The Frog's Song
126
The Frog's Song
126eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781947548152 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Regal House Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/17/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 126 |
| File size: | 904 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Morning in the Wilderness
Where would I be happy?
Have you ever asked yourself that question? Being a smart person, you probably ask yourself how you can be happy, rather than where, but this is the question that was on my mind one morning as I prepared to rake the yard.
I was standing in the horse paddock, having already cleaned the barn, and fed my mares, Velvet and Sierra, who munched hay behind me, tails swinging contentedly. Leaning on the handle of my rake, I paused to inhale the pungent scent of the forest and watch the morning mist stream from the Douglas Firs, as though exhaled by some gigantic beast. Our log home, lit to a warm pefection by the morning sun, looked as if it were basted in honey.
Everything was perfect — the horses, the yard, the house. So why did I feel as though I had a hole in my chest the size of a MACK truck? For God's sake, Joyce, you live in paradise. Happiness is a state of mind. Why aren't you happy? you might well ask.
Well, let me tell you.
My husband and I lived in Marcola, Oregon, fifteen miles out of Eugene on forested land in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. Together, we had built a beautiful home of logs and glass; we had acquired a number of horses, three chickens, and two ducks, and settled in.
My husband, Neil, owned an electronics business that manufactured accessories for microscopes. With the economic crash of 2009, cutbacks occurred across the industry: companies limited spending, and the demand for microscope accessories dwindled. For six months, my husband and his partner paid employees while taking only partial pay — or, at times, none whatsoever — for themselves.
During those months they always believed that the business would turn around, but, in the meantime, we were sinking into debt faster than an otter sliding down a muddy river bank. Neil was reluctant to relinquish a business into which he had invested time, love, and money; he held on longer than was healthy. Having survived cancer, daily doses of business-related stress was the last thing Neil needed. We needed a change, but what sort of change? I had no clue.
No longer able to manage our sizeable mortgage, we had put our house on the market some months before, but the economy was sluggish and we did not receive a single offer. I well understood that should we buy a smaller house in the vicinity, my husband would limp along with his declining business until we were both dead. A radical, unparalleled, drastic sort of change was needed.
So, my question, of wondering where I would be happy, wasn't so strange. We were, after all, seeking a new place to settle. In our quest, my daughter, Nina, her two-month-old baby, Roman, and I, in company with our two dogs, departed for an eight-state road trip. Our road trip could be likened to bookstore browsing. Some visits you wander past stacks but do not come across any that "speak" to you that day; other days, a book virtually leaps from the shelf, lands in your lap, and snuggles up like a kitten. Our travels, like an unsucessful bookstore trip, had been most enjoyable but did not yield a satisfactory answer to our housing and financial dilemmas.
So, that July morning in the horse paddock, leaning on my rake (with no offers on the house, and no fixed destination in mind as to where we should move), I was in a quandary. When I threw out the question, Where would I be happy? The answer came in a flash: Check out Hawaii on the internet. I almost fell off my rake handle. True, we had been to Hawaii several times, and on off-days, both Nina and I had dreamed of escaping to that island paradise. Nina had once declared, "In twenty-five years, let's retire to Hawaii." At the time, I had answered — as I have always done when our kids asked for the impossible — "Okay."
I raced to the house, tossed my rake in the garage, and ran from the daylight basement up the stairs to the main floor; then, with the dog racing beside me, barking with excitement, we bounded up the next flight of stairs to my loft office. Flipping on the computer, I searched real estate listings in Hawaii. An hour later, I was calling downstairs to Nina, "Nina, did you know we can buy a house in Hawaii for half of what we owe here?"
"Let's do it," she said.
And so we did.
CHAPTER 2Preparations
The "Big Island," officially called Hawaii, has always been my favorite of all the Hawaiian Islands. It is one of the few places on earth where you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. Since it is also the largest, I figured it would be large enough to satisfy my need for elbow space. So that's where I looked, online.
The second house that popped up for sale on the real estate site was perfect, and it came with ten acres — room enough for horses. When I shared the listing with Neil and Nina, we unanimously agreed that this was the one. The property, nestled within the jungle, was so beautiful that it almost completely eclipsed the house — a charming gray and white structure built off the ground (as Hawaiian houses often are) with a porch and a screened-in lanai. A beautiful tree hugged the house, its canopy shading the lanai. An enormous bromeliad plant, with a purple center and thick cotton-candy-pink leaves, was affixed to the trunk of the tree. The interior of the house, from what we could see of it, looked simple but livable; it boasted a large kitchen, comfortable living room, two bedrooms, one and one-half baths, and the additional space afforded by the lanai.
The property contained one hundred macadamia nut trees, as well as two acres of pineapple plants. Neil's friends teased that he was retiring to be a nut farmer.
For Neil, living off the grid was akin to giving candy to a three year old. I, however, was less enthusiastic about being utterly isolated and was relieved to see that the ten-acre parcel next to us was occupied by our neighbors.
"There's a Home Depot on the island, isn't there?" I asked.
"Yep," said my husband, "in Hilo." So if we wanted to add some pizzazz to the house, we could find help eighteen miles away.
