So there I was last Sunday night in seat 22E, flying high above the Pacific Ocean on Hawaiian Airlines toward San Francisco, trying to see through my stifled tears to open the stupid package of pretzels the flight attendant passed out. Molly, my four-year-old, was happily sitting next to me, pouring out her adulation on the new hula-dancing doll we had bought her in Kohala. It was outfitted with a green Hawaiian-print top and a plastic grass skirt, and instead of legs it had a plastic conical bottom which housed a battery-powered mechanism that made her move and swish her hips when you flip the switch. It was a cheap little thing bought in a tourist shop, but to Molly it was passionately enchanting. That morning, in a goofy mood in the car on the way to the airport, I had taken the doll and made an impromptu puppet show for the girls in the back seat. For once in my life I was funny, and it had set them off squealing and giggling. For the rest of the day and on into the airplane, Molly had kept asking me, “Mommy, will you make another show?” which I periodically obliged within the limits of the other passengers’ tolerance….
So why was I crying? Where the hell were these tears coming from? Was it just PMS, or was there something really moving me inside? It happened the next day again as I whooshed through Trader Joe’s getting groceries to refill our bare cupboards. Every time I saw a product from Hawaii or a Hawaiian print on an employee’s t-shirt, I got tears in my eyes.
Something happened during our vacation to the Big Island last week. I didn’t feel it when we touched down at the Kona airport the previous Sunday and looked out the windows to see barren chocolate-brown lava fields all around. The island felt strange and exotic, not postcard-perfect like the other islands, but mysterious, different. The sun was so hot and intense it felt dangerous to my pale skin. The posted signs for tsunami evacuation centers were oddly ominous. Strangest of all was the ubiquitous but silent presence of the Kilauea volcano, which a few months ago opened up a new vent and has been spewing sulphur dioxide into the air in enormous quantities every day. It made for a consistent white haze in the sky near Kona. They call it “vog,” and, as you might imagine, it’s a health hazard, though we couldn’t feel any tangible effects from it.
What moved me about the Big Island crept in slowly. It was the thrilling change of scenery as we drove from the hot and dry north into the wetter, coffee-growing south and into a rainstorm. It was visiting an ancient Hawaiian religious site that still so strongly held a sense of peace and sanctuary; a silent connection with a people who lived and breathed hundreds of years ago. It was tasting the native pineapple, mango, papaya, macadamia nuts, fish; feeling the fresh plumeria flowers around my neck in a white and violet lei; snorkeling with bright yellow and zebra-striped fish in the turquoise waters; and being quietly stunned by the abundance of the natural world in this spot on earth.
What moved me also was my family. Paige, who had been terrified of water as a two-year-old, now could not get enough of it. Her uncle and grandpa taught her to snorkel, and she loved it. Molly was inexhaustibly delighted with a pink inner tube and all the things she invented to do with it. Here, the two of them were freed from their everyday routines of home and school life and set forth into a giant, beautiful world that welcomed them with soft air and buoyant water.
I think it was the first vacation where the four of us actually had fun together. The girls are finally old enough to have some adventures without naps and diapers ruling our every decision. After surviving a near melt-down of our marriage last year, my husband Roland and I seemed like perplexed aliens set down on the beach, unsure of quite what to make of the overflowing abundance of beauty and harmony. The extended family who joined us on the trip gave our lodgings the feel of an ongoing block party. Molly delighted her grandparents by tottering off to their condo every morning to join them for breakfast (often unbeknownst to me). Paige played tug-of-war with palm fronds with her two teenage step-cousins, her giggles wafting over the lawn in the balmy night. I enjoyed a walk I took with my dad one morning to see some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs baking in the unforgiving heat. I’m not sure which was more perplexing: the hundreds-year-old petroglyphs, or the fact that my dad had just turned 76.
I think my tears were simply sadness that all of this had ended. It was time for us to return to the Bay Area, to find our car in the parking garage of the San Francisco airport, to weave through the traffic on the Bay Bridge, in the middle of what now seemed an inordinately sprawling urban metropolis. It was time to check my email again, to put my watch back on, to send the girls to camp and preschool. It was time for the four of us to disengage and go our separate ways during the day and try to reconnect at night. It was time to re-accept the terms of the modern world. To re-enter the hurly-burly of it all.
But I didn’t want to. (I kept joking that “inowanu” is a real word in Hawaiian.) What I think I tasted in Hawaii was a few days of living in a more holistic way. And I think my tears were about my intense yearning for me and my family—and the whole world—to live a better life. How wonderful—and how right—it would be to live on land that is unspoiled, to swim in water that is clear, to taste the wonder of fresh food from the earth, to live in community with extended family and peaceful neighbors, to gaze at the stars and connect with the past, to be able to discern the most important parts of life and to give them our attention.
