Grandpa’s open Visayan nature was quick to affection and sternness, yet his fun-loving spirit was never far behind. Although he was raised on the sea fishing for his family, I only remembered one time with him at the beach. He rolled with me in the waves, laughing and throwing me in the crashing shore break, my hair and swim suit full of sand. I begged him to play in the sea with me again, but he complained his back was sore, a familiar refrain that any parent will tell an unyielding child. 
       My senior year in high school I performed a French opera solo with our Punahou School choir at the Neil Blaisdell Center. It was the most prestigious concert hall in Honolulu, just down the road from the Hawaii Theater where Grandpa played base half a century earlier. In just a few months I would head off to college, music school. I could not have known then how my soaring aria filled my Grandpa with joy, the self-taught guitarist, a man who didn’t read music. After the concert, he pulled the gold diamond and aquamarine ring off his finger and gave it to me. A year later he would be dead after heart surgery. His loss was a heartache, a longing I would only come to fully know nearly a quarter century later when my son was born.< next >