Our Hawaiian realtor repeatedly warned us about the road — I wasn't sure of what exactly, but he kept mentioning the road as though I should be worried. Having regularly traversed a half mile of graveled driveway in Oregon, I considered it a trivial matter. "They have gravel in Hawaii, don't they?" I asked.
"Gravel," my son-in-law said, "is God's gift to Oregonians." Perhaps it was to Hawaiians as well.
The state of the road would do little to deter us. Not only were we now determined to move, but possessed of a strong belief that the little house we had found on the internet was already ours. We put in an offer, despite the fact that it already had one — nothing would stop us now. Our realtor was convinced that the other offer would fail, so we remained confident of our chances. Hoping to pay cash, I began scraping together funds from every available resource — retirement, IRAs, and the proceeds from the sale of Neil's interest in the business property. I figured that if we paid cash, we could, after purchase, acquire an equity loan. And, of course, I was still hopeful that our Oregon house would sell — hopefully before escrow closed.
Living in Hawaii. It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? It conjures up images of rolling surf and bathtub-warm ocean water, ukulele music, fragrant tropical flowers, hula dancing, and Mai Tai's. Years before, I had heard that houses in Hawaii were so expensive that even the locals couldn't afford to buy one. I had assumed houses would list in the millions. Not in a down market, apparently.
During this period of heightened anticipation, worry continued to burn in my chest. At night, troubling thoughts either kept me sleepless the entire night or woke me just before dawn. I worried about finances, about the logistics of moving, and about leaving my oldest daughter and grandson. One day, I was happy at the prospect of moving to Hawaii; the next, I would throw myself to the ground in exasperation.
"How will we manage without a regular job?" I asked my husband.
Neil proposed working on designs remotely — since it is the age of computers, after all — and email them back to the home office.
I feared that we would get gassed. "Sulfur dioxide burps from the volcano on a regular basis," I worried. Neil laughed at me.
"The volcano might squirt lava in our direction," I protested.
"I am sure any laval flow will be channeled into the ocean by the mountains," Neil reassured me.
Other recurring worries plagued me: I get cabin fever; I have wanderlust, and thrive in wide-open spaces. An island is a little, bitty piece of land surrounded by water; if I get on my horse and take off, I'll end up either going in circles or with the horse doing the dog paddle underneath me; I'll be leaving my friends; I won't have any friends in Hawaii.
I confessed my fears to Nina.
"It's logical to have those fears about the unknown," says my wise daughter. "Fear is what keeps people stuck. You still want to go to Hawaii, don't you?"
Nina imagined that her little seven-month-old son, Roman, would soon be running on the beach, swimming daily, and turning as brown as the macadamia nuts that dotted the Hawaiian landscape. And about her sister Lisa — whom we were leaving behind — Nina said, "She can come to Hawaii. She can call and write. We will send pictures and little island gifts."
Perhaps, I rationalized, when Lisa and her family come to visit us in Hawaii, we will all enjoy quality time together as well as a grand vacation. We would not have to ink out time between jobs, and scramble for opportunity to see one another, as had become standard in Oregon.
So I began the check-off list:
Wait for an existing offer on the Hawaii house to expire. It did.
Put in a firm offer; scrape money together, and bluff that the funds would come before escrow closing day.
Panic.
Stay awake nights. Pray that our present house would sell. Check moving quotes to Hawaii. Check out car moving quotes. Check out horse transport quotes.
Panic.
Have dogs and cats vaccinated. Begin the 120-day animal quarantine.
Our realtor had told us that we could quarantine our pets at home, provided the animals received vaccinations for rabies twice, ninety days apart. Hawaii has never had a case of rabies, and they were determined to keep it that way. Our realtor assured us that they had transported their dog from the mainland to Kona without difficulty; from Honolulu onward, they had carried their Pomeranian in a soft carrier on the plane.
We traded in our Jaguar for a brand new, efficient, economic hybrid Toyota Prius. Our Jaguar had 333,000 miles on the original motor when we sold it. With those miles, we could have driven to the moon and back.
Neil printed pictures of our house-to-be from the internet, enlarging them enough to see a gnat's eyebrow. Not only did he study them, but he showed them to our family, the Oregon real estate agent, and the UPS driver. The real estate agent oohed and ahhed over the pictures and told her fiancé that they ought to do something similar — something out of the ordinary.
Neil's scientific mind was up to the challenge. Living off the grid, using solar power and a water catchment system — these were toys to him. He had researched maps and learned about lava zones. A rift conveniently existed between our property and the volcano, and any lava streams from an eruption would flow directly into the ocean. The house had existed for seventeen years without lava burning it up or a hurricane blowing it away; we figured it would sit for another seventeen.
We made plans to travel to Hawaii on August 28, 2016, for a tour of our new dwelling.
I had adopted a metaphysical attitude and saw the Big Island as a source of new life — something we desperately wanted and needed. As the volcano goddess Pele had poured lava over the land, she simultaneously expanded its shores and provided the fertile ground upon which vegetation could flourish. This building of new soil and new life is work that perpetually occupies the volcano goddess Pele. I considered this process of renewal to be symbolic of our lives, and yet another reason I was determined to move to Hawaii.
