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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Daddy’s prophecy
>> Pipeline Cafe
As she danced, the young woman turned, and the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, the 18-year-old Buddha from Liliha, saw an impressive display of cleavage heaving from her red halter top. Then she was smiling, waving, lips moving but music drowning out her words, and she was hurrying to their table, giving his big brother Joe Kharma and Kamasami Khan hugs.
"Jey, meet Bodhicita," Joe shouted above the music.
"Did you say Boddhicitta? The path of enlightenment?"
"Let me guess," she said, sitting down beside him, "you're Buddhist."
Bodhicita Guzman was attracted to bleached-hair local surfer guys, and this one was pretty cute in a Quiksilver cap, black Kailua Boys T-shirt, baggy jeans and Nike T-Macs. But there was something else that made her sit down, gaze into his eyes and suddenly recall her father's prophecy.
"No, not Boddhicitta," she said, "but close."
She told the story of how her Puerto Rican father, then a submariner at Pearl Harbor, attended a Free Tibet kegger during UH Homecoming Week for no reason other than it was a kegger and there would be girls.
And he met a Japanese beauty who was there because she was Buddhist, Tibet was a wonderful cause, it was a kegger and there would be guys.
They hit it off, courted, fell in love and soon grew frustrated because she lived at home and he lived in a sardine can. Finally, they got a room in Waikiki. And somewhere in a night of love and laughter, he noticed a Book of Buddha beside a Gideon's Bible. She read to him, wonderful passages of Buddha's wisdom that made him see the world in a new way. And maybe it was enlightenment, or maybe it was the Jose Cuervo they were sipping, but when she read about Boddhicitta, the path of enlightenment, something in his heritage clicked.
"Bo-dee-see-ta!" he said, jumped up and danced to a beat he knew from a Carlos Santana album. "Bo-dee-see-ta! ... Bo-dee-see-ta! ..."
And so nine months later on Dec. 8 when they welcomed a daughter, her daddy named her Bodhicita, my little Buddha.
"Not only did he spell it wrong, he used to sing to me 'Don't sit under the Boddhi Tree with anyone else but me,'" she said. "Plus the Santana thing. I used to say, Daddy, you're going to hell. And he'd say 'No, baby, I'm introducing you to paradise. Because of your name, you're going to meet a wise man with a pure heart and an honest vision who will show you the universe in all its glory. No way I'm going to hell!'
"Know what? I think I just met him."
Jey nodded. "Perhaps you have."
And Khan thought, sheesh, we can't take this guy anywhere.
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
