Aloha, Y’all. Yes, Hawaii. Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. I wrote a blog last summer about how I was not in Hawaii, and now, this summer, amazingly, I am. Almost ten days in paradise.
I am here with Frank, courtesy of his vocation. Once again, I am the stowaway, the familiar girl in the faraway port. But I’m not minding; the hotel is nice, the breezes are heavenly (Heavenly!), and I am well stocked with apple bananas (a world apart and above regular bananas), mangos, pineapple, macadamia chocolates, and diet shakes (to offset the chocolate). Hawaii! Surreal. My first….maybe my only visit.
The hours that Frank works, I play with the workout stuff in the fitness room. I also float in the pool, where the staff covers white cushioned chairs with white terry sheets before you use them (the hotel theme is white on white; I like it). I bask in the sun— just a little; the sun is intense here; I could easily be burned if I remained stationary for half an hour. I have been flirting with sunburns all week. And then I lounge in the hotel room (to housekeeping’s quiet consternation) and out on its breezy balcony overlooking the ocean with the chocolates and fruit and my Kindle and laptop. My hair in funky braids. I’ve read a book and a short story and I’ve started another book. This is the third day I’ve worked on this blog.
You might say, in staying close to the hotel for so many hours, that I’ve sold my paradisiacal inheritance for a bowl of oatmeal. That might be; I really don’t care… my contentment is expansive.
Besides, the hours that Frank is not working, we are tourists of paradise together. While I love Frank, and love seeing new places with him, I really don’t like being a tourist. And so, I am loving Hawaii, and I am not.
This may seem contradictory and fragmented, because, well, actually, it is. Be generous with me, though. Life is full of contradictions, right? It takes a good, stiff argument with one’s self to know one’s own mind. Yes? And fragments; isn’t it true that in the long hours and miles of our experiences, we are mostly moved by brief inches and seconds? Glimpses, snatches, fleeting perfumed moments, quick flashes. Our responses to these little microbursts don’t always make sense. They don’t always fit our carefully crafted perceptions of ourselves, or of the world.
One reason I do not like being a tourist is because, as a tourist, I find myself apart from what I am trying to experience. The very culture I have come to see and taste and buy is staged for my benefit; it is largely contrived. I cannot truly connect with it, nor can I easily connect with those who serve me because of the set up and because trust is not bought on the turn of a dime. I tell a waiter, when he politely asks us where we are from, that I don’t think it is flattering to be tagged immediately as a tourist. My tone is both plaintive and teasing. How does he know we aren’t local? He stares at me, a smile frozen on his face. And does not answer. It takes all my wits to attempt to defuse that awkward moment. I say attempt; I’m not sure I ever can.
Sometimes, there is an undercurrent of ragged competition amongst tourists. I feel a bit adrift as the crowds sweep by me in Waikiki’s shopping district, a sea of beautiful people in beautiful clothes (or non-clothes, the closer we are to the beach). At first I am self-conscious. I worry about my clothes and hair, my body and age. But I gradually realize that, collectively, the sea of beautiful people is impassive; in this mass of faces hungry to be seen, it is a rare face that smiles back. A rare face that reflects friendliness. I realize I really don’t want to be swept up in that lonely current, to belong to a tribe with no real connections. And so, these last few days, I am most comfortable in easier stuff— my own skin, my favorite jeans and thrift bargain tops and last year’s swimsuit. We play in the beautiful, beautiful surf near the totally unglamorous town of Waimanalo. Amazing water. Feral cats, weasels. Local children bobbing without fear over and under waves. Grownups smiling back. We venture on a hike away from Waikiki crowds, up Makapu’u Point. Which winds up being a total splurge; we leave the trail and explore dismantled home sites and crumbling bunkers and colonies of prickly pear and aloes and yucca. On the way up we chat with a gregarious local man who hikes that route every day. He has lost 75 lbs this year, hiking up to the lighthouse. Though the trail is hot (Makapu’u Point being in a desert area of Oahu), he wears a sweat suit, with a plastic garbage bag wrapped around a layer of t-shirts under his sweatshirt. His own homemade sauna. I am so impressed— by his ingenuity, his determination (he is still a very big man), and especially (ok, I know) his friendliness.
