# Delayed Gratification and Love (Part One of Two)



## Winston (Jan 22, 2017)

I live in two worlds.  One foot in the present, and one in the past.  I try to learn from each, even though they are often at odds with one another.  That is the way it should be.  It is the chaos and conflict of colliding visions and realities.  In that friction is smoke, and sometimes an uncomfortable heat.  And through those vapors I see the truth.

The world of today needs little illumination.  Upon inspection, it is laid as bare as moonbeams in a hall of mirrors.  The things we "know" are in fact transitory and illusionary.  One moment's knowledge is the next day's falsehood.  Allegiance is situational and flexible.  The future is not written because it is uncertain.   Life is easy, and often unsatisfying.  The effortless conquests give today's person a false sense of power and security.  We do not pass on wisdom,  strength, or a thankful heart.  We teach arrogance to the next generation.  Nothing is appreciated, because nothing is truly earned.

The other world needs a thorough explanation and exploration.  It is so foreign to many today that it may, in fact, be frightening.  I have spent more time there than most today.  I have seen that world through the eyes of those that have lived there.  I have listened to their words.  Their stories are now a part of me.  

But it is more than stories.  It's about how people were.  They were a different genus of human.  It would be easy to be dismissive,  and say that they could not live in our world.  That our complexity would overwhelm them.  Of course, deep down you suspect the corollary of that is also true.  So I am the child of two worlds.  I draw strength from each.  I carry the tools I was given.  I am thankful.
　


My grandmother was born at the dawn of The Twentieth Century.  Her name was Pauline.  It must have been a wondrous time to be alive when she was a girl.  Yet, life was not easy for persons of her social station.  When the people from the California and Hawaii Sugar (C&H) came to town, their offer was Faustian and enticing.  They were expanding into the new Territory of Hawaii, and needed laborers.  Since my family lived in Puerto Rico, they were poor, and knew how to work hard.  The family needed the work.  There were no social programs for the poor, no "safety net".  There was charity, for those so inclined.  Pauline learned pride at an early age.  The family moved to where the work was. 

Hawaii has always been "melting pot" of cultures.  My Puerto Rican family was soon working with other immigrants from Japan, China, the South Pacific and people from the 
Mainland.  Of course, the "Howlies" (white folks) ran everything, but there were some "working class" whites.  My great grandmother worked her fingers to the bone around the "house" (shack),  and our family income went to The Company Store.  Grandma Pauline  married a Howlie in an effort escape when she was only 16.  My grandmother found no respite, continuing to cook and clean like her mom.  And, soon, my mother (Polly) was born.  The year was 1929.

There are few survivors of The Great Depression still alive today.  Did it fundamentally change my grandmother?  No.  She was already tough, and would remain so. She was also kind, and knew how to work with all types of people.  When you are poor, and hungry, your race and skin color mean much less.  You all take care of each other.  Period.  There's no room for politics, no stupid biases.  People need people.  She learned how to work even harder, especially after my uncle Norman was born a year or two later.  A blessing, and another mouth to feed. 

I know the cliché' about all Hawaiians greeting with "Aloha".  In Pauline's world, the common greeting was "Have you eaten?".  They never had much. There was rice, of course.  Tofu.  And that nasty Poi.  They shared it all.  Times were always tough.  Things were just a bit rougher in the early 1930's.  Pauline cooked, that was her job.  It was also her way of saying that she cared.  And she did.

You know your history.  Things got better... right up until late in 1941.  First, the Japanese attacked.  Then, the Howlies invaded.  It was a real mixed-bag for my grandmother.  All kinds of jobs opened-up after the smoke settled.  And many of the family's friends disappeared...  to Internment Camps in California and other states in West.  I know this had to have scarred my mother Polly and Uncle Norman. They were kids growing up in "paradise".  Grandma Pauline kept things together for the family.  Yet, I don't know how she could have ever explained why these things happened.  

After The War, Polly and Norman were old enough to fend for themselves, so Grandma  Pauline got a job at the department store.  She worked as a switchboard operator (primitive IT telecommunication).  That was a big deal at the time, a woman working outside the home.  Times changed, needs did not. The family needed the money.  I don't know if my grandfather approved, as I never knew him.  He died sometime in the early  1950's, after my uncle Norman committed suicide.  

A woman in Pauline's position did the only thing that made sense.  No, she didn't camp out on "the pitty pot" after losing her son, then her husband.  She re-married.   Quaint, but in those times, a woman "needed" a man.  I won't disparage Pauline's new husband here, but I found out later that he was abusive.  At least by today's standards.  He would smoke and drink (which Pauline hated), then yell at her and occasionally get violent.  She was strong, and she "took" it.  By this time, They had moved to Northern California.  It was getting too expensive for Puerto Rican immigrant workers to live in "paradise".  In the mid 50's, my mother Polly had met my father, and soon moved out.  
Pauline was alone.    

However, It wasn't long before Pauline was able to re-connect with her friends from Hawaii.  Some recently emigrated (like her), others were among those "relocated" fifteen years earlier.   My earliest memories are of a tiny house full of brightly dressed people laughing loudly.  My grandmother never stopped moving, serving everyone food.  She was always happy when she was busy.   I never saw my grandfather much.  He was either hunting, or at the bar.  My extended family heaped attention on me, their little "Howlie boy" (I had my German father's blond hair).  

She spent her remaining decades like that.  In a small house, looking forward to visitors.  Living with a man that did not treat her like she deserved.  I never heard her complain.  She would just flutter about, constantly checking her stainless steel rice cooker.  As a teen, I would visit, and she would insist on making me a bowl of Won Ton Mien soup.  From scratch, of course.  I would visit her with my mother Polly, but later when I could drive, I visited by myself.  Pauline was someone special to anyone that got to know her. I am glad that I did.  She had the kind of character that could only be forged from a life fully lived.

In the late 80's, I was just out of The Marines, and grandma Pauline was getting sick.  Yet, as she slowed and tried to hide her pain, she never looked small or weak.  She did occasionally look tired, because she never stopped working.  She tended her garden, and kept her little house immaculate.  Her 2nd husband had passed on a few years earlier, from lung cancer.  She must have been frightened, but it never showed.  My sisters and I only left her as alone as she wanted to be.  Which wasn't much.  As she got sicker, she kept wanting us to come visit.  We would help her, and she would protest.  She would insist on making me those bowls of Won Ton soup that I like.  Soon, the rice cooker was cold more often than it was hot.  She had her family, and her pride.  She left with both.     
　

This was not some kind of biography, or obituary.  It was a lesson. 
I won't live her life, as remarkable as it was.  I will live my own.  
But I will live it better, thanks to her.  



(End of Part One)


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## dither (Jan 24, 2017)

That's one helluva story Winston.


Wow! What a woman.


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