We’re on our way to Hawaii and are currently laid-over in Seattle. It seems a little unreal…partially because we’re going in October and I’ve been focused on work. Mark has been reading at least three books about the islands and has already booked several snorkeling excursions.
Mark has never been to the islands.
I was there last in December of 1977 over the Christmas Holiday. My family spent about a week there. What I remember was a dingy-looking pigeon in a dark, stone, Honolulu Episcopal Church on a rainy Christmas Day… I remember collecting rocks from a crashing surf with my sister, Julie, while my folks walked the beach… I remember visiting the Pearl Harbor memorial and seeing tiny oil droplets rising from the rusting hulks beneath the water. I remember going to a cultural center where my mom and sister put on grass hula skirts and Julie’s mortified expression when I took their picture. I remember the the public was invited to taste poi; the docent there was complaining that they had to use ineffective toothpicks now that the Health Department had ruled that tourists couldn’t scoop up poi the traditional way with their fingers. I remember Hawaiian dancers on a floating platform…. I remember trying to photograph every “tiki” I came cross and also being in a competition with Julie to buy the most resin tikis “made with real lava.” (The “Love Tiki” with glowing eyes was an especial hit.)… I remember island-hoping from Oahu to Kauai and there was some problem with the plane’s front landing gear (it was stuck up or down? the tire had fallen off? it was turned sideways?) that had everyone anxious. I remember stifling my laughter and not making eye contact with my sister as we were sitting in a restaurant while two elderly ladies several tables over pointed and asked their waiter “Did they film Hawaii Five-0 over there?” (My parents were also wearing their straight faces.) The biggest impressions made on me were from a (dry) book of Hawaiian Myths and Legends collected by King Kalakaua (“Hina, the Hellen of Hawaii”, and “The Sacred Spearpoint of Lono”), and the infamous “hula girl”—also “made with real lava”—I brought back on the request of my grandfather before our Christmas travel (“Make sure you bring me back a hula girl, heh-heh.”).
About two hours in the air—four more to go. We’ve been separated from our roll-on cary-on. The other passengers appear to be drama-free. The sunset is slowly pulling ahead of us as we fly southwest. When we took off from Seattle, the sun was on the horizon, but it sprang back into the sky as we ascended. Over the hours it turned the clouds into a keystone shaped stain glass window.
The ruddy glow has dimmed, leaving behind a honey-agate glow which turns turquoise and then cobalt. The ocean below was a gradient greyscale beneath silvered clouds, but it’s all inky now.
There should be a sliver of a new moon, but I can’t see it out of the airplane window… maybe it’s—oh! We just banked and now Venus and the new moon are visible!
The most surprising thing about the airport on Hawaii was that it is open-air. Gates, agent counters, and luggage are under structures reminiscent of huts. Incongruous flat-screen flight monitors cast blueish light on palm trees. Everyone says “aloha,” which was expected. What was surprising is the use of “mahalo,” the meaning of which I thought was somewhere between “thank you” and “respect,” but which appears to be used for something between “thanks in advance” and “your forbearance and compliance with this procedure, which should be common sense to you, and which may be bureaucratic or mildly annoying, is appreciated and expected.” We retrieve our cary-on luggage and go to the car rental.
The night-time drive to the resort is uneventful, although we do wonder which live animals we should be watching out for on the highway.
When we arrive at check-in, Bud, the guy who greets condo owners is out for the day. The women staffing the front desk are a hoot, and when we say that we were expecting chocolate covered macadamia nuts, tell us that we need to march into Bud’s office and pound on his desk for them. “Here,” says one, “you check him in and I’ll tell this one about how to do things.” My instructions boil down to use common sense and don’t trust Siri to get you places because she’ll steer you wrong (“I told them we wanted to take the exit, but did they listen to me...?”)
It turns out the wild animals that cross the highway at night are goats and wild pigs.
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