Sometimes tourists encounter resentment. I am sure there are reasons. While it could be that we are reaping the harvest sown by a few scattered tourists before us, narcissists with occasional bad mouths or manners or attitudes….it might be also that none of us are aware enough of the disparity of circumstances between ourselves and those who serve us: we are vacationing in paradise; they are surviving in paradise. Desperate to find culinary fare better than cafeteria quality, we ask a valet (a handsome, fit young man—it is the valet’s practice, at our hotel, to run for the customer’s car when the car is requested) what he thinks of the hotel’s restaurant. Is the food good? He smiles and looks away; I hear it is good, he says, but it is too expensive for me; I have never tried it.
The day after flummoxing the waiter with my silly anti-tourist outburst, Frank and I drive north along Oahu’s shoreline, north as far as we can drive, the road ending in a crowded parking lot next to a beach, and we see how ridiculous it is to be desperate over restaurant choices. As we drive north of Pearl City, well past Waikiki, we notice the residences gradually becoming more and more dilapidated, from house to cottage to shack in increasing stages of decay, til nearly at the end of the road, we pass a tent colony perched right on the edge of the beach amid scrubby trees, tents made of tarps and towels and trash bags and garbage lids and the sides of old cars, permanent residences of some of the permanent population of Oahu. It takes my breath away, and yet… all seems serene as we pass. Or resigned? We see a man wheeling a large plastic canister of water on a dolly from tent to tent, a teenage girl walking on the side of the road (where I am nervous just to slow down in the car), in short shorts and flip flops with a backpack over her shoulder. A dog on a tether. One tent, apart from the general cluster, has a large American flag flying just outside it.
The hunt for good food must be a catalyst for loaded experiences. Like this Degas moment: Looking for a bakery one morning, we reach a shopping area early. Most businesses haven’t opened yet; the courtyard is sparse. A woman sits alone on a bench, brushing her hair. Totally uninhibited; this appears to be her morning ritual. I pause behind a column to watch for just a second, not wanting her to know her privacy is compromised. Her hair tells the story of her coming of age; it is white at the crown of her head, turning gradually grayer as it falls past her shoulders, ending in a darker gray brown almost at her feet. Thick, long, beautiful hair. I never see her face, only her hands in her hair.
Here are more encounters with those rare faces that moved me, smiling back.
There was a ninety-plus year old woman named Ruby. We were buying t-shirts for Ez in the busy little shop she worked in, and she struck up a conversation with us as she patted the piles of clothing back into order with her neatly manicured, gnarled hands (why did that motion make me think of Grandma Wilson? The pat pat adding emphasis to her words). While she was a Japanese American all her life, Ruby’s family was back in the countryside near Hiroshima because of the Depression when the bomb was dropped. She had an aunt and uncle who went into the city to help people evacuate that day. Her uncle came back; her aunt never did. Ruby reminisced about her marriage (she was the lonely girl waiting in a port too, and oh, my, was her husband handsome, she said…for some reason, when she spoke of her husband’s handsomeness, my heart ached for the young Ruby all those years ago, eagerly looking for his return). She reflected about how customs had changed over her lifetime (so much divorce now! We never did that, when I was young). She had endless stories; just when we thought we’d said a thorough goodbye, she’d start another one. And they were all fascinating. I didn’t question her motives for talking to us at such length (I’m pretty sure it had everything to do with the loneliness of having survived a century and knowing almost no one who could relate). I was so grateful for her generosity in reaching out to us.
