Lilith and the gardener

When she came down from the raised bed next to a wall from which she was trimming a vine, I noticed her shirt, "Janis Joplin Live 1968." She'd missed Joplin when she came to Hawai`i, one her great regrets, since Joplin died soon after. The seats had been ripped out, but Joplin offered to pay. She was a small woman who wore a hat with a back flap and a front flap, so at first only her eyes showed. She pulled it off, and we started talking. Her father had served in the 442nd. He was a scout, carried a Tommy gun. "He had a machine gun! Don't know how he survived. He said they don't kill the scout, only the guys who come after." I told her about my mother's small army boots, given to her by a "Neecy boy," as she called him. Then Albert Saijo. She'd never heard of the Beat poets, but when I said "Beatnik" she lit up. "They were before hippies, yes?"

 

I noticed the Buddha standing at her front door, other side of a gate. "I've taken pictures of your Buddha," I said (I'd just been taking pictures of her). She got it at Ross. Looks heavy, she said, but it's really light; she can just pick it up and move it. She invited me inside the gate. There was a Xian warrior, also from Ross, that she'd painted white, standing in the neat garden. She suggested Lilith could go off-leash, so I let her bound off to sniff everything. We went behind the house to see her other Buddha, nestled among her plants. The wind had knocked Buddha to an odd angle, so she reached out and pulled him back. Another one from Ross. We went inside her house. Kerfuffle between Lilith and an aging cat. I put Lilith back on her leash, and we left slowly the way we'd come. The woman, whose name begins with a J, said she hoped we'd come back again.