A Nokabes Birthday Letter

Dear Violet,

Over the past few weeks as I have been thinking about your birthday letter my mind has been ticking boxes for all the things you are learning and doing - all the moments I so desperately want to document in your letters, locking them away into a virtual time capsule of sorts. You can swim. Diving for rings and sticks and whatever else falls to the bottom of the pool. Cannonballs and side breathing. Check. You know most of your letters and their sounds (and when in doubt, you say H). Check. You can write and recognize your own name. Check. You carry on long-winded conversations about your day. Check. You draw and recognize shapes. Check. You ride your bike and hike for miles at a time. Check. You can hop on one foot, do a summersault and catch a ball. Check. You love fully, hug fiercely and can be wildly stubborn. Check, check, check.

Checks of achievement, sure, but also checks on an ever-growing to-do list of growing up. Sometimes I get locked into that soundtrack that is ever present in our days together. How can we do better? How can we do more, work harder, push further?

In high school I started long-distance running and cross country requires year round training. This is a grueling sport, but one that taught me the benefits of hard, honest work. There are no shortcuts when you are distance running, only running flats, pony-tails and gatorade. No bad referee calls or tech suits. In running, it’s your mind and your sweat and your soul and maybe a pot hole or an elbow dig along the way.

My junior year of high school my cross-country team won our regional championships and placed second in the state. Our coach used a Hawaiian pidgin word, nokabes, throughout that season. He wrote it on 3x5 index cards he gave us before all our big meets with other motivational quotes and words of encouragement. He shouted nokabes at us as we ran past him on the racing course, and reminded us of the word before training runs and track practices. It became part of our daily vernacular. Loosely translated, the word nokabes means “the very best.”

The thing I should tell you though, is our team had no front runner. We had no one superstar, but we were all evenly matched, sticking together through the entire grueling three mile race. That is what allowed us to win. We depended on each other. And, I think, what Coach Rodriguez was trying to ingrain in us was that we were all superheroes, needing each other to always be looking out for the very best. When we see the best in people this brings out their best. Believe that you are amazing, and you become amazing. He was saying to us as we ran by him, be you, be your best and let your teammates carry you to be your best self too. Nokabes.

It took me another twenty years to learn that these checks of achievement can be - and should be - a badge of honor, but that sometimes life is more than ticking off a to-do list. It is kindness, Violet. And good books and delicious treats and great music and warm sunshine - silver linings among the many storms you will face as you grow.

I guess what I am trying to say in this letter is that you are my nokabes. Your sisters are my nokabes. Your father is my nokabes. Your grandparents and aunties and uncles and friends and community and teachers and faraway mentors - they are all what make us our best selves - piecing together the broken and the mangled - allowing us to grow and learn and complete those checks of achievement.

My wish for you is this: that you will look often for nokabes. That you find nokabes in the people you meet. And that you will always strive to be nokabes.

I love you more than all the stars in the sky and the water in the ocean.

Love,

Momma