Work & Whiplash

I know two things: (1) I love this island. (2) I love this boy.

I fell into a bit of an impromptu travel season this month – three back-to-back trips with a weekend between. Just enough time to empty the suitcase into the laundry cycle, to re-roll and re-pack once it was refreshed.

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I am learning that one is not in direct competition with the other; that separation doesn’t always mean absence, that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. That life, mostly, can be compartmentalized until it can’t.

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It’s an odd thing, to receive the very thing you wanted. To receive the quiet of an empty room you’d wished for only weeks ago. To receive the alone time you crave, the silence you love.

The whiplash of it all.

The release from responsibility in one area, straight into the throes of responsibility in another.

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It’s about presence, for me, I’ve come to know.

It’s about being gone when I’m gone. Being home when I’m home. Being all there, wherever I am, and resisting the temptation to bow out of social hour because I need to FaceTime.

(Resisting the temptation to bow out of family time because I need to hop on a call.)

R & R

You come for rest, for rejuvenation. You think it might be a nice bonus to meet someone with an answer to what’s weighing on your heart. Maybe you’ll bump into her at the pool, or eating a shaved ice, or on a surf board.

What happens is this: you depart realizing she’s you, and has been along.

(You promise to keep in touch.)

When in Hawaii...

1. Turn off your phone

2. Head straight for Honolulu and book a room at Hilton Beach Resort. Rainbow Tower is rad because it has a lagoon view and is closest to the food. Also, the beach. If you’re coming in around midday on a Friday, you might catch an indigenous meal and smile at the boy drinking POG by the palm tree. Ask your driver if Hawaii likes to party and witness an emphatic string of positives: Yes, yeah, yeaaah, aloha!

3. Curl up under beach towels with fireworks blazing in the sky. Your jet lag will kick in first thing the next morning, but it’s worth it. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Aloha forever.

4. Try your first shrimp taco (I knowwwww) and add shrimp and garlic to your grocery list pronto. Also, google food trucks on the island. (This one’s the winner for now!)

5. Stake out a spot on Sunset Beach, stay there forever. Do not leave. Sitting in the swaying hammock with warm toes, you’ll feel like you did when you were 19 in Cancun, which is never a bad thing to feel.

6. Learn many things; remember two: (1) everything is sand, (2) except for love.

To my sweet, loving, committed to work kids Preslee and Max – that couldn't come this time, there's always next time, next time.