Forgetting the Wonderment

After so many years, I forget the wonderment and how wonderful seeing the Islands of Hawaii are. But this year, I’ve been reminded of the beauty and difference it is to everywhere else. To fly over and see the Big Island off to your left and Maui sitting as close as it does and then circling for the final approach into Honolulu, flying over the resort we’ll be staying at, seeing it from a bird’s-eye view, it is simply breathtaking. Jen and I have gotten into a pattern of using Hawaii to escape our normal lives. In the beginning, as workaholics, we used buying a timeshare as a forced vacation. But somewhere along the line, I especially, we began bringing work to the islands and it began to lose the luster it once had. Today, I was reminded of the special feeling I once had by bringing friends that have never been to Hawaii. My hope is that I too will get to experience the new all over again through their eyes, nose, and ears.

I’ve been many places that are oceanfront, and they all have their own unique charm that you experience. South Carolina with its southern history and upscale lifestyle of Hilton Head Island, to Biloxi, with it’s gulf humidity that not even a breeze in your face will stop the muggy feel as you stroll around a plantation with the Spanish moss dangling from the trees with the drawl of the deep south. There is the fast-paced lifestyle of the northeast along the Virginia and Maryland waterlines and the smell of stuffed crab being cooked outside of the restaurant and the grittiness of the sand on their beaches. The blueblood Northeast with the lighthouses, seafood, and beautiful Falls of color. My favorite is the Northwest along the icy Pacific beaches and tall grasses where fir and yew meet the ocean in magnificent and rugged coastlines. The huge marine life from the giant squid to hundred-pound halibut to the whales along with the coffee and beer. Coffee may have originated elsewhere, but the northwest perfected it.

Around 2004, Jen and I had cancelled on a trip to Italy for our honeymoon due to her dad’s health taking a turn for the worse. We made the decision to cancel and bank those first-class tickets for some honeymoon later. But sometimes fate is on your side and out of the blue, Marriott Vacation Club came knocking and offered us a five-night stay at Ko Olina Marriott Beach Club for a few hundred dollars and coming with a rental car. This was within weeks of us cancelling. We figured we might be able to escape as her dads health stabilized but is also is when some hard family decisions were made to put him into a memory care facility. We had been woken many times in the middle of the night to run to Boulder and help pick him up off the ground or deal with the sometimes-unruly nature of Alzheimer’s. Jen was still a nurse at heart, but a caring daughter for the family first. Especially the dad she adored. Anyway, back to the story, Hawaii fell into our laps. We didn’t go seeking it. Through our twenty-year marriage, Jen has had to deal with me working every angle imaginable before committing to something like buying a timeshare. But in the end, the mandatory acceptance of that timeshare sales meeting along with the island magic pushed me over my uneasy line and we purchased a vacation week on the island of Oahu.

I never considered myself someone to love a tropical place. Most people know that I hate being hot almost as much as I hate shoveling snow. And I certainly never like humidity along with the heat, which don’t ask me why I ever moved back to East Texas. Anyway, I was more of the rugged outdoorsman type fella that loves putting on flannel, jeans and work boots and chopping wood. Now I live it vicariously through a Justin Timberlake’s “Man of the Woods” video, because once I stepped off that plane and smelled the smells of the sweetness of Hawaii, ok there was little jet fuel mixed in, but remember I worked in the aviation industry, so it just made it all the better for me. The smell of the plumeria overwhelmed me and was like a drug I couldn’t get enough of. A few years later we discovered the North Shore Soap Factory, and we began taking the smells home with us in the form of soaps, body sprays, and lotions. I’m pretty sure the guys at worked must have thought I was starting to give up my flyrod for Mai Tai’s. They were wrong of course, as later on we began thinking about a second vacation spot and Jen followed my desire to own a timeshare in South Lake Tahoe. Another magical place that gets the same reaction from guests as we top the mountains surrounding the lake and seeing it for the first time. There is no other lake like it, and I love the preservation of the locals to maintain it through millions of outsiders visiting every year. But after twenty years of coming to Hawaii, I feel we have lost that magical sensation and more just take a deep breath and leave work, construction, or our normal lives behind and unwind and unpack our lives through being pampered and spoiled by the people at the beach club.

I wish we weren’t so tired when we arrived yesterday, and I hope that tiredness didn’t spoil that first moment for our guests this year. We never really schedule anything here anymore, but this time we do have an activity almost every day. We get to experience Hawaii all over again as we did twenty years ago and I, along with hoping our guests, have the grandest time here, and I hope we rekindle the love for this island along the way. Mahalo Hawaii, I never tire of the receptionist wishing us a “Welcome Home” comment. I know they say this to all weeks owners here, but still it is nice to hear and reminds us of the warmth of the people here and the love they have for sharing their culture with strangers and that they have maintained it for generations even through many attempts to hijack and rob them of their past as in removing the monarchy once held by their King and Queen. This is something many of us have lost in our own culture due to the melting pot we have on the mainland.  I really do love these islands and I hope I get back the feeling of loss if we skip a year to use the power of owning here to see some other beautiful place knowing in the back of my mind that I gave up something really special in doing so and wondering, “should I have?”. Aloha Hawaii, I love being back home!