Chapter 1

Confession

Honolulu, Hawaii

I was born in the Chinese Year of the Pig. If I had known this when I was still in my mother’s womb, I would have postponed my birth. My husband, Larry, tried to console me. “It’s the Year of the Boar. That sounds better.”

Pig, boar, what’s the difference?

For twenty years we spent our winters in Honolulu, Hawaii, as “snowbirds,” renting an apartment, In 2013 we bought our own apartment in the same condo and moved here after more than forty years in Severna Park, Maryland.

I was in our condo elevator with two elderly Japanese ladies. One looked at my Year of the Dog T-shirt and asked, “Were you born in the Year of the Dog?”

I made a sour face, wrinkling my nose: “No. the Year of the Pig.”

“Oh, no,” she said, her eyes widening in disapproval of my unhappy response. “I’m the Year of the Pig, too. It’s gooooood, good people.”

I laughed. “Oh, well, if it’s us, it must be good.”

Luckily, I didn’t have the power to postpone my birth, because the very next year in the Chinese Zodiak is the Year of the Rat. No thank you.

Besides, I’ve discovered some famous pigs that put me in good company. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stephen King, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Maria Callas, Steven Spielberg, Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Hillary Clinton, Glenn Close, the Dalai Lama, Alex Trebek, and Alfred Hitchcock. And let’s not forget Marie Antoinette and Henry VIII.

As a Jewish girl born in the Year of the Pig, my final comment is oynk oynk!

Chapter 2

Hawaii Adventures

Part One, "Donkey" Tales

I love “Donkey.” It’s my favorite grocery market, but for so much more than groceries. It‘s my just-about-everything store. “Donkey” is actually Don Quijote, a full city block on Kaheka Street in Honolulu, a few blocks from Ala Moana mall. I’m possessive of my Donkey because it’s around the corner from our high-rise condo. I gave it my personal nickname long before I learned that Don Quijote is the biggest discount store in Japan and is nicknamed “Donki” there. But why did a Japanese company give it such a Spanish-sounding name? The company website says the stores were named after the hero in Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote, “bravely and aggressively offering challenges to the conventional retail industry.”

In case you’re wondering, I don’t work for Donkey. I just like the way it provides entertainment as well as groceries. My biggest problem is avoiding the temptation to buy great stuff I don’t need! I jauntily pull my black wire cart around the block, collapse it, and stow it under a store cart to tool around. Not just for food. Maybe a large laminated map of Kauai. Or a filmy jacket with a tiger’s head on the back. Or used books and DVDs. Whatever it is, I have adventures—many with unintended consequences.

Until summer 2017, a tiny post office branch nestled on the far left wall. But Donkey underwent a major renovation and the convenient little post office that so many of us depended on did not survive. Missing it the most, I’m guessing, are the shoppers who painstakingly filled out customs forms to mail their holiday gifts to family and friends in Asia and elsewhere abroad.

Once I was in line to buy more sheets of Batman stamps; the graphics were so dramatic and macho. The sheets included small circles of the striking Batman silhouette: black wings spread against a yellow sky. That day I said to Esther, the postal lady: “I’m really enjoying these stamps and the little stickers of the Batman silhouette. I put them on the backs of birthday card envelopes.”

Esther gave me a funny look. “They’re not stickers. They’re stamps!”

Oops! I’d already used twelve; six dollars down the toilet.

A produce man was busy at the wall display of fresh vegetables. He was arranging enormous carrots, almost a foot long, in a dramatic wheel formation. I stopped to look. “What a pretty design!” I said. “You’re an artist!” He gave me a tremendous smile.

The next week I stood there ready to buy the longest, fattest carrots on the wheel. I tugged at a choice specimen and found myself face to face with another woman—clutching the other end of the same carrot. We both laughed. What were the odds of that? But she tugged harder and won! Silently, I said goodbye to my prize carrot as she dropped it into a bag.

The aloha spirit seems to reign at Donkey. In line to check out, a young woman in the line next to mine said, “Excuse me, but those bagels have mold on them.” She pointed to my clear plastic package standing up in the top tray of the cart. Sure enough. I hadn’t noticed the greenish-blue fuzzy patch on one whole-wheat bagel. So kind of her to tell me, especially with her wiggly baby dangling his little feet in the top of the cart. I thanked her and handed it to the checkout clerk, who stowed it away.

Amid all the breathtaking sights on Oahu, who would expect tourists to include Donkey? I always take our visiting family or friends there. And it turns out once is never enough. They insist on going back on their last day to get more Kona coffee, chocolate macadamia nuts, aloha shirts, and souvenirs before returning to the Mainland, even if their departure is just a few hours away. Recently, I was standing with my brother and sister-in-law in the center aisle. We were admiring the pareos, the popular beach-wrap sarongs in Hawaiian patterns and splashy colors. “Ninety-nine cents!” I chirped. Ann began painstakingly choosing one for each friend back home in Minnesota. Fifteen minutes later, a local island girl came by with her friend. She checked a price tag. “Pareos, $14.95,” she announced in a loud voice to her friend. The girls sauntered away. Oh, no! I had been looking at the wrong sign. Ninety-nine cents was for the tatami mats on the bottom shelf. Ann piled her large stack of pareos back on the shelf—too polite to remind me I’d just wasted fifteen minutes of her precious Donkey time.

