For the Love of Sean

By A.J. Llewellyn

I love children and the nieces, nephews and assorted godchildren I have in my life are very important to me. As an author, they have inspired both Baby Kimo and the twins Kamaha and Keli'i in the Phantom Lover books (13 and counting). My niece is the model for Baby Daphne in the Black Point books I co-author with D.J. Manly.
When D.J. first suggested that our red-hot Black Point husbands Thomas and Matt should have their own child, I was all over the idea. However, I felt there should be a tug of war with the surrogate mom, an idea D.J. ran with.
I've seen this situation happen over and over again with friends where surrogate mothers and even sperm-donor dads have fought for custody rights.
Watching the dreadful circus that unfolded in Rio de Janeiro this morning with the long custody battle over 9-year old Sean Goldman, I realized how lucky Kimo and Lopaka were that they managed to get custody of their son Baby Kimo pretty easily. But that's fiction.
If you haven't been following this case the bare facts are this: A Brazilian woman, Bruna Bianchi married New Jersey resident David Goldman. They had a son, Sean. When Sean was four, she took an alleged two-week vacation to Brazil with her son.
And never came back.
She divorced Goldman, married another man and fought, with her powerful attorney husband Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, any efforts her former husband made to even see his son.
For five years, David Goldman has petitioned the courts for visitation and for a custody order to be enforced. And then Bianchi died in childbirth.
Up until the last month, this drama has played out privately. Like many custody battles, the details are shocking and cruel.
Both Bianchi's mother and her widower fought Sean's return to his father until they ran out of options this week.
What disturbed me today was how some newshounds supported the family that abducted Sean Goldman and kept his father from even seeing him for 5 long years.
In my Phantom Lover books. Kimo has magical powers. He was able to fight wrong with the help of his ancestors.
David Goldman isn't so lucky.
It isn't the first time a high-profile US child abduction case has hit international headlines (remember Elian Gonzalez?) but what disturbed me in this emotional tug-of-war was how the Brazilian family who profess to love Sean Goldman behaved this morning.
Forced by the courts to return Sean to his father, Lins e Silva, who has been able to use his legal and financial clout to prevent David Goldman from having contact with his son - in spite of several Brazilian court rulings in Goldman's favor - chose to parade the child he claims to love through the streets, the boy crying and frightened all the way to the US Embassy.
I've read all the reports and watched extensive coverage of this case and it is clear that if Joao Paulo Lins e Silva truly loved his dead wife's little boy, he would never have put him through such public trauma.
He was given much more private means of returning Sean. In the end, it is apparent that his motives are not for the love of Sean, but for the love of winning.
In spite all the hoopla, New Jersey rep Chris Smith who has helped David Goldman in his quest for justice since the beginning and was present this morning when they were reunited, said that once Sean was over his terror of the crowds, he and his dad were thrilled to be together.
"They were calm, smiling, they started talking about basketball."
Smith was also present the first and last time David Goldman got to see his son in February and said that visit too, showed the father and son adored each other.
I am certain that once the dust settles and Sean is comfortable and safe, David Goldman will allow Sean's maternal grandma to see the boy again.
All of this heartache - on both sides - could have been avoided if the child hadn't been stolen in the first place.
I feel strongly that David Goldman should not have just forgotten his kid or given up on him as some in the media suggest. He loves his son and the photos of them together from five years ago show a loving bond.
This is a story of love and I for one, am impressed that David Goldman never gave up on his kid like so many dads do. He is no deadbeat. He hasn't moved on and fathered a bunch of other kids by a bunch of other women.
He is a man who loves his son.
I hope they get to cement that bond in peace and without further interference from the family in Brazil. I heard this morning that they don't plan to contest this arrangement anymore.
Perhaps they have finally woken up and realized their only resource is to make peace with the man they denied for so long.
I am not sure how merry this Christmas will be for either side, but I think Sean's return to the father who loves him devotedly might just mean that for him, it is a very happy day indeed.
What do you think?
Aloha oe,

A.J.

Unconditional Love

By A.J. Llewellyn

Hi Everyone,
I want to talk about Unconditional Love today, in particular a Cause I have been passionately committed to: the canonization of the Belgian born priest, Father Damien. They called him the hero of Molokai because this incredible man was the only one who volunteered to service Molokai when death was almost certain.

He defied the Vatican’s orders not to have direct physical contact with his flock and went to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, a leper colony in 1873 to serve the sick and dying. Single handedly. Hundreds of islanders were banished to this island during the terrible plague traced to a ship load of Chinese farm workers brought to the Hawaiian kingdom, causing widespread panic and disease.