CHAPTER 3Cleaning the Refrigerator Syndrome
Paring down, cleaning out, packing up — whether it is a home or a refrigerator, the process is inevitably an agonizing one. First, you take everything out of the refrigerator, or cupboards, or house. You spread the contents over the countertops, or floor or yard, and then …you are stuck. Since everything is scattered, cluttering your house, you must handle it.
The refrigerator was straightforward — throw everything out. However, the rest of the house was more complicated. What about all those baskets I had collected? What about the food I had stored because I'd believed a guru who told me to "burrow in"? What about twenty-five years of house, shop, and garage accumulation?
Paring down a 4,000-foot living space, garage, and storage room into a twelve-by-twenty-four-foot metal shipping container would take some doing. The car and truck would be transported to Seattle Washington Dock on a flatbed truck, loaded onto a ship, and carried away to Hawaii. We had been told, however, not to pack anything into the vehicle, a practice which would immediately cause the security hounds to circle. And then there were the four chickens — my splendid chickens. I had a momma hen and three little chicks (who turned out to be two pullets and a rooster) that I had bought at the county fair. The chickens, Mille Fleur and Dixie Chicks, were gentle in nature and laid delicious eggs. The rooster, Sir Winston, was a complete gentleman. When I brought vegetable scraps to the pen, Sir Winston would cluck about what the sky god had dropped into their yard. Mille Fleur, meaning "little flowers," is both the name of the breed and the name of the momma chicken. Their feathers look like flowers painted with copper paint and outlined in black ink. Before we left for Hawaii, Mille hatched three chicks — the timing of which was a bit disheartening since I had tried in vain for years to incubate eggs. I thought about smuggling my chickens into Hawaii, but thought better of it. Sir Winston and his girls all went to a good home, as did our two ducks, Valspar and E.B. (Eternal Blush).
I worried, too, about leaving Lisa, my first-born child. She was livid at our decision to depart for tropical climes. I love them, I thought, but children leave home, why not parents? Go for it. Live your dream, and allow them to do the same. However, with the ever-present feeling of the distance that would soon come between us — in addition to our growing financial worries — I was in a constant state of anxiety.
Prospective buyers looked at our house, but we had no offers. It was a complicated scheme; we had to sell our Oregon house during a down market, pricing it high enough to pay the mortgage plus the real estate agent's fees, purchase the Hawaiian house, and cover the costs of the move. Still, Nina, Neil, and I remained determined.
As the moving date approached, I found myself thinking of a documentary Nina and I had watched, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. The narrator had interviewed four men: a lion tamer, an expert on naked mole rats, a topiary gardener, and a robot engineer — quite a collection. The engineer explained that after attempting to create a stable, spider-like robot, he had observed that some insects spend more time tipped over than walking on their feet. "I don't have to make a stable robot," the engineer concluded. "I just have to make one that doesn't hurt itself and keeps moving forward."
Keep moving forward and don't hurt ourselves — we could do that!
Why-O, Why-O, Why-O?
We were determined to make our grand move to Hawaii, despite my nagging worries. Nina, as always, was a source of sage advice, citing her own recent pregnancy. Nina had desperately wanted a baby, and had endured twelve months of artificial insemination in an attempt to become pregnant. Just when she felt she had hit a dead end and was about to try in-vitro fertilization, she conceived. "Maybe you just have to be willing to persevere," she suggested.
I think she's on to something, I thought. Perhaps it isn't necessary to do everything on our to-do list in order to reach our goals, but we must be willing to do it. We were willing to take radical action — although we weren't always sure what that entailed, so we just kept putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to fall over.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Frog's Song"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Joyce Davis.
Excerpted by permission of Regal House Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Note from the Author 6
A Morning in the Wilderness 1
Preparations 4
Cleaning the Refrigerator Syndrome 10
Balance 15
All Together or None 17
The Look-See 19
An Empty Skin-Bag 28
Love Lost 31
Running Away 32
Turn Right at O'ahu 34
A Pet-Friendly Hotel? 36
Sixth Grade Camp 37
The Naked Lady 39
Cane Grass, Coqui Frogs, and Utah 41
Mornings 43
Wool Socks and Felines 44
The Pod in the Papaya Field 46
The Tiki Room and Shop 48
Trauma 51
Barry 54
Challenges 56
A Baker's Dozen 58
"You Will Appreciate Everything" 60
The Monsoon 62
Christmas in Hawaii 64
Angels in Hawaii 66
Spam, Home Depot, and Babies 68
Painting and Noni 71
The Aquarians 74
Aloha 77
February 6 79
The Inspector 81
Pig Balls and Three-Gong Fish 83
Tsunamis, Loans, and Refrigerators 86
Schools 88
Hulas and Hot Dogs 90
Come For a Ride 93
To The Stable 96
The Water Tank 99
Alohalani 101
City of Refuge 103
Echoes of Long-Ago Songs 106
"Screw It!" 108
"Within the Breath of the Creator" 110
Inexplicable Mysteries 111
"Ahem, dear, guess what?" 113
The Cement Cow 115
Goodbye 117
Epilogue 119