Kalani Tonga

Kalani Tonga is an artist who lives in Midvale, Utah. In addition to painting and creating objects that incorporate graphic design from her Tongan heritage, she works at a nonprofit, Pacific Island Knowledge 2 Action Resources (PIC2AR) that builds community connections, provides services and resources for ethnic communities, and preserves Pacific Island cultures art forms. She is also the director of Pasifica Enriching Arts of Utah. Her design work can be viewed on her Instagram feed

My house. At my house, I have two sons and three daughters. My boys are 18 and 12. I have twin 11-year-old girls and a 10-year old. I had four babies in two years at one point. So it was hectic there for a few years, especially when we're talking about Sundays; that was a nightmare. But as they've gotten older, we've had different kinds of surprises. My husband passed away in 2021. And so it's just me and my five little people. We are just plugging along. We live in Midvale, Utah.

A Tongan ward. On Sunday, we have church at 12:30. That has really made a difference in our being able to get there early enough for  sacrament. We have two bathrooms, and there's either fighting over the shower the night before or the morning. But we get up, and we get ready. We also have a dog, so somebody takes the dog out so that he is good to go while we're at church. Then we're off. We are definitely not first row kind of people, but we straggle in, and we make it there. We go to the Midvale 14th Ward, which is a Tongan ward. So that's probably a little bit unique. It's really cool. I love it. I grew up in Texas, and our family was the only Tongans that I knew in the area that I lived in, outside of my grandparents and my aunt who lived with them. But I didn't get to grow up around a lot of Pacific Islanders. You always want your kids to have the things that you didn't get, right? And, unfortunately for them, we don't have any more money than I had when I was growing up, but I feel like one of the things that I have been able to give them that I didn't have is the opportunity to be around other Pacific Islanders. The Church is the same everywhere, but there's a different spirit to it being with people who sound like my dad and who look like my family members. 

A cappella. Half of my family still lives in Texas, and then I live in Utah, and I have a sister and a brother who also live here. But one of the things that I really miss about all of us being together is that music was a huge part of growing up for me. And if you come to our ward, it's surprising. It's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't been there before. But the music is done a little bit differently in the Tongan ward, where the chorister starts; they sing first. So they start the music, and then everybody joins in. And that happens with every single verse. You wait for him or her to start singing. And then everybody joins in. Sometimes we have pianists and organists, and sometimes we don't. Right now, we don't, and this is kind of sad: our pianist and organist passed away during COVID. She was the only one in our word that had that talent. And so since then, we've just been singing a cappella. So they start singing a couple of notes, and you hear what to sing. And then everybody just picks a harmony and sings. It's really cool. And it's different than I think you would expect. 

Dad's house. After church, we all go home together. Sometimes we go on Sundays up to the cemetery to see their dad. They call it "Dad's house." We go over to Dad's house and hang out for a little while. Sometimes when the weather is nice, we take the dog and let him kind of run around. My kids run around, and play, and talk to our dad, and then we go home and start getting ready for whatever we have going on the next week. 

My mother. Mother's Day is a little different as a single mom, but not really. For me, Mother's Day is really about honoring my mother. My dad's family is Tongan, and my mom's family is Swedish. I think my mom and I are very different in a lot of ways and very similar in a lot of ways. When my husband passed away, my mom and my stepdad came, and they stayed with us for seven weeks, which is a significant amount of time to just put your whole life aside for somebody else. And she does things like that often. I had five grieving kids and all of them had different grieving styles, and some of them triggered each other. My oldest dealt with it with humor, and any time I asked him to do the dishes, he'd be like, "Wow, Mom, my dad just died, I can't believe you're asking that!" And we would get a laugh out of that, but then it would really upset some of my other kids. One of my kids was having a really hard time, and I didn't know what to do because they put her on a medication that ended up making her suicidal. And I was like, "I can't work, and deal with four other grieving kids, and also be on suicide watch. I can't. There's not enough of me to go around." And my mom came and got her and took her back with her to Texas, and she lived there for a couple of months until she got back on her feet, and everything got settled. So, yeah, for me, I think being a single mom, there are challenges. But luckily, I have a mom that is really, really kind and generous--Christ-like--in my life.

On the journey. We try to make Sunday different from all the other days of the week, but we've had a really long road to trying to figure that out. My husband was a member, but he was not ever active. He was in and out of prison. He was in a gang. He had lots of stuff going on. And so during the time that we were together, we weren't super active in the Church, and then, even after he passed away, it's taken us a while to kind of get our footing back under us. But luckily, like I said, I have an amazing ward. I have really caring leadership--all the way down from the bishop to the Relief Society president to the young women's president--everybody has been really kind when we needed kindness. And so I think just getting to church has been something that was different for us, in a good way. Everybody's in a different place on their journey. And that's where we're at right now is that we're just trying to do the basic things, get us there, and then make sure that we are prepared for the rest of the week ahead.