The cool water flowing over me was extremely soothing, and when I positioned my head just right, my ear would be filled with the water, muting the sounds of the world around me, magnifying my other senses, in particular the feel of the warm concrete sidewalk below me and the smell of car exhaust coming from the street. My brothers voices became garbled and pleasant, and my blurred vision became a gift, making my siblings live action water colors moving in the distance. I was eight or nine years old at this time, and only slightly aware of who I was in the world. I had been born into a position of privilege without the awareness of being so.
I was the second of four boys, born in Santa Monica, California at St. John’s Hospital. My mother was a housewife, and my father a pilot for Western Airlines. We had a home in the hills of Sherman Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. I have a handful of memories from that place: the fireplace at Christmas – complete with roasting chestnuts, the deck with a view of the yard, my first attempts at riding on a bicycle on the narrow winding street in front of the house, and flashes of my father, and my older brother, and vague, yet warm, memories of our next door neighbors. On the whole, my recollection was of good times, though I do have an image of being in bed, afraid to go to sleep from fear of nightmares. As I think about this, more comes to the surface of this murky past. There was the time I am in the far back of our vehicle, on our way to or from nursery school with my oldest friend Nick. He was doing his multiplication tables out loud. Yes, that was a true event, something discussed with my family years later. I still cannot do my multiplication tables, aloud or otherwise.
Then, at the age of five, we moved to Manhattan Beach. Our house was a three-story building, the first floor being the garage, with outside stairs leading to the second floor. Here was our dining room, kitchen, and two bedrooms.The upper floor had a living room and two more bedrooms, one for my mom and one for my older brother. I don’t think my father ever lived with us in this home, though I could be wrong. I believe my parents were separated at this time.
Manhattan Beach was even more white than Sherman Oaks. Not that I gave it any thought at the time. It’s rather interesting in hindsight to realize that my two friends that come to mind were darker skinned than everyone else. There was Danny Mendoza, of hispanic descent, and my other friend, Joe, who was part Native American Indian. Everyone else was white. I don’t think there were any black kids in our school.
I first got a hint regarding my place of privilege from travel. At the age of eight I went to Africa with my mom and my older brother. We spent two weeks there, often using the local transportation, where we would be the only white people on the bus. I remember a scene where the local school had got out, and all of the kids coming up to us and wanting to touch my head and my brother’s head. We weren’t sure if they’d seen blond kids before. But, of greater contrast than the color of our hair and skin was the obvious economic differences between the US and Kenya. I had not seen poverty like this before. There were numerous beggars on the streets, often with major physical deformities and some with open wounds. Many of these people were gaunt from having too little to eat. This was when I first came to realize that I had so much that I had just taken for granted; not only had I always had food and shelter, but also the ability to travel and see other cultures and different ways of living. I recall a feeling of guilt; why should I have so much and others so little? This is the sort of question that gets one thinking about the bigger questions we face as humans, such as why are we here? And, what is the meaning of life?
My life of privilege became more apparent when at the age of ten we moved to Hawaii. My mother’s boyfriend, Jerry, needed to leave L.A. due to severe allergies to cigarette smoke, making Los Angeles inhabitable for him. He invited us to join him on his move to Kona, Hawaii, something I am forever grateful for. His relationship with my mother only lasted a year or two, but it got us to Kona. In Hawaii, Jerry is considered to be my “hanai” father, that is, an adopted father, but not related by blood, nor necessarily a legal standing. So much more to say about Jerry, but that can wait ’til later.
My first several weeks at school were challenging to say the least. My brothers and I made up 4 of the 6 haole (Caucasians) in the school. There was a student body of 240 kids, kindergarten through eighth grade. We were now the minority.
All of the kids, and a number of the teachers, spoke pidgin-english, a broken-up version of English with a number of Hawaiian words thrown in, as well as influence from a variety of other cultures including Tahiti, Portugal, the Philippines, and Japan. Half the time I had no idea what the other kids were saying to me, but within a couple of weeks I began to develop an ear for it.
My brothers and I were quite happy to learn that shoes were not a requirement at school, due to the inability for some families to afford them. Several weeks into the school year another student told me, “Your family must be poor since you and your brothers don’t wear shoes.”
I told him we didn’t wear them because we didn’t have to. What we did wear were what were commonly referred to as “slippers” in the islands, what we had previously called flip-flops or go-aheads back in the mainland. I remember that I would often kick them off under my desk in the morning, then put them back on at the end of the day to go home. Generally, the kids dressed well at school, even though they might not all have shoes. Back in Manhattan Beach it was ok, and even cool, to wear jeans that had holes in them, or to wear cut-off jeans as shorts. Those were not acceptable in Hawaii. Culturally, there was a more strict dress code at school here than from where we left.
Coming into the fifth grade class in Kona gave me a new sense of my privilege. Again, I had left one world and entered another, this time with a sense of permanence. It became quite clear that my previous education was at a level more advanced than everyone else’s in the class. On my first day of school the teacher took me to the back room filled with shelves of books, at which point she asked me to pick out a book that I might read. I picked up “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl. She asked me if I could read that book, which I told her I could. Unknown to her I had read it in the past. She opened it to a random page and had me read a section aloud. Then she told me that I would be reading books from that section, level 25. I then noticed that that was the highest level available. I soon learned that there were a couple of the kids in the class that could barely read at all. I was an avid reader at the time, and perhaps more so even than my classmates back in Manhattan Beach. However, all of my previous classmates could certainly read well. Now, at the age of ten, I had peers that were at what I would’ve considered a kindergarten reading level, whereas I was in the midst of the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R.Tolkien. One could argue that this difference between my classmates and myself were strictly the result of the circumstances and privilege that I was born into, which leads one to ponder the Nature vs. Nurture question. And, I should probably point out that none of my three brothers read like I did, and perhaps did not experience the contrast to the degree that I did. Of course, we were of different ages, and for my two younger brothers, at least, I imagine the difference was not so great. Whatever the case, I had a glimpse into my position of advantage; I was so very fortunate to have had an environment that fostered education, and perhaps the color of my skin was a factor in this.