And there was the little Polynesian bus driver who played his ukelele for us while we waited for the shuttle to fill up with other passengers at Pearl Harbor. This little man had a great mass of silver hair, a wide creased smile and a big speaking voice. He greeted us with a quip and a joke. Someone noticed the ukelele tucked behind the driver’s seat and asked if he were going to play for us. He seemed pleased to be asked, and while we waited for the bus to fill up, he played and sang a wartime song, “Remember Pearl Harbor”, and then “Blue Hawaii”. This wasn’t an official part of Pearl’s memorial tour… other drivers sat in professional/detached silence as their shuttles filled. Our driver’s voice, though it was rich and held plenty of volume, crackled and wavered crazily as the voices of the old often do. Frank and I were sitting toward the front of the bus, and I found myself holding my breath, just a little, praying that no one would laugh or mock, that everyone would be kind. Clapping trickled from the back of the bus. And thankfully, the little bus driver didn’t stop. He sang Israel Kamakawiwo-ole’s version of “Over The Rainbow”, familiar and beloved to me with the playful, wistful pluck of the ukelele, and I exhaled and looked out the window, humming along. He didn’t need our kindness; he was dishing it out. I wasn’t worried that someone would hurt him anymore; I was simply in the moment with him.
Here are more dichotomous tourist experiences:
We went snorkeling. Another highly recommended thing to do. I have been lamenting to Frank lately that we don’t play enough, that we don’t get out and move…move up mountains and over hills and through waters enough. To his credit, snorkeling was his idea. And I must say, reluctantly and with injured pride, that he loved snorkeling better than I. While I am tough enough to run over 8 miles in an hour in the fitness room (and am inordinately proud of it,) ask me to wear a face mask and snorkel, and I am on the verge of panic. It is like someone has their hand over my mouth and nose and is intent on suffocation. Complicate that with flippers on my feet, flippers that get caught in the ocean’s breaking tide and threaten to sink me in the ocean’s loneliest depths before I can even leave the shore. After a couple of aborted attempts at actually submerging myself enough to truly snorkel (I almost gave up each time, shaking my head, near tears, fighting my way through the waves to the shore), I finally was in the water. Breathing like Darth Vader (or that girl on “The Abyss”) through my mouth and Not my nose, heart pounding, knees trembling. Forcing myself to swim. Trusting that the waves wouldn’t sweep me out to sea, that my snorkel wouldn’t fill with water, that my flipper/fins wouldn’t drag me down to the bottom and hold me there, merciless. This was my leap of faith, my little breath of life, planting my face covered with all that stifling gear into the water. Swimming at first slowly, and then with more confidence…and then smooth and weightless, till suddenly, I realized that I was flying. The ocean floor was the ground, the water’s surface the sky, and I floated over the earth, my arms spread and sweeping like wings. It took awhile to see the fish and coral—complications of a foggy face mask–and there were panic stricken intervals when waves washed over me and stopped my snorkel or filled my face mask with water—but when I could finally see the life that I floated over, it was magic. Sometimes Frank and I held hands as we flew. Those were good moments.
I mentioned Pearl Harbor. Besides the ukelele playing bus driver, we saw the memorials and toured a big ship and a submarine. This adventure took nearly a day. I got a headache. I got thirsty. And a little tired, and a little cranky. The wind kept blowing the hem of my cotton dress up and Frank, often behind me on stairs and ladders, kept holding the hem down for me. I wouldn’t have cared if the hem went over my head, but he did. The seconds that I loved: I loved seeing the bunks on the ship. How tight and exact everything fit, bunks stacked (claustrophobically) one over the other, with just enough space in the aisles between bunks for a lean, tight-hipped sailor to stride through. In one of the bunkrooms, a mattress was propped up, revealing the underneath support, which looked like a large tool box tray. Segmented into little compartments. A sailor would have kept all his stuff there, his most important stuff—the kind of stuff he would have stood in line and filled out papers and pled with his sweetheart to be given, since space was at such an extreme premium. That caught my imagination. It also caught my throat; shipfuls of those toolbox trays containing the wartime treasure boxes of boys lay at the bottom of the harbor. Things that were once so important that they were included in that closely edited space submerged in sea water, forever out of reach. The owner long dead.
