ruth

If I have any aloha spirit, I learned it from this grand dame. She is always welcoming.

The evening view from Ruth's lanai.

 This is Ruth. She lives in a castle at the end of the road and welcomes all comers, the embodiment of the aloha spirit. She is 86, but she still plays the organ in the church where I briefly sang in the choir. Her husband Jim was the choir director and a notable singer, invited to every local wedding to sing the Hawaiian Wedding Song and funeral for Aloha Oe. Ruth calls him "My Jim."
    They met when she was a high school student and he the music teacher at her Iowa school. When she graduated, he asked her out and took her to see the movie South Pacific, which was shot on Kauai. He had been stationed in Hawaii in World War II as a musician in the service. "How would you like to live there?" he asked Ruth when the movie was over. "Oh, yes!" she replied. She was playing trumpet in a touring all-girls band and did not see it as a career path. They married—he 30, she 18—and moved to Kauai. They lived here until his death some years ago of cancer.
   Nowadays, Ruth lives in the house at the end of the valley without "my honey." She greets everyone who drives up—strangers as well as friends—and invites them in for pupus. Though two of her sons live on the property, she gets lonesome for her Jim every evening, when they used to stroll on the beach together or sit on the lanai in the valley and watch the sun set. I try to go and visit at that time of day, when she drinks her watered-down margueritas and watches her game shows, starting with Jeopardy, on to Family Feud, turning down the sound for the news, and finishing up with Wheel of Fortune. In the morning, she has to practice the organ for the next church service. There is a new choir director.

At a Rotary dinner, Ruth is joined by her daughter-in-law, daughter and granddaughter.