Day One: Revisiting Favorites

My day started very early since I am still on East Coast time, but everyone else had no trouble sleeping until the day normally starts here.

First thing, Auntie Annette is ready to go out for her morning walk around the valley at 7:30 and she asks if I am coming with her. I try to get out of it -- I have a bad knee, I limp -- she isn't interested in excuses and she waits for me to get dressed.  We go out and patrol the valley. It's a lovely morning and I remember how cool it is to be able to see the ocean from the top of the street.  She stops to throw people's newspapers closer to their houses so they won't have to walk so far, and to pull some of the many munching caterpillars off what appears to be year-round milkweed as an intentional landscape feature. I wonder if those are monarchs, but I sort of doubt it, and since I don't know I just watch her collect these big striped worms in her hand and throw them in the street while we walk. She reminds me of Grandma Hiu, in addition to the obvious similarities with my mother. It turns out that my knee is not such a hindrance to walking with my 84 year old aunt who multitasks while she walks, and she tells me I am walking too fast anyway. Maybe I should find new walking partners when I get home. I just walk with people who are too focused and way too young.

Jon allowed himself to be drafted to go on a real hike with my aunt at 10:00.  A friend from the mainland had called her, he is in town and wanted a hiking partner.  So the three of them went on the Hanauma Bay hike and got to see those amazing views from the top of the ridge.  Hiking in Hawaii is rewarding after you get about 40 feet up because the views are just gorgeous from then on.  

Hanauma Bay from the top of the ridge.

Meanwhile, down at street level, I called Auntie Pat and asked if I could come for a visit. Years ago, my mother and I did a Winter Term project together, collecting stories from my mother's aunts and uncles when they were in their 80s and 90s. Now all those people are gone, but I have my own aunts and uncles and I am well trained not to be afraid to call and visit, thanks to mom. This generation has its own interesting sagas, but since we don't live here we can just visit people without feeling like we are taking sides of any kind. And we often serve as an easy way for people to see each other after a long time, even though they live on the same small island.

So I drove over to the next valley, about 10 minutes from home base in Niu Valley, and went to see my aunt. She told me what she knew about my cousin John who is always in transition, confronting challenges, and not feeling successful in general. We also learned that John's older brother Scott has moved back to Hawaii, so we will hope to see him after about 20 years. Pat is my late Uncle Vern's second wife and she helped to raise my three cousins: Scott, Matthew, John -- she is always my main hope of finding those boys. I was delighted to find that she now has a housemate who helps her take care of herself, the house, the gardens. This makes me very happy as Pat has lived alone for a long time, taking good care of herself but always in a wheelchair for her whole life. This caregiver is also a fellow quilter, and they have been friends for 40 years. While I was there, Jon and Auntie Annette came back from the hike and stopped in to say hello (all part of the plan, of course).  

My theme for this trip is picnics, daily intentional picnics. I think I love picnics because of the Hawaii trips of our youth and because we were poor so picnics were a regular feature of travel, anywhere we went. In the old days, we always packed food and took it to the beach. Now I don't need home-packed food and I don't even need the beach, I just want to sit at a picnic table or somewhere outside. Even on our cross country driving trips in the winter, we seek out picnic tables. Regular followers of this travel monologue have seen many references to picnic tables...

Our Day One picnic did not have high standards. We went to Zippy's and got saimin and a mahi mahi sandwich and a Teri burger (and lilikoi juice just the way I like it, weak) and we found a parking place at the perennially crowded Sandy Beach and we ate and had naps. HEAVEN.

Picnic at Sandy Beach.

Then we went for shave ice at a place that looked authentic because it was crowded with locals. I got my standards:  lilikoi, coconut and some other fruit that is less easy to identify (doesn't matter what). Jon wanted to go back in and read the menu so we would be more prepared for next time, but it was too crowded so we will have to wing it.

While Auntie Annette went out on her third walk of the day, her Sunday walk with a friend, Jon made hot and sour soup and I made fried rice (ironic to be cooking Chinese food for our Chinese relatives, but that's what we eat at home, so oh well). Uncle Babe and Auntie Arlene arrived with their yummy contributions to dinner and we had a nice meal. Uncle Freddy called Jon's soup "sexy" and Uncle Babe said it was like something from "downtown." People at home use different words for Jon's cooking, so that amused me.

Donna and her boys dropped by to say hello and by that time I was so sleepy I could barely keep my eyes open so everyone else had to do the talking. I just about fell out of my chair. They were talking about food and I was full anyway, so I couldn't really follow the conversation. I felt like Grandma Hiu, dozing at the table while everyone else kept going. Jon, of course, was somewhere else on the couch with his phone.  

Coming back here reminds me of why I am/we are the way we are, in so many ways. My father tends to get a lot of credit/blame for our upbringing, but when we are here I see all the ways that we are like Mom. Clutter comes from both sides of my family. Organized and in areas that make some sense, but  so much stuff on surfaces and edges. Just like our house. And the way we eat has much more to do with my mother and Jon than with anything to do with the Newcomb side. And the discipline we keep (at least my siblings and I) comes from Mom, not from Dad. This "discipline" topic has been coming up for me a lot in recent weeks as I think about aging and what it takes to age successfully, without too much pain and anguish. I am grateful to my mother for whatever discipline I might have.

An excellent first day in paradise.