Ka Puana: Bananas Don’t Grow on Trees
By Rocky Sherwood
The first time I saw the Kona Coast of Hawai‘i, it was all dressed up in early December. Hillsides exploded in blood red poinsettias and wild yellow daisies cascaded over rocky cliff edges, reflecting daylight like small solar flares. Avocado and papaya hung pendulously from their trees like huge testicles. There was an insistent sensual fecundity everywhere, creating almost too much stimulation. I was in awe of it all.
I had just come from a gloomy landscape, where the skeletal gray fingers of leafless trees scratched against a pale sky, and everything shivered and hunkered and waited. Suddenly I was in a place that was bursting with warmth and growth and energy. Windows were open and the world seemed to be smiling. The magnificent canopies of monkeypod trees stretching over the roadway, the brilliant orange and golden blossoms of African tulips and the white snow bushes flashing their purity. Then, the bananas! Oh, the relentless bananas; giving birth all year round to weighty hands of fruit! I did not know then, as I drove beneath their massive green folds, that they would grow like weeds and someday swallow my little Hawaiian cottage. I believed that the bananas were trees, like peaches or apples. I expected them to give fruit each summer and then sit quietly and wave their lovely leaves like flags in the breeze as a decorative member of the garden.
Be warned, however, before planting bananas: they are actually perennial herbs! Not only do they tower above the rest of the yard and grow so heavy with their pregnant inflorescences that they threaten to topple over before ripening, but they simultaneously give birth to “keiki,” sprouting at the base of the parent and increasing the size of the grove exponentially. The main plant dies as soon as it fruits and needs to be chopped down or it will putrefy and slowly turn to stringy mush. Neighbors, I learned, tend to frown on those of us who are lazy about our bananas. A yard that is infested with the rotting corpses of the plants can look less than tidy and smell a bit too much like green cheese. Harvesting bananas is a physically demanding job and should always be done while wearing only your “banana clothes,” because the sap gushes out of the plant and permanently stains you. Wrestling with bananas leaves you looking as though you had been splashed by a passing asphalt truck. Trying to saw the heavy fruit free of the stalk and catch it before it hits the ground can be a dangerous dance and the plant is spitting black goop at you during the entire performance. I have lived in Hawai‘i for eight years now, amassing an entire wardrobe of banana clothes.
Bananas don’t grow on trees, I know now, and they are a constant reminder of my early innocence, as my dreams of tropical life began to come into contact with its realities. Life on the South Kona Coast is a journey of constant learning. My simple existence here has produced a contentment and a sense of peace that I cannot imagine finding anywhere else on this planet. I was at home here on that very first December day and I am grateful beyond words for finding this paradise, where I can feel warm sand between my toes every single day of any year.
The island keeps reminding me to watch and feel and be in the present moment. I have my consistent lapses and allow myself to be distracted by a political issue or a social injustice or the painfully slow progress of an important improvement. But over time, the sensual stimulants win and I spend most of my days positively involved with my amazing surroundings.
I can imagine no more pleasant duty than that of harvesting a sticky and unwieldy bunch of bananas on a lazy Kona afternoon. ❖
Big Island author Rocky Sherwood’s books, Meanderings of a Twisted Mind and In Poseideon’s Pocket can be purchased at www.rockysherwood.com. Email her at rocky-ra@hawaii.rr.com.
