SUNDAY SUNRISE -- SOGI (from Kathleen's journal November 1997)

Fisaga sleeps in our silent house this morning. Silence here is the constant riffle, rumble or roar of the waves as backdrop to the sound of roosters celebrating sunrise and the pigs and dogs grumbling themselves awake. Umu smoke shrouds the house, hiding sky and sea, clearning only after the cooking fires have taken hold. Church bells begin to cll the village to worship. Pagans need not respond.

I've dreamed of running away to an ocean for forty years or so. Ten years ago I found the island, but it was just a few weeks ago that I found my house on the beach. The sounds here are still new to my mid-western ears -- a constant presence instead of sea songs that I carried home from vacations or visits. In quiet moments I watch and listen, trying to learn the rhythms and melodies of my bit of ocean.

To my surprise, I find its tenacity annoying sometimes. There is never true silence here and I have not learned yet how not to hear it.

Years ago, on another island half a world away, resting beside a new lover and listening to the gentle voice of his ocean, I asked if he still heard the song. He looked at me, probably seeing a tourist instead of a lover, then shook his head. The magic of the sea had been with him all of his life and he was no more aware of it that the beating of his own heart.

City dwellers learn not to hear the midnight sirens. I've learned not to hear the dogs. I don't want to learn not to hear my ocean. I don't want to wake up some Sunday morning to silence.

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From Kathleen's Journal

FISAGA'S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL(9/98)

She sat, a bit reluctantly, with 19 other children in a circle of tiny chairs, observing the morning ritual of prayers and songs and rol call. Her body language moved between a near-defiant "this is stupid" slouch and surreptitious clasping of Mom's hand for reassurance.

When the "So-and-So is our Friend" dance came to her, she chose to break-dance on the floor instead of imitating the demure hippy-shake of the other little girls.

Orientation for the new kids was stanad-in-line, walk-in-line affair: the right way to carry the chair so as not to poke anyone in the eye, the way to put it down quietly, the way to answer roll call, the routine of getting out and putting away toys and mats. Fisaga watched, and listened, and shot the occasional look my way, as if to say, "You told me school would be fun -- what's this nonsense?"

Or was it just that I didn't really want Fisaga to learn that stand in line/keep your place/follow instructions are what school is about? Necessary, perhaps, but what would this do to my fearless, in-your-face beauty? Her world, until this day, had so few arbitrary rules.

She was the last to choose her first "work", as the teacher called it -- clothes pins to move around on an empty ice cream box. This was a far cry from her computer or other home toys and didn't hold her interest long. I must admit that I did little to encourage her to find the deep inner meaning of the clothes pins and empty ice cream box game.

We took several bathroom/cigarette/snack breaks. We talked in the yard behind the cafeteria: I don't like my teacher. Why? I don't know her. I don't like the kids. Why? I don't know them. We negotiated time in and time out. The snack helped.

We came back into the class together. Teacher Marie engaged Fisaga in a new activity. After a solid kiss and hug for Mom, she joined the class.

She didn't notice when I left.

I sat in the parking lot, listening to the happy noise of 100 children at play, straining for the one sound of distress that would allow me to rush to the rescue of my child.

I heard only my own gentle distress that Fisaga was perfectly fine without me in this world beyond the circle of our family.

AND A MONTH LATER (10/98)

Fisaga is not in the "top group" of her class at the Montessori pre-school. This bothered me no end during the third week of school. My solitary drive time was filled with contentious dialogue with those teachers who hadn't immediately recognized my daughter's brilliance. Finally, when my ego threatened to crowd me out of the car, I came to terms with the fact that the "top group" is mostly five-year-olds with at least one year of pre-school under their tiny backpacks. Fisaga is three and has been in school now for all of a month. Her admission to Stanford is probably not in jeopardy at this point and I really don't want to become one of those parents the teacher hates to see bearing down on her in the hall.

Mom's temporary insanity aside, school has been good for both of us. Saga's playing field is expanding and I am lookingn for a comfortable spot in her cheering section.

Saga brings home tidbits of her day -- mostly songs right now, but sometimes news bulletins: Victoria helped me go to the potty. I ate spaghetti at my school. Sione chased me and I chased him and he chased me and I chased him. Lalelei and Tali are my friends. But sometimes: Chantel hit me. Miss Fele is mean. Monika stuck out her tongue at me.

I probe for details, but few are forthcoming. I know Victoria and Sione and Tali and Lalelai, and approve of those friendships. I will listen closely for further news of mean teachers. I ask if Fisaga hit Chantel back and wonder who really hit first. We talk about how perhaps Monika doesn't know that sticking her tongue out is bad manners. I want to hug Victoria for helping her younger friend, want to threaten Miss Fele with bodily harm and want to hate Chantel and Monika -- whoever they are -- for causing even momentary distress to my daughter. Reason prevails -- I cannot intrude on this new world with hugs or threats or hatred. Fisaga must chart this course herself.

