Dark Side of Paradise

So there we were, Eloise and me, walking down the street on my birthday. The sun was shining. It was lunchtime. We were meeting up with some people at Paniolos. Toward us on the sidewalk comes Sonja, a well known local homeless woman I’ve seen walking around Kailua in various states of undress. Rumor has it she was prom queen not too long ago, but unfortunately drug addiction has left her unfocused and out of it.

We see homeless people 100 percent of the time we go to Honolulu. In Kailua it’s a little different, because you see the same people in the same spots fairly often. Many issues lead to homelessness of course, and it is a huge problem in Hawaii, especially in conjunction with the opioid epidemic, but I feel like Kailua in general does some things right with regard to its homeless population. People know their names, their families. People remember them from before they were addicted to drugs. People at our church (Kailua Community Church) can tell you what they’ve done to reach out to various homeless people. I’ve seen people pull over at chicken corner and call to the woman with the pet bunny and the guy who sometimes sits on the opposite corner by name and hand them boxed lunches and chat.

Sometimes my kids ask me, “why is that lady sleeping there?” or “what is that man saying? Why is he yelling?” and we talk about mental illness, drug and alcohol use, and homelessness. I don’t think my kids too young to learn about stuff like that—they see it everywhere. One of my kids’ classmate’s mom was hit by a car and killed last week in an incident stemming from an addiction issue. We talk about how illnesses like addiction can affect your brain and the way you think, and how it’s important to be kind and careful. Kind, because they are fellow humans created in God’s image and loved by God and their families. Careful, because they are not following the same social conventions that most people do, so their behavior may be unpredictable (people yelling and darting around) or inappropriate (we often see people partially undressed, and I’m not talking those buttless bathing suits at the beach). But always kind.

So there we were, and there Sonja was. Eloise’s little hand was in mine, and my other hand carried a bag with Eloise’s lunch and water bottle in it. Sonja changed course and came right toward me, moving quickly, and as I tried to pull Eloise behind my body Sonja says, “I NEED TO GET MY PIPE BACK,” and darts down to grab Eloise’s tummy! “EXCUSE ME DON’T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER!” I roared. Sonja sauntered off, jabbering to no one, eyes unfocused. Eloise was unhappy but not harmed. I asked her to show me how hard her tummy was pinched and she got a pretty sharp grab. Eloise was definitely not amused. This was at noon in front of Lanikai Juice—the middle of Kailua Town. The sheer volume of my shout surprised me as it reverberated under the concrete overhang of the shopfront, and it amazed me that not one person was like, “whoa, is your daughter ok?” Maybe one person looked up. It was over so fast.

I found my friends and said, “Did you hear all that yelling? Someone was yelling at a homeless person. It was me. I made it 35 years without yelling at a homeless person, but no further, I guess.”

It was pretty alarming. Now I’m having mom guilt that I wasn’t able to stop my daughter getting her tummy pinched out of nowhere. But Eloise seems fine. And next time we’ll be more careful… I guess? I don’t think I’ll ever have my guard up half a mile from home on a sunny day at lunch time in front of a beach town smoothie shop. Well at least if I see a mom yelling at a homeless person, I’ll be kind and ask if everything’s ok!

But yeah, like everywhere else, there are dark sides of paradise.