Walking on Eggshells: Discovering Strength and Courage Amid Chaos Read Online Free PDF Page A

in his life. Dad also had a slew of young children to be responsible for and a business to run. That is a lot for anyone to handle. Before long some of the balls Dad was juggling so precariously began to drop. First, business fell off. Tawny had written a lot of bonds on the Big Island, and it was hard for Dad to keep up with two locations on two different islands. Next, some of his employees began to mismanage Dad’s business. They must have thought that with Dad being so distracted he wouldn’t notice, and I don’t think he did—at first. But by the time he did it was almost too late to bail himself out of a huge financial hole.
    Still, Dad spent as much time as he could with us. He set up a business line in our house, and all of the kids, myself included, began answering the bail bonds line to help out after school. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I soon became very good at giving instructions and taking messages over the phone. I can just imagine what Dad’s clients must have thought when a seven-year-old regularly answered his bail bonds business line.
    Leland also helped out by taking us to school. On weekends we all went on crazy adventures with Dad. We went fishing a lot, and I remember being in a boat with Dad and Leland, who were spear fishing. Both were bare-chested, and I can still remember how happy they were when one or the other actually speared something. Another time we sailed all the way to Captain Cook Point, and Dad told us how Captain Cook had discovered Hawai’i. During those trips I found that I really loved the ocean. There wassomething calming to me about the rhythm of the waves. I also loved swimming and asked Dad to take me every chance he got.
    Dad often took time to read to us to from the Bible, and as a family we talked about what the stories meant. We had some great discussions. One day we learned that a local boy and girl had drowned tragically in a pool. Dad was so moved by the incident that he wrote a story about them. I vividly recall him reading his story to us and can picture Dad’s handwriting on the blue paper that he ripped out of a notebook. He wrote that our grandma met the two children in heaven and grabbed their hands to welcome them.
    To ensure that all of his children were safe and well cared for when he was away, Dad put an ad in the paper for a nanny. It wasn’t long before a number of very pretty nannies moved, one by one, into our home, and then out. Even though I was quite young, it didn’t take me too long to figure out what was happening. After a few days or weeks of taking care of us during the day (and at night when Dad was out of town), each nanny somehow began sleeping in Dad’s room.
    I can’t tell you how many nannies we had. It seemed like dozens—but I am sure the number was far less than that. Of all the nannies, we had one in particular whom I became very fond of. Unlike the others, she was not classically beautiful. It turned out that the other nannies were ultimately there because Dad must have seemed quite a catch, but I could tell that this nanny was there for us . She kept our house spotless, cooked great meals, and every day when I came home the house smelled wonderful. Once sheeven served escargot, a French delicacy of cooked snails that I had never even heard of before.
    This nanny meant so much to me. One evening I was sitting at the dinner table and when we bowed our heads before the meal I remember praying out loud, “Dear God, please don’t let Dad screw the nanny.” I wonder how many little girls are anxious about that particular topic. Several days later I woke up to find my beloved nanny sleepily coming out of Dad’s bedroom, and I was heartbroken that God hadn’t answered my prayer.
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    I’m not sure which of the nannies first turned Dad on to hard drugs. Or maybe it wasn’t a nanny. Maybe it was someone else, but at about this same time Dad became more and more distracted, and business dropped off significantly. Dad,