Our morning drop-off time together has dwindled from twenty minutes to less than five before Fisaga is absorvbed into the cluster of other early arrivers who are learning to segment their days into school and not-school. We walk together to her classroom, stow her backpack, and return to the front gate for at least two final hugs and two final kisses. "Bye-bye Mommy! Bye-bye Mommy! Bye-bye Mommy!" rings out as I walk to the car waving "I love you" in the sign language we have learned together. By the time I start the car and drive past the front gate, she has turned away and is busy chasing and being chased.

I take comfort from the cries of "Hi Fisaga" that greet her each morning and from the giggle in her voice as she returns the greetings. I cherish the vision of her in a happy tangle of bodies the day I picked her up early beacause of the rain. A half dozen voices echoed "Fisaga, your Mom is here", an older girl (probably not Chantel or Monika) brought Saga her backpack, and a dozen "Good-bye's" followed us out of the classroom. My daughter is safe and happy and well-liked in Room 5. She knows the names of the janitor and the milk lady and the cook's helper. She imitates Sister Sheila's habit in her dress-up play. She laughs more now, if that is possible.

She sings school songs in the car and on the potty and when we play. She is concerned that I don't know all the words to every song and is an impatient teacher. She tells me secrets. Her stories are longer and more complex, with elephants climbing trees and great underwater adventures -- but many still end with the dog pooping in the yard.

She is still my fearless in-your-face beauty.

MEMBER LINKS

She paddled slowly out of the harbor, the kayak cutting cleanly through the water. Since that first evening on the Potomac River thirty years ago, she had preferred kayaks to canoes or any other boats. Light enough to carry alone, nothing to break that she couldn't fix, no need for crews or mechanics or a pair of hands stronger than her own, the kayak suited her. More than anything except diving, kayaking gave her access to solitude, silence and communion with the ocean.

The kayak rode low with the weight of her dive gear and provisions, but she had packed carefully and the balance felt right. The late afternoon sum was gentled by the light breeze, paddling was easy through the calm sea. She paused at Breakers Point, turning for a last look at the fierce green of the island rising behind Pago Harbor. Whispering a small prayer to whatever gods might be listening, she gripped the paddle tighter than necessary and turned once more toward the Taema Bank.

She reached the Bank, several miles off-shore, well before sunset, dropped her small anchor in 120 feet of water, and carefully opened the front hatch to retrieve a still-cold can of diet coke. She settled herself as comfortably as possible and waited for the first stars to appear.

For the past thirteen years, since she turned thirty, she had taken this night before her birthday as time alone to review her life, to decide if she wanted one more year. Seven times she had spent this night in anonymous hotels rooms in strange cities, three times on the white sand beach of Ofu, and twice watching the moon pass over the Pala Lagoon. Twelve times she had greeted the sunrise with a sense of renewal, but each of those nights had started with the uncertainty she felt at this moment.

She never thought of herself as suicidal, but she believed that all life should be a matter of choice. The first death she remembered was her grandfather's. Too young to understand the agony of uremic poisoning and too steeped in church mythology, she had been afraid only that grandpa would go to hell for being so mean. Fear of hell had dimmed during her many years away from the church and through the other deaths she had witnessed -- friends and family lost to cancer, car wrecks, random accidents and deliberate bullets. Fear of hell had dimmed even more as she had watched people walk though empty lives without the courage to seek change. The notion that she woke each morning by choice gave her pleasure as well as strength.

Over the years she had considered many ways of dying. Suicide was tricky business. An unsuccessful attempt would earn both the pity and the scorn of friends and, on this island, a quick contract termination and an escort to the airport. Since it wouldn't be fair to leave a mess for someone else to clean up, guns and razor blades were out. Unsure of her courage or her ability to deal with pain, she'd finally decided that an overdose of sedatives was the best option, although that still left the problem of a body someone would have to get rid of. The ocean would take care of that nicely.

Satisfied that this plan was the best yet, she looked to the emerging stars, counting them as she used to count rosary beads to tell the events of her year. Much of what she saw would have passed unnoticed to her friends. She treasured the small things -- discovering a song or a poem that found words for a feeling she had been unable to name, laughter or tears shared for a moment without reservation, this sunset, that full moon, words of something close to love in the middle of a lonely night. She worked quickly through her failures, but stopped with the one thing that made this year different from the past twelve.

A few months before, cleaning the debris from a party that had filled her house with music and laughter until three a.m., she had heard for the first time the powerful silence that remains after good friends have gone home to the people they love. That silence had become her companion for too many nights.

