Hula, Hendrum, haiku

(Still managing to keep up with the A to Z blogging challenge. Much love to all my commenters, who make this conversation seem so much less one-sided!)

Hula: I've never been to Hawaii, or actually seen hula performed live. But I like the sound of the word, and how it invokes the very motion it describes. The Hawaiian language sounds tropical and lovely to me, too, even "mele kalikimaka." Tenessa and I (and Dan and Shaun) threw a Hawaiian themed party, once, in which we draped our whole apartment in various Hawaiian fabrics, played catchy ukulele music, and allowed Shaun to wear a coconut bra. It was a mostly beautiful thing. I still have approximately 17 yards of Hawaiian fabric to utilize for other projects. Suggestions are welcome.

Hendrum: My hometown, a little blip on the map of the Red River Valley. Hendrum is so much a part of who I am, crafted so much of my childhood, and provided so much to me while I was growing up, that I barely know where to begin. Both of my parents were born in this town of just over 300, in homes right across the street from one another. My maternal grandfather ran Johnson's Fairway, a small, three-aisle grocery store, for over 40 years there; my paternal great-grandfathers helped build the city, moving large buildings across the river with 16 horses, and building shelters at the city park and houses within the city limits. As V gets older, I find myself longing, in some ways, for her to have more of the childhood I had: freedom to roam from yard to yard, knowing all our neighbors, to hear the churchbells and know that it is supper time. There are deep constraints, too, in a town this small with roots so deep: when over half the town remembers her great-grandparents, people she never knew, sometimes a sort of stagnation can set in. In her kindergarten classroom, she has people of all colors, all backgrounds, from Christian to Muslim to Atheist. In Hendrum, diversity amounts to people whose names don't end with "-son." Bake a pie, eat a pie, I guess.

Haiku:
Little poem, precise
simmering words exploding
from my heart to yours.