Too much wonderful food.

This post won't be much about food. It's more about two other words that begin with the letter F: family and fellowship.

The other night my husband and I were invited to the first birthday party of the daughter of a young coworker of his. As it happens, this man is married to the niece of a dear friend of ours so we had more than one connection (and isn't that SO Hawai'i?).

You'd never know it but I'm rather shy and usually find an excuse to skip parties where I'll hardly know a soul. But my husband wanted to go as most of his coworkers would be there and I knew my brother and our good friend Kimo would be there, so I said yes and girded my loins for what I thought would be a well-meant but uncomfortable evening.

Oh how wrong. Best party I've ever been to except for mother's 80th birthday.

This party, Kane'ohe side, was in full swing when we got there because both of us had taken a nap and overslept and then got the place wrong and were wondering around for a while but we found it, finally. Our brother had saved us seats.

Derek Benetez and his band were playing the most beautiful Hawaiian music. There was a buffet table with pretty much all the Hawaiian standards. I hadn't had poi in ages and it tasted so good. The chicken long rice was so good I'm going to make some this week because I forgot how much I like it. (And mine is the besses'.) The portions were lavish and the food just kept coming. Best was some kind of small, whole reef fish, grilled right on the bone. It wasn't on the buffet line but my brother knew about it and went and got a plate for us and my husband was in HEAVEN. When you dipped the fish into the poi and sucked it off the bone, you could feel yourself really being in Hawai'i, a feeling that gets more rare each day.

Because there's Puerto Rican blood in the family, Derek did several tunes in Spanish and we got up and samba'd or rhumba'd or chacha'd (to be honest, I don't know what we were doing, but it was way fun).

Then, in typical Hawaiian party fashion, they called up this young guy out of the audience and he picked up an electric 'uke and sang falsetto that would tear the heart out of your chest; channelling Auntie Genoa in his loooooooooong-held vowels. We screamed and smiled and stomped and called out "Hana hou!" His name is Kamakakehau Fernandez and I predict great things for him. Check his site at myspace music.

Squashing my normal tendency to sit and feel scared at a party this big (it was huge, with kids running everywhere and guys out on the balcony smoking cigarettes and people roaming between tables), I introduced myself to a number of my husband's coworkers, to the young falsetto singer, to my friend's last remaining paternal aunt (80-something and still akamai; what a lady, I'd like to interview her and get her life story), threaded between tables. I watched family groups and friends meet and greet and talk and hug babies and discipline unruly children and get another plate and sway to the music.

And then the best thing happened. The father of the birthday girl is Samoan and he brought his family up and they first sang "Happy Birthday" to the baby in beautiful harmony. Then, they did a very freeform and unstructured Samoan song, the women performing graceful hand movements and the men agressively gesturing with closed fists, led by the father of the baby. The house came down. As is Samoan custom, dollar bills began to fall like rain all over the performers while they swayed and gestured. I couldn't help myself; I got up and started to imitate the women's movements. It's much less structured than hula and so beautiful. The entire room was in a riot.

And then, it being a bit late, my husband and I decided to go home. As we were leaving, I thought this: The food was great. (The next morning, I can't tell you how much I wished I'd taken a plate, as many people did. You know that thing where you have eaten something the day before and you want more but you can't have it?)

But the family and fellowship were better. To spend time with my brother, his mother (he's my step-brother, so our Moms aren't the same person but we all love each other), with our dear friend and his auntie and his brothers and sisters, to meet the men who work each day with my husband (he's a truck driver, and it's hard work), to watch a beautiful young man performer so skilfully, to see a family come together and dance together so movingly and so much from the na'au. That was the point.

The point was not the kalua pig or the poi or the baked 'ulu. It was to be together.

I wish you a party like that sometime soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.