I also loved the stark contrast between submarine and battleship; the dials and knobs and gears of a sub are shiny, made of brass I suppose… while the ship’s mechanical parts (the ones we could see) were by contrast grey and clunky and entirely utilitarian. Which actually I know a submarine’s parts are too…definitely utilitarian, every inch used wisely… but the sub just looked better doing utilitarian than the battleship did. I found myself irrationally longing to own somehow the gleaming metal parts of the sub, perhaps because I have learned to love power tools. Particularly new ones: durable, steady, precise.
One of our first days here, Frank and I went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. It is a beautiful place, with lots to see and do. Friends and relatives who’ve been to Oahu were insistent that this experience was a necessary one. And it was a good one, it was. Objectively, I can recommend the long hours and miles. Subjectively, I learned something shocking about myself through them (the hours and miles): I do not like guided tours. I have this nearly irrelevant flashback as a little girl on a thirsty, frustrating day at a Brownie (or was it a 4-H) day camp. There is some part of me that rebels, that objects, that wants to linger, independent, or run ahead and be the first to discover something real, on my own. That doesn’t want to be given pre-measured little helpings of this and that along the way, ending precisely in time for a luau. I don’t like the sensation of following someone else’s program, at any given minute half expecting someone to tell me to line up, stay off the grass, be quiet, don’t touch (which at the Polynesian Center, they thankfully never did. Brownies and 4-H-ers should be so lucky). When it was time to weave a little fish out of the long strappy leaves of some tropical tree, I wrestled with my inner child. Our tour guide was radiant and confident and I sincerely liked her…I felt guilty about my rebellious longing to disregard her instructions. Kind of glad that she was busy with other people who were trying to make the fish right. I wanted to weave a whole mat, wanted to start at the beginning and end at the end and make something real that my children could play on. The little fish was so….I don’t know. Little. Exasperating. Later, when we got back to the hotel, Frank looked at my project and asked me what had I been trying to weave? Because it didn’t look anything like his fish (which turned out perfectly).
Hours and miles, and (as I said before) while I didn’t love all of them, I don’t mind recommending them. The canoe pageant with its dancers representing different cultures, the canoe ride, the luau, the night time show with more beautiful dancers (my favorite part: when they danced with flaming torches and over flaming leaves). The woven fish, or not. We learned a basic hula, regarded replicas of villages and fragments of customs of different Polynesian cultures—coconut tree climbing, coconut cracking, drum beating. Saw a very large boat, primitive but capable, and certainly inspiring. The glorious little seconds in all of those miles? Besides the snippets of humor interspersed throughout, it would be Aloha: The beauty of Polynesia, past and present, absorbed in a flash: lush plants hanging with fruit, sun flashing on water, green thickly textured mountain backdrop, people vibrant and smiling with beautiful skin and eyes and hair, muscles and curves, powerful and languid and graceful all at once. Beckoning, inclusive. An occasional tongue stuck out. Someone, I think it was our tour guide, told us what “aloha” means. “Alo” means to share. And “ha” is “the breath of life”. So literally, aloha means to share the breath of life. It works for hello, goodbye, and I love you. I thought of my sister Nola, with her wild Mufasa hair, her arms tight around me, burying her nose close to my neck and inhaling. She does this when she is greeting me and when we are parting. So does Maurya. I have sometimes done that too, the quick inhale, only usually I am more subtle. Reserved? Wanting to (anonymously) catch the perfumed fragrance of my grandma, or the working, comfortable warm smell of my dad, or the floral bohemian essence of Mara Lee. Or (strangers beware) the intriguing scent of someone new to me.
I love the meaning of aloha. It seems to me to be a prompting, instructive. While it sometimes may have become something of a cliche here, said with every crossing of each new proprietor’s threshold, I hold my discovery of aloha like a pretty shell in my fist, next to my chest.
As I will hold all the treasures I am finding in Hawaii.
