This blog has about one more post left in it before it's retired - or would that be discharged? - for good; which means, after you read this, you'll probably never hear from us again.
OK, so if you make the four-hour flight from Minneapolis to Seattle, then schlep six hours over from Seattle to Honolulu, we'll invite you in and chat you up for a mai tai or two - please leave your slippers at the door, of course. But once you head ma kai and get back on your plane, you won't see us again unless you come back, because we are never leaving. Ever. As much of our hearts that can be lost in less than a week's time, have been lost to O'ahu. I prefer to call this island by its own name instead of the general term, because this isn't Hawai'i.
This isn't Hawai'i that smelled of salt air as soon as Tammy, I and the kids got off the plane at the airport in the middle of the Leeward side four days and some funky time-change effects ago.
This isn't Hawai'i that we see when we walk through the ma kai side of Tripler Army Medical Center's guest housing and see the mystical, pacifying Pacific stretching out before us a mile down the side of a mountain is the mystical. It sometimes seems to be bickering with the sky over who gets to be bluer. (Ma kai is the direction toward the ocean, as opposed to makala, toward the mountains - there is no north and south, or east and west.)
This isn't Hawai'i that we dug our toes into as the Pacific crashed at our legs in front of us a couple afternoons ago, while to our left, over Diamond Head and Waikiki, a rainbow formed as if to say, "Aloha," even if one local - not a native, but a local as they are called - told me, almost embarrassed, "We don't really talk that way."
This isn't Hawai'i, not the mountains that tower 5,000 and 6,000 and 7,000 feet over the sea, after rising straight up out of the blue.
No, this isn't Hawai'i. It can't be. Hawai'i is some faraway, exotic place that exists only in some dreamland where I never could and never will be unless I close my eyes. But then, the nine weeks without my wife - counting days, hours and moments, wishing I could be with her, wishing our family was whole again - seemed to fit that definition, too.
But then we go to Subway, buy three meals and spend almost $30; we look through house ads and think that $2,400 a month for a three-bedroom, two-bath place that measures 1,400 square feet, or a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath that measures 1,600 square feet might just be a good deal. (Where are they putting all these bedrooms?). And it reminds us - still house hunting - that, yes, we are in Hawai'i.
But for the extra price you might pay - OK, will pay - this place is a steal. Just don't leave your towels unattended on the beach too long, or you're asking for some theft.
Justin, Tammy's biggest fan
(Click on any of the photos to view them in full size. Obligatory cutlines: top photo - the road to Tripler - the pink monolith on the side of the mountain - is named Pu'uloa Road, which is an easy one to say, but not to drive. None of them are easy to drive, especially if you have any sense of direction. Second from top - view of the Pacific from behind one of the housing complexes behind Tripler, a complex which is directly behind us. Bottom two photos - the view of the downtown Honolulu skyline and the Pacific beyond it from the parking lot of guest housing, the building where we are trying not to step on each other in one bedroom and one small living room with five people and 10 pieces of luggage. The famed Diamond Head is on the far left side of the photo second from the bottom.)
