My Parade

No matter what the event - Christmas, Fourth of July, a Festival - Kailua-Kona knows how to throw a parade. The Lantern Parade didn’t have the cement trucks roll down Alii Drive, but this small parade attracted a crowd that lined the streets to watch the procession of lanterns bob through town. For the past ten years the parade, kicks off the Kona Coffee Festival. The Lantern parade is a Japanese tradition created to pay tribute to Japanese ancestors. I can’t explain the connection to Kona Coffee Festival.

Since the parade features lanterns and glow sticks, darkness is required to appreciate the softly-lit orbs. The parade began about an hour after sunset. Shortly after the last blue lights of the police car rolled by, I headed home. Dark, but not late, this was my first hike home in the dark. In the morning I run in the dark, but at that time of day the traffic is lighter than the flow on a Friday night. Shoulders are wide, except in a couple of places were cars are parked along the side of the road or where a bridge crosses over a dry creek bed. It was there that I started my own two person parade.

Linda, a tourist from Minnesota, sat on the bridge’s guardrail next to the ocean. She was on the opposite side of the road, the side going with the traffic, not the side she should have been on as a pedestrian. Linda had been out to the luau at the Royal Kona. When I passed the hotel the luau dancers were still on stage, so her departure was early. Nevertheless, she had made the most of it in the short time. As I approached she got up and started walking up Alii in the direction I was headed.

This stretch of Alii is almost pitch dark, no hotel or condo lights. It’s tough to see where concrete ends and the dirt shoulder begins. Her shoes were not the most sensible. When she stumbled I wasn’t too surprised. But she continued to stagger tripping on nothing but her brain’s inability to manage coordination.

From across the street I yelled, “Are you okay?”

She stopped to remove a pebble from her shoe. In the typical fashion of most people who are intoxicated she said, “Yeah.” Her voice and body traveled into the road. The hell you are.

I was afraid continued conversation would bring her out into the path of a car. She wandered up the road and I cringed when a couple of vehicles whizzed past.

I crossed the road and she staggered into me. “Can I help you make it home?”

“Do you know where you are?” she asked.

Here was an opportunity to be a wise ass and say Hawaii. “Yeah. But, I don’t know where you are going.”

“Right up there,” she waved an aimless finger down the road.

“To the Sea Village?” Whew, only a few hundred feet. “Let me walk with you.”

When we got there, she said, “This isn't it. I’m going to the Sea Cliff. You know where that is?”

Suddenly, I became a tour guide. “Top of the hill.” It was about a quarter of a mile. I wanted to put my arm around her to prevent her from wandering off the pavement, but was afraid she would push me into the traffic. I walked between her and the road. When she veered my way I steeled myself and let her ricochet away from the road. Cars passed uncomfortably close. Fortunately, she was about my size. I couldn't have worn a white shirt instead of dark blue?

She stopped walking. She looked right at me. “You are so kind. Where did you learn that? From your mother?”

Here I paused. Thoughts swept through my head like snow across the midwestern plain. I rewound what I had been thinking before I stumbled upon my Minnesotan.

Why had I gone to the parade? It was fun; something to do. But this was a long walk back in the dark, alone. I pondered Genesis 4, the story of Cain and Abel. (I don’t make this stuff up. Well, some of it I do. I have been studying Genesis this past week, so the story in my head made sense.) I mulled over the idea of whether I should pick up the weird stuff I find on the side of the road – a sheet metal screw, a paper clip, an Allen wrench. I could do something with this stuff. Sell it on the Internet under a site called Lost on the Side of the Road.

Of course I learned this from my mother. I simply said, “yes.”

Help others. Do the right thing. Care about the welfare of those less fortunate, except I don’t think Linda was less fortunate. She was just drunk.

But are things that simple? Where did my mother learn this? And her mother and so on? And was every generational step along the way perfect? Was there any disconnect to this concept of doing good? Was someone in the lineage a horrible, horrible person?

Well, yes, Cain. But tonight, I am letting some stranger bounce off me so she doesn’t get hit by a car, or taken advantaged of by another stranger. Look what I found along the side of the road. Not a safety pin.

Did I have to learn this? No, I was born with a conscious, a sense of having a responsibility toward others. God gave me that, even before the knowledge of good and evil. The farther away we have gotten from God, the more rules we have made under the assumption that without the rules we don’t know how to behave toward others. We knew long before there were Ten Commandments.

It would have eaten at me to let you stumble home alone. Am I doing this for me?

“By the way, where are your friends?” I asked. Am I my brother’s keeper?

“I left them at the luau. I’m a very independent person as you can see.”

Yeah me too, but I’m not prone to do stupid things.

I got her home. She’s leaving the island tomorrow, disappointed that the island isn’t prettier. It is all the matter of your point of view. I thought the island was pretty sparse and Kona crowded. But the crowds are tourists, and the land is vast and diverse. Lady You won’t find me living in the snowscapes of Minnesota anytime soon.

I made it home, still alone. I wondered how my brain tied all this together. Only by being alone, I supposed. I thanked God for creating me with the deep sense to help a stranger in need. And His Word.