My checkout clerk’s name tag read “Glenda.” I couldn’t resist saying to her, “There’s a famous actress with your name.”

She nodded. “Glenda Jackson.”

Then I added, “And the good witch in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

“No!” she retorted. “That’s Glinda!”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “You’re right.” So much for my recollection of the movie—and the book I read at age twelve. All this with a line of shoppers patiently (and undoubtedly annoyed) waiting to check out.

The hot food deli is so popular that you have to take a number. I was there for their succulent barbecued chicken quarters for our supper, as well as two orders to put in the freezer for Larry: pot roast with gravy and corned beef and cabbage. A lean seventy-ish man handed over his number and asked a lady server behind the counter, “How much?” He was pointing to hamburger patties floating in sauce.

“Four dollars each,” she said.

“Fo’ dollah fo’ one? Goodnight Irene!” He walked away.

When she was wrapping up my order, I said, “You people are much better cooks than I am.” She laughed and replied, “We love you!”

The holiday checkout line was long. I began chatting with the young local couple behind me. We smiled at each other, knowing we’d be there a while. “My name is Rosemary,” I said. “My husband and I write novels and stories.” I handed his wife one of our bookmarks. (Nobody escapes our bookmarks.) She cocked her head toward her husband and said to me: “His name is Boz, B-O-Z.”

First of all, you have to know this about me. I’m extremely generous with my opinions. I always have one ready whether anybody wants it or not. I turned to the young man. “Do you know that you have something in common with one of the world’s greatest writers?” He looked puzzled.

“Charles Dickens,” I said. “In the 1800s he published his stories in the newspaper under his pen name, “Sketches by Boz.”

The young man grinned. “That’s cool!”

As I turned onto Kaheka Street, hauling my wire cart loaded with my groceries, I heard a voice on my right shouting: “’Bye! Call me when you get off the bus.” It was an island woman about five feet tall with tousled gray hair and a cavernous smile that revealed a mouth only half-filled with teeth—all crooked. She said to me, as if I were a friend, “That’s my granddaughter. We have lunch once a week before she goes back to Waipahu.”

“How nice,” I said, surprised but flattered that she wanted to tell me. Not quite sure how to respond, I asked, “What grade is your granddaughter in?”

“She’s a senior. She’s the first of my fifteen grandchildren to graduate.”

“Wow!” I replied, actually dumbfounded. Did she mean high school? College? “Does she have any plans?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, yes,” the lady answered, her expression solemn. “She‘s going to college. She wants to be a nurse.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “You did a good job raising her.” I had no idea whether she was responsible in any way for raising her granddaughter, but she did not dispute me.

“Thank you,” she said. We walked another few feet, then I stopped at the red light to cross Kaheka. “Good luck to you and your granddaughter,” I called out.

She gave me another huge semi-toothy smile and waved as she continued on her way.

In the Produce Department I turned the corner from the Bosc pears and accidentally bumped the edge of another cart, being pushed by a smartly dressed haole woman.

“My fault,” I said.

“No, my fault,” she responded.

We parted down different aisles. Later, I pondered our little cart-bumping exchange. I’m an avid fan of Carol Burnett’s incorrigible skits, so my thoughts ran to how she and her sister, Vicky, would have played our responses out.

“My fault.”

“No, my fault.”

“My fault.”

“No, my fault.”

The responses are getting testy.

“Come to think of it,” says Vicky, “yes, it was your fault!”

“Are you crazy?” Carol shouts. “It was yours!”

Hair pulling follows.

I’m a fast walker, always rushing here and there—and a few months ago, I plunged straight into a gruesome Donkey misadventure. In the meat aisle, I tossed packages of frozen chicken into the cart, then rushed back to the dairy case because I’d forgotten my one-percent milk. As I set the half-gallon carton down, I stared in dismay. There sat two small packages of poke; they had been packed up specially at the meat and seafood counter, perhaps for an elderly shopper. I had taken the wrong cart to the dairy case! That poor customer! What to do? At 4:30 in the afternoon the store was jammed. Panicked, I pushed my way in frustrating slowness back to the chicken counter and found my own cart where I’d left it. I consoled myself. Maybe the person went back to the meat and seafood counter, hoping to find their missing poke. But I was about thirty feet away. I would have to make my way past the hot-meals deli counter, crowded with hungry shoppers in line for their suppers.

So I did the next best thing. I shouted. “Is anyone missing their cart? I took the wrong one by mistake.” No one claimed it. Total silence. A lady with a lined face and her hair in a severe bun threw me a wry look of fake disapproval. “You’d better leave—now,” she warned.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll book a flight to the Mainland tonight.”

She laughed.

Oy oy. My hijacking the wrong cart was bad. Really bad. Because it wasn’t just a lapse of memory and neglecting to pay attention. It now would rise to the top of my list to atone for on Yom Kippur, only a few months away.

At home that night, I phoned a friend and ruefully spilled my story. “Time for Larry to put me out to pasture,” I said. “But first I want to choose all the pasture amenities.”

My truly wise friend chuckled. “Rosemary, you’re already there.”

Of course I am.

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Reviewed by Lesley Jones 03/17/2021