As the waning moon tracked its way across the sky, she tried to imagine what impact her disappearance might have. She hoped it would be easier without a body. She had left letters behind explaing what she could. Three letters -- to her brother, her nephew and her friends -- had not changned much since the first draft twelve years ago. Some years, this year, there was a fourth letter. She hadn't been more than an occasional visitor in the lives of her family for a long time. The ex-pat community in Samoa was one of transients and she would soon join the ranks of those half-forgotten friends who had moved on. The fourth letter would have to speak for itself.

As light began to touch the eastern sky, she carefully removed her dive gear from the aft hatch. She clipped the tank and vest to a safety line and let them float beside her. She reached once more into the forward hatch for a no longer cold soda, a fresh pack of cigarettes, a roll of duct tape and the bottle of pills. The prescription was only three months old, obtained from an impersonal clinic during her last trip off-island. Not bothering with a prayer this time, she opened the bottle.

Half-way through the second cigarette of the new pack, sooner than she expected, she began to feel drowsy. After one more deep drag, she tossed the cigarette into the water, thinking with a wry laugh that she'd finally kicked that nasty habit. She put on her fins, weight belt and mask, pulled in the tag line so she could reach her regulator, turned on the air supply, placed the regulator in her mouth and secured it with three long pieces of duct tape. She had enough air for at least 45 minutes and assumed she would be unconscious long before that, but she didn't want any last minute struggle with drowning when she could no longer hold the mouthpiece in place.

She slid silently into the water, tightened the straps of her vest, let the excess air out of her vest and began her descent. At one hundred feet she pulled a small knofe from the pocket of her vest and cut the anchor line, freeing the kayak to drift. She dropped the knife and began kicking down through the blue.

Her last conscious thoughts were peaceful. She drifted gently with the current, drawn into the darkness.

Like the flame of a trick birthday candle, awareness flared. She saw her body a few feet away and heard laughter that held no hint of joy. The laughter was inside her, with a voice that mocked:

"The silence left behind when friends go home to the people they love? Listen...."

And the silence raged within her -- forever and ever, amen.

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(Note: Kathleen lives a happy and decidedly unsuicidal life with her three year old daughter in a home that is rarely silent these days.)

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Copyright 1998 by Kathleen Kolhoff. All rights reserved.

CONTACT

Umu smoke clouded the horizon that morning when we saw the small white boat leave Pago Harbor. There were forty of us and only three of them. We had watched them loading strange equipment, but we could see no weapons. The gear was odd, but we sensed no threat.

When they turned west out of the harbor, we saw they were following their usual pattern and we knew where we could find them. We were supposed to be a scouting party. A few of the female and their young -- those who were in training for more serious responsibilities -- would be allowed to show themselves as decoys, but contact was to come later, after our final report to the Council.

It was my fault that things got out of hand. The day was perfect. Shafts of sunlight cut thorugh the blue and danced on the white sands below us. We all felt the joy of an outing on one of the last days before the winds returned to stir the seas. The decoys had attracted the attention of the three on the boat and we could hear their laughter as they watched the young ones leap and spin. After the old man cut his engines to idle, we could hear their voices and laughter more clearly. La went in closer then he was supposed to but before I could call him back he completed his most perfect spin. I knew he must have been practicing in secret, waiting for the right moment to show off. The laughter from the boat was contagious. I was proud of my son and for a few minutes let my heart rule my head. We laughed at the human's laughter and at the joy of calm waters.

Before I knew what was happening, two of the humans slipped into the water beside La. The humans were clumsy and didn't know how to breathe properly, but they seemed harmless as they floated nearby.

The others were waiting for my orders. We were not supposed to make contact. That was for the Council to decide. But I was entitled to take some independent action during a mission. I signaled that we would stay -- but carefully.

Once they got over their initial fear, the humans actually turned playful. They tried to swim with us, but the only way they could keep up was to hold on to ropes while their boat dragged them. La tried several times to teach them to spin, but they never seemed to understand even his simple directions. I offered greetings twice, but intelligent language seemes to be beyond their skill.

Other teams have studied humans in captivity and reported that they could be taught simple skills, like feeding on command, identifying colors and shapes, and placing objects for recovery. Several reports have been filed that humans can be taught to understand a few words of our language. I personally doubt this. I think they can be trained to mimic intelligent sounds, but I don't think they have the capacity to understand true speech.

The attention span of the two in the water was longer than I had expected, but they finally tired and I led my herd away. It had been an interesting experience, but I wasn't sure how to report it to the Council.

I think contact is possible, but I'm not convinced tht humans are intelligent enough to be of any real use to us. Some, like the two in the water, may be harmless and playful, but they aren't rational creatures. I think the Council will decide it's not yet time to trust them.