Peg & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Hanai Halloween

(Hanai Family photo left to right:

Lola in Alphonso's lap, Mee, Bella in Lee's lap)

In Hawaii there is a deeply loving tradition called Hanai. Children without parents are "hanai-ed" into a family and become part of it, or a couple without children might be given a hanai child by another family or community member. It's a longtime practice that came from the highest place of loving and caring for one another. In fact, very early on, the first born child of a couple was often given to their parents as a sign of their deepest love and respect.

Our Hanai family lives in Tennessee. Years ago we somehow serendipitously found each other, not by intentional calculation, but by what I like to think of as "The Hand of God" moving us around like puzzle pieces and by all of us allowing ourselves to be moved. For sure, A Grand Design "hanai-ed" us together and we all just seem to fit in the deepest, most inexplicable way.

About nine years ago, Ted and I were the "accidental" conduits for Lee and Mee meeting each other. (It's a long story involving Mee's search for Angus, and Crystal Skulls and Teotihuacan). Mee lost her mom when she was 18. I call her the Woman of Many Mothers because she's pulled wonderful mother figures to herself over the years, and I've been graced to be one of them. And Ted, "Bubba" to the kids, is more a father figure to her than her blood dad really could have been. But more than parental roles, we all feel like we've played interchangeable roles for each other for an enormity of time, before and beyond this lifetime. Does that make sense? Oh well, sense or no sense, we love this family dearly and their children ARE our grandchildren, blood or no blood, sense or no sense and that's just the way it is, and we couldn't be happier about it.

So, we went to Nashville for Halloween to get some good Hanai-lovin' and whooo weeee doggies! did we git it bigtime!