April Showers Bring May Flowers

By Virginia Beck

Rain in April was a gift from Heaven. Global Climate changes are heating the ocean, expanding water volume and pushing the Tradewinds further north, unlike the reliable patterns of centuries past.

Cattle ranchers, local small farms, and our families who grow fruit and vegetables at home were relieved at the downpours. While some streams flushed red soil into the ocean, covering reefs, other steady gentle rains brought needed moisture into forest uplands and inland pastures.

Flower farms are especially grateful, and local homes grow massive stephanotis vines on their fences for graduation lei. Pua kenikeni, a small pale-yellow flower, begins to turn a deeper apricot just in time for graduation. It is native to the many high islands distributed across the Southern Pacific. It is also known as the “10 cent” flower, exquisitely fragrant and prized for its perfume. Abundant plumeria burst into surprising blossom, shocking us all as seemingly barren trees suddenly erupt into clouds of glorious color and fragrance.

Traditional favorites such as the cigar flower lei, and many native plants such as maile and mokihana berries are treasured gift lei, dried and cherished for years.

Graduations here are multigeneration family celebrations. You haven’t really graduated if you can see over the abundant flowers piling up around your neck! Families work extremely hard here, given the cost of living, to send their youth to University of Hawai‘i’s many campuses.

Others proudly support their astonishing children’s major accomplishments by encouraging them to apply to top universities and colleges across the country. The partings here are more tearful and difficult because the airfare back and forth is becoming more extreme with rising fuel costs.

I am allowed the incredible privilege to see the quality of the applications from Kaua‘i’s graduates, as I volunteer with two different organizations that offer scholarships to young women, and health careers to scholars in general. The results are beyond stunning.

I read 17 applications recently and deliberated for four days. I read all 17 about five times, trying to rank them, and it was nearly impossible. They were all astonishing and stellar, and mostly quite humble about their accomplishments.

Every single one had the highest aspirations for themselves and for the skills they wanted to bring home to our community. Skills that are desperately needed for our future survival as an island and a community.

Each one of them represented our community’s rarest gifts, our talent and our children. We have invested our treasures wisely in these gems. I am so proud of the grandparents and parents whose life achievements and treasures are wrapped up in these graduates. They are the golden Oscars awarded the families for their hard work and sacrifices.

I feel humbled by the devotion of these families, and awe at what they created, these amazing women.

Next year, I promise to work harder to enroll more donors for the YWCA scholarships, because we need every single student of this caliber to be supported. The island urgently needs this.

In addition, for the Pay it Forward scholarship project started in honor of my mother, Pat Beck, a paramedic on the ambulances in London throughout the German Blitz Bombing in World War II.

Courage is when you are terrified, and you do it anyway. Do the right thing. Live Pono.

• Virginia Beck, NP and Certified Trager® Practitioner, offers Wellness Consultation, Trager Psychophysical Integration and teaches Malama Birth Training classes. She can be reached at 635-5618.