Two of my favorite Hawaiian words: ohana and hanai

Since I've arrived in Hawaii and Maui, I have been struck by an incredible cultural expression of love: Ohana and Hanai children. My research into both words found them to be inextricably linked.

A hanai child was adopted by the ohana, or extended family or even a village (Is Hillary listening to this?). But the purpose was more to help carry on the Hawaiian cultural practices as well as provide food and shelter for child whose parents may have been killed or captured in the days of the warlords' battles for the islands.

More often, though, it was a personal family practice, and the matches were made by grandparents instead of parents who felt they had the right and the wisdom to make the best family matches. Even Queen Liliuokalani was hanai. She was adopted by a family of chiefs who were of higher social standing than her biological parents.

She wrote in biography that hanai "is not easy to explain... to those alien to our national life, but it seems perfectly natural to us. As intelligible a reason as can be given is that this alliance by adoption cemented the ties of friendship between the chiefs.”

The practice of hanai is no longer always about continuing tradition, although in some regions that's more likely than others, such as Hana, where tradition appears to valued more highly than in some other Valley Isle regions, at least according to what people tell me and the books I've read lately on Hawaiian culture.

Rather, it's increasingly more about the pragmatic search for a good home in the hopes of keeping a family together during a rough patch. Not always, though, of course. Because nothing so brilliant is ever black and white.

Maintaining culture and community ties still is another reason for it, or maybe that's the same thing as keeping a child close to the community he or she was raised in.

For my first couple years here, we in the newsroom would take turns writing up the obituaries. And nearly every one of them contained several hanai sons and daughters. I've written about hundreds of hanai sons and daughters in just a couple years.

I don't know how common it is today to take in the children of friends for whatever reason (It does sound so much like my own Catholic tradition of godchildren. And since we are devout, becoming a godfather -- which I am greatly privileged to say I am -- is taken very seriously, especially when you're Irish and Italian. Godchildren seems to grown out of fashion, though, as less people go to church. But hanai remains a common practice here, and much more involved, of course, unless tragedy strikes.).

Maybe they were orphaned; or their parents had to travel for work; or they were just unable to maybe feed another mouth in the large families that continue to be common in some Hawaii regions.

But I have been told that these wonderful people took in these children -- without expecting to be paid by the state -- which, of course, happens in the foster care system.

And sometimes these hanai children would maybe live with their hanai parents for a year or so and still be able to maintain a relatively normal childhood before returning home, which also happens to be a goal of foster care systems. With hanai, however, the kids didn't have to leave behind friends or change schools or live under the house rules of strangers.

For more than a decade as I was growing up, my mother and father had foster children. They got the idea because my mom wanted to do something meaningful while she took a break from her career to raise us.

The overachiever that she is meant that sometimes we had as many as six foster girls in our home, many of whom had been abandoned by their families or had strained relationships because of abuse or their own struggles with addiction and rage (They were always sweet to me, though. Always kind.).

I can say that no one ever got rich being a foster parent. It was done out of love for one's community, although there were always a few bad apples who took advantage of the system, too.

Anyway, I can see those parallels between my mom and ohanas and hanai here

For instance, my parents never turned one of us kids away if we hit a wall for a few months. And my mom even took in one sixth-grade girl, Debbie, whom I consider another sister today even. Debbie's mom had lost her husband, and her mother had several sons to raise on the Ojibwe reservation nearby my hometown of Duluth, Minn.

Debbie is truly amazing. She stayed with us through college -- long past the time the state reimbursed foster parents for a child. I am so proud of my big sis and still recall fondly how lovely and protective she was. She has a great husband and family now; she takes in foster children and treats them the same as her kids, too, like my mom did. This is the kicker: for years, she has a been drug and alcohol counselor on the rez.

Again, when I used to do those Maui News obits. There were some familiar names listed as hanai. I saw a lot of successful business owners, professionals and even lawmakers. As for the word ohana, it's no secret that the price of paradise makes it nearly impossible for many young couples just starting out to buy their own place. But that doesn't seem to be much of an issue for people with families who already own land and homes on Hawaii.

That's because ohana today seems more and more to refer to immediate family or a few extended family members -- or I've seen it used in a much broader sense to mean an entire community or even the whole state of Hawaii.

But in everyday use lately the happy obligation goes much deeper. Sons, daughters and cousins, aunties and uncles (I'll talk about those wonderful, more encompassing terms of endearment on another day.) don't just return home here because they were laid off and need a basement to crash in.

Instead, across Hawaii, families from all backgrounds welcome relatives to live in small homes that the counties allows to be constructed behind the main house. These are sometimes little starter cottages or “time-to-get-back-on-your-feet houses,” which apparently have increased in the modern era or been refurbished for use again, and in these difficult economic times.

You could see the backyard construction work increase on even cinderblock ohanas as small as a less than a 100 square feet, as the economy fell into the toilet.

They also are used to care for elderly family members, and sometimes, they are rented out while a son or daughter goes to the Mainland in search of steady full-time work.

I don't know if to what exact extent this system of community ohana exists today, or how many families have returned home (I'd love to see a study on it, though, if anyone has seen one.).

But I have seen the proof in those obituary names that ohana and hanai still works. Hawaii I am certain is a better place, a more special place, with more smiles and internal safety nets, because of this cultural tradition. It brings me such joy to know what a quietly caring place this state is, how people take care for each other without expecting much if anything at all in return.

And it's often coming from the families of the humblest means.

Bravo, Hawaii, for “Live Aloha” being so much more than a bumper sticker. I hope the practices of ohana and hanai continue forever and evolve into something even greater.

There are so many lessons we as individuals and as an organized society of laws and taxes and regulations can learn from these pragmatic and open-hearted traditions of childhood comfort as well as community and cultural protection.