I have been devoted, along with many others to the Cause of seeing this Blessed man declared a saint. Make no mistake. I’m not Catholic, nor has God whispered in my ear dictating this long and winding road, but I did have an encounter with Father Damien that I have never forgotten.

Damien, thanks to the new Pope, Benedict XVI is on the road to Sainthood. At last.

The spiritual patron for Hansen's Disease, HIV and AIDS patients and other ‘outcasts’ has finally been embraced by the Vatican, once embarrassed that Father Damien, in caring for what he deemed his Children, fell victim to leprosy (now called Hansen’s Disease) himself and died in agony of it at the age of 49.

His story is remarkable. When he arrived on the lonely, isolated Kalaupapa peninsular, he was shocked to find so many sick and dying men, women and children, banished to the island with no food, shelter or any treatment for this hideous, progressive disease. Damien stopped the women from being raped, demanded food and medicine to be shipped to Molokai, built housing and a church for his children. He fed them, bathed them. Respected them. And he loved them. Utterly and unconditionally.

He must have been a talented builder because every single structure he erected is still standing and in use, by the remaining two dozen patients who will by Hawaiian state law be allowed to live at Kalaupapa until their last breath.

Visitors are allowed to Molokai, but a permit is required and no more than 100 tourists can be on island at the same time. A few years ago, after the death of my grandmother, who raised me, I fell into a deep depression and during a long stay in Maui, found a compilation of oral histories from former patients at Molokai. Their stories were devastating. So many families were destroyed by the “Separating Sickness.” I felt increasingly compelled to visit Molokai and read everything I could on Father Damien.

I became obsessed with the wonderful Australian movie, Molokai in which the extraordinary David Wenham portrayed Damien. Like many islanders, I became enraged when Father Damien’s steps toward Sainthood resulted in the Belgian government digging up his body from his grave in Kalaupapa.

Long before he contracted Hansen’s Disease, he considered himself a leper. I felt in death, as in life he would want to sleep with his children and when the Belgian government bent under international pressure and returned his right hand to the people of Hawaii, I felt even more strongly about paying homage to the man I considered a true hero.

Coincidentally, I won a book on ebay called Margaret of Molokai and couldn’t wait to receive it. Then I got an email from a man on Molokai who was devastated because I had beaten him out on the book auction. He had tried to win it for his mother, a still-living resident at Kalaupapa. I offered to give him the book as soon I had read it. I promised him I would read it quickly and send it to him immediately.

He responded with a kind email saying I was the embodiment of the spirit of Aloha. This man and his wife and soon, his mother, started corresponding with me regularly and I ended up going to visit them. Anyone who has read my Phantom Lover series might be interested to know that Lopaka’s tutu [grandmother] is based on the woman who became my surrogate mother on Molokai.

She took me on a tour of the hospital. I was shocked to see all the barriers still in place, as a sort of memorial and living museum where family members were allowed to come and visit their loved ones in the disease’s curable stage, thanks to new drugs.

We went to Damien’s church and we sat in a pew. I will never forget the sun shining on me, the dizzying scent of ginger stems washing over me. I looked at the floor as I thought about my grandmother and all the things I might have said to her given the chance to say goodbye. I saw all the holes in the floor. That, I hadn’t expected.

“What are they?” I asked my friend.

“Spit holes. In the latter stages of leprosy, the victims during Damien’s time, before there was a cure, could not swallow. Damien still wanted them to come to church and he put spit holes in the floor so they could still come to church and pray.”

And then, a wondrous thing happened. I felt him. I really did. His beautiful, Holy ghost was in his House, and I, like all his other outcasts had just become one of Damien’s children. It was an indescribable feeling. It was a high feeling of pure love.

“He’s here, you can feel him, can’t you?” my friend whispered and I just sat, stunned. Had I been alone, I know I would have dismissed that moment as a fantasy. That feeling has stayed with me for years now and I reach in for it, whenever I need it.

Recently, Pope Benedict declared the inexplicable healing of 80 year old Audrey Toguchi’s cancer as a Miracle. Her fatal illness miraculously disappeared after a long visit at Father Damien’s grave. He has pushed Damien’s case to the head of the line where he should be.

Earlier this year, I went back to Molokai and took Father Damien a lei. I know it’s only his right hand there, but it still belongs to him. The hand that touched, nurtured, fed and held people terrified and feeling abandoned by their God.

In Hawaii, Father Damien Day is celebrated on April 15.

Beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995, the Catholic Church commemorates Damien on May 10.
Known officially as “Blessed Damien of Molokai,” he will soon be known as Damien, hero, father…SAINT.

Aloha oe,

A.J.