Yes, it sounds like a description of paradise. Is heaven a silly concept? Is the holy city just a dream? Or is there something in our yearning in itself, and in the yearnings of the scores of generations before us, that somehow makes that wholeness a little more possible?
So why was I crying? Where the hell were these tears coming from? Was it just PMS, or was there something really moving me inside? It happened the next day again as I whooshed through Trader Joe’s getting groceries to refill our bare cupboards. Every time I saw a product from Hawaii or a Hawaiian print on an employee’s t-shirt, I got tears in my eyes.
Something happened during our vacation to the Big Island last week. I didn’t feel it when we touched down at the Kona airport the previous Sunday and looked out the windows to see barren chocolate-brown lava fields all around. The island felt strange and exotic, not postcard-perfect like the other islands, but mysterious, different. The sun was so hot and intense it felt dangerous to my pale skin. The posted signs for tsunami evacuation centers were oddly ominous. Strangest of all was the ubiquitous but silent presence of the Kilauea volcano, which a few months ago opened up a new vent and has been spewing sulphur dioxide into the air in enormous quantities every day. It made for a consistent white haze in the sky near Kona. They call it “vog,” and, as you might imagine, it’s a health hazard, though we couldn’t feel any tangible effects from it.
What moved me about the Big Island crept in slowly. It was the thrilling change of scenery as we drove from the hot and dry north into the wetter, coffee-growing south and into a rainstorm. It was visiting an ancient Hawaiian religious site that still so strongly held a sense of peace and sanctuary; a silent connection with a people who lived and breathed hundreds of years ago. It was tasting the native pineapple, mango, papaya, macadamia nuts, fish; feeling the fresh plumeria flowers around my neck in a white and violet lei; snorkeling with bright yellow and zebra-striped fish in the turquoise waters; and being quietly stunned by the abundance of the natural world in this spot on earth.
What moved me also was my family. Paige, who had been terrified of water as a two-year-old, now could not get enough of it. Her uncle and grandpa taught her to snorkel, and she loved it. Molly was inexhaustibly delighted with a pink inner tube and all the things she invented to do with it. Here, the two of them were freed from their everyday routines of home and school life and set forth into a giant, beautiful world that welcomed them with soft air and buoyant water.
I think it was the first vacation where the four of us actually had fun together. The girls are finally old enough to have some adventures without naps and diapers ruling our every decision. After surviving a near melt-down of our marriage last year, my husband Roland and I seemed like perplexed aliens set down on the beach, unsure of quite what to make of the overflowing abundance of beauty and harmony. The extended family who joined us on the trip gave our lodgings the feel of an ongoing block party. Molly delighted her grandparents by tottering off to their condo every morning to join them for breakfast (often unbeknownst to me). Paige played tug-of-war with palm fronds with her two teenage step-cousins, her giggles wafting over the lawn in the balmy night. I enjoyed a walk I took with my dad one morning to see some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs baking in the unforgiving heat. I’m not sure which was more perplexing: the hundreds-year-old petroglyphs, or the fact that my dad had just turned 76.
I think my tears were simply sadness that all of this had ended. It was time for us to return to the Bay Area, to find our car in the parking garage of the San Francisco airport, to weave through the traffic on the Bay Bridge, in the middle of what now seemed an inordinately sprawling urban metropolis. It was time to check my email again, to put my watch back on, to send the girls to camp and preschool. It was time for the four of us to disengage and go our separate ways during the day and try to reconnect at night. It was time to re-accept the terms of the modern world. To re-enter the hurly-burly of it all.
But I didn’t want to. (I kept joking that “inowanu” is a real word in Hawaiian.) What I think I tasted in Hawaii was a few days of living in a more holistic way. And I think my tears were about my intense yearning for me and my family—and the whole world—to live a better life. How wonderful—and how right—it would be to live on land that is unspoiled, to swim in water that is clear, to taste the wonder of fresh food from the earth, to live in community with extended family and peaceful neighbors, to gaze at the stars and connect with the past, to be able to discern the most important parts of life and to give them our attention.
Yes, it sounds like a description of paradise. Is heaven a silly concept? Is the holy city just a dream? Or is there something in our yearning in itself, and in the yearnings of the scores of generations before us, that somehow makes that wholeness a little more possible?
1 comment:
We must have been shopping at Traders Joe's the same time the next day. Walking through the isles limping along behind Wayne it was all surreal we were home already. Our week together made me realize what I had already always had known our family is perfectly puzzled together. I cried as we pulled out of our driveway that morning to head home. The trip we had anticapated was over. The bond we all had was incredible. We enjoyed our morning visits from our blonde darling :) Playing in the ocean it was such a blessing. Thank you for writing such a beautiful story of a memory we all share together. Kiss the girls Kim! Much love Sabine
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