, and we were happy to go home together every evening. We were only half joking when we’d say that Keoni was afraid of the cash register and I was afraid of the smoker—but together we made a Most Excellent Team.  And Keoni liked to boast that he got “paid in kisses and tattoos.” Whenever a diner told me I should give the cook a raise, I’d lay a big ol’ smooch on him!

evidently this chick doesn’t look like a business owner…

We regularly ran up against sexist stereotypes when dealing with salespeople and the like; very few people made their first approach with the idea that I might be the “businessperson” of the operation. One salesman came in while Keoni was out picking up supplies, and insisted on sitting and waiting until my husband returned, rather than talking to me. When Keoni came back half an hour later, you can imagine the guy’s chagrin when Keoni told him, “You’ll have to talk to Kana Girl about that. She’s the owner—I just cook.” Needless to say, this guy had already lost any chance of making a sale. Other people would ask me if they could talk to the owner (never mind my apron with “Kana” across the front, and the “Kana Girl’s” name across the front door)—and one fellow went so far as to ask me if I knew who the owner was. (Surely it couldn’t be the tattooed chick in the miniskirt!)

Keoni at the restaurant with the youngest 4 of our 7 kids: Christian, Kapena, Elena Grace, & Kawika

We were also both very happy about NOT having to work for anybody else. It was one of our favorite jokes, whenever anyone asked if we could make a substitution or fulfill a special request—Keoni would answer, “Well, I’ll have to check with Corporate…” Then he’d turn to me with the question: “So what do you think, Babe?” (We also joked that if I were “Corporate,” that made Keoni my “Corporate Man-date”…)  We loved being able to do things the way WE thought they should be done, and we loved being able to involve our keikis (kids) in the family business.

Looking back now… Opening that restaurant when we did looks in retrospect like a totally harebrained idea. We were deep in a recession and eateries were closing left and right. Neither of us had ever owned a business, we’d only known each other for half a year, and only been Sober for that same half-year. Launching a restaurant just then was a crazy-ass thing to do. And we had a lot to learn! But all in all, it went beautifully. In fact, in some ways it was an advantage to be new to the restaurant business, because we weren’t hidebound by “The Way Things Are Done.” (Take the zero-dollar advertising budget, for example…) Although I also have to say that there were plenty of other things, learned along the way, that we would definitely handle differently if we ever had a “do-over.”

Keoni with another Keoni, who gave us his old license plate to hang on the wall

In the end, we threw our beautiful restaurant away. We didn’t lose it; we threw it away. After a year and a half of booming business, we drank again. In a mere matter of weeks, we threw away absolutely everything that was important to our Sober Selves. Custody of our kids, our restaurant, our house, our car, and almost our marriage. (People regularly ask us if we ever fight—a question usually accompanied by the observation that we clearly have a lot of fun together. The honest answer is that we don’t argue… when we’re Sober. When we drank, we didn’t even like each other.)

Keoni cooking on his smoker—in sunshine, rain, sleet, or snow… And always in shorts! Crazy Hawai’ian.

That was a little more than two years ago. If we could take back the hurt we caused to the people who love us—particularly our kids and our parents—we’d do it in a heartbeat. But at the same time… There are a lot of things about our journey of the last couple years that we wouldn’t want to trade. (In fact, that’s probably a whole post in its own right.) Bottom line, though: despite the financial struggles and various challenges of the last 27 months, we’re in a better place now than we’ve ever been—spiritually, emotionally, in terms of our Sobriety and our family relationships… in every way, actually, except financially.

And then… An unexpected blessing fell into our laps. Keoni had a retirement account from his career in Corrections; we’d been trying to avoid tapping into that resource, but we’d been falling behind on our rent, and he had a couple surgeries to get through (last week’s spine surgery, and another knee replacement coming up) before he could get back to working… So we finally decided we’d better go ahead and cash out his retirement. We thought it would be just enough to catch up on our rent and pay ahead a few months while we figured out “what next”… But when the check arrived, it turned out to be quite a lot more than we’d expected. In fact…

a wakeboard made for us (and autographed) by one of our regular customers

It turned out to be enough to re-open our restaurant. Seriously, how often in life do we actually get a “do-over”? Well, we just got handed one. To quote one of our favorite A.A. guys: “How cool is THAT?!”

Things have been falling into place the way only God’s plans do. (One of the things we’ve learned in Sobriety is that when we’re working too hard to try and make something happen, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate whether “our plan” is really the best thing to be doing. Not surprisingly, God’s ideas are better than ours.)

“Coming Soon!”

We found the perfect location almost immediately. It’s  ideally situated from a business perspective, and it’s right next door to Elena Grace’s school and within walking distance of Christian’s junior high. There’s even a private space upstairs that we can use as a “family room” when the younger kids are there with us.

This time around we also have the advantage of some eager extra hands within the family. Our teenage son Kapena has already been working full-time between two jobs, and he can’t wait to quit those  jobs to work with us. Even Christian is gung-ho about being part of the venture. And we have the chance this time to put into practice all the things we learned the “hard way” the last time around. I can’t even begin to describe how excited we are.

We’re set to open April 13 (our lucky number 13!), giving the landlord time to do some remodeling and updating of the building, and giving us time to “remodel” the cook (those surgeries I mentioned). The restaurant website is still under construction, but I do have the menus posted: www.KanaGirlBBQ.com. And so… The next adventure begins! Stay tuned…

our “save the date” card