Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos Read Free Page A

the relationship between Dad and Beth grew until even a child as young as I could see that there was more than friendship going on.
    This is why I became confused about the roles of women in the home and in society. When you have never experienced normal, it is hard to recognize it when you finally find it. The same holds true for an abnormal life. For example, when your parents are continually high, it is hard to think of that as being either a bad or an unusual thing. I just regarded it as being “what grown-ups do.”
    As young as I was, I could see that Dad was making an effort to create a “normal” life for us, and even though he and Tawny fought just as my mother had fought with Dad, life was better when he stayed away from the partying lifestyle. During thosetimes we went to church regularly and Barbara, Tucker, and I were able to develop our interests. For me it was dance. I so loved going to dance class. Dad really did want to give us the childhood he never had.
    One of the people who helped Dad grow in life was the motivational speaker and author Tony Robbins. Dad had been going to and speaking at his seminars for several years. Dad often spoke to Tony’s audiences about his time in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and how much Tony’s words and philosophy had helped him over the years. At about the time I turned six, Dad attended a ten-day Tony Robbins seminar in Hawai’i while our grandmother, Dad’s mom, watched us. Dad and Tawny had been married only a little while, but already it was on-again, off-again.
    Dad fell in love with Hawai’i and did not return home to us until our initial two-week stint with Grandma had turned into more than a month. When he did return, he happily announced that we were moving to the Aloha state. I was still at an age where I had no concept of the enormity of change this move was going to bring. But the plane ride, the endless ocean, and the new house in a tropical paradise all represented such great challenges that they made life feel strange and unreal, even for a little girl growing up in the surreal fashion that I was.
    Still, even if all of my life challenges so far were combined, they would not come close to the test my elementary school years would prove to be.

Two
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New Identity, New Life
    H awai’i truly is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I understand why Dad fell head over heels for it. I live on the island of Oahu, where the weather is perfect year-round and there is a lot to see and do. I love hiking and being able to take my kids to the beach every day. Between the beach, hiking up Koko Head (the headland that defines the eastern side of Maunalua Bay), the Makapu’u Lighthouse trails on Oahu’s east side, and the many waterfalls, Hawai’i has it all. For me, it is home.
    But even paradise isn’t perfect. My move here when I was six taught me that people and life situations can mar what is otherwise ideal. For example, my brother Duane Lee did not move to Hawai’iwith us. Instead, he chose to stay in Colorado with his girlfriend, and I missed him terribly. There were also many new things in my world, and most of my time was spent getting used to the warmer climate, the lush vegetation, and the unusual accents spoken by many of the people in Hawai’i.
    Although English and Hawai’ian are the co-official languages of Hawai’i, I quickly learned that many Hawai’ian residents speak a broken form of English called Pidgin. Early Hawai’ian settlers and plantation workers influenced Pidgin by the many different languages they spoke. Eventually Pidgin was used outside the plantation, kids learned Pidgin from their classmates, and over time it became the primary language of most people in Hawai’i.
    For a young, newly arrived Hawai’ian like me, Pidgin was very difficult to understand. For example, “th” sounds are replaced by “d” or “t” so that becomes dat, and think becomes tink . An “l” at the end of a word is