in the bank

Jessica and Aloe arrived on the same plane that took Phil home Thursday. It was a ragged morning for everyone but after the tearful exchange I swooped the first-time island girls directly to the condo, the turtle cove, an then to the pool. Aloe swam like she was born in the water, while Jessica and I caught up across a pair of shaded lounges. My new favorite resort staffer, Steven, came by offering umbrella drinks and banter, and we introduced Jes to the Lava Flow. An afternoon of grace was capped with a mom and daughter about Aloe's age, a flower painted on her freckled cheek, who were leaving the next day and so gave us a boogie board and bag of sand toys which had been likewise donated to them earlier in the week. We went down the road to Brenneckes for an early dinner at a table with not only dazzling sunset views among the palms, but also a pair of playful whales just beyond the breakers and a vivid St Patrick's Day rainbow. Where's the pot of gold, Aloe wonders? We're splashing in it.

Friday we set alarms to be front and center for the cloudy ginger cauldron of sunrise. We had a hula lesson followed by another hour in the pool and a walk over to Shipwreck Beach, where we camped near tidal pool rocks in the occasionally blazing sun and watched both boarders and cliff jumpers rolling their dice in the red flag surf conditions. We depleted the kitchen snacks until evening, when we ventured to Hanapepe for the weekly art walk. After making so many visits to that crumbly main street in the almost abandoned day time, it was magic to see the Friday night transformation. There was suddenly tons of human evidence that a real life town bubbled around Hanapepe's sleepily disguised concourse. Guitar players on porches and drum circles on the curb, print-makers filling empty garages with a tangle of cheerful wares, pie vendors at picnic tables, pink plumeria tree silhouettes in a pink twilight sky, string lights laced across neighboring eaves. And so many food trucks. We started with Tiki Pop hibiscus and lavender tea infusions served in mason jars, then gourmet mac and grilled cheese from Kickshaws. Finally, at last, we found the Midnight Bear Bakery open. We ate their prosciutto pizza and put two danishes (myer lemon and guava cream cheese) and a hefty rosemary sea salt baguette into the beach bag.

Probably plenty of tourists attended art night, but they were folded into what felt like a very local, sizzling electric, Friday night. We had a kid asleep in the back seat on the dark road home, it was that sort of full-on sun-kissed day. Next morning another sunrise meditation amidst clouds and mild wind. Jessica grading, Aloe front yard surfing with stuffed animals on the boogie board, me reading a novel until noon. I gave the girls a Poipu tour which included my first sit down at Makai sushi counter in a corner grocery store, watching Chef Lim roll his ahi, avocado and eel with great finesse and teasing conversation. Not a fast lunch, but simple, scrumptious and fun. 

We checked out the orchids and rainbow eucalyptus outside the Allerton Garden tour, stopped by Spouting Horn, and tested the water at the Canoe Club beach, all on the way to a barbeque hosted by Jessica's parents, aunt and uncle, who happened to be vacationing in Poipu this week as well. Their ocean-front room sat directly above the lawn of The Beach House restaurant, and we spent a magnificent sunset hour on their lanai looking for wave-catchers, whales, and the enchanted green flash. 

After gourmet burgers and a few bottles of wine, we decided to sleep in Sunday morning and lounge around the room until our next meal: brunch on the elegant veranda at Kilohana Plantation's Gaylord's restaurant. Where to begin with this culinary highlight...the mac nut and pineapple yogurt parfaits, lilikoi mimosas, kalua pork pinwheels, rum raisin bread pudding, cabernet-braised spare ribs, or the show- stopper: ahi eggs benedict. We sat with cloth napkins in our sundress laps, perfectly sheltered and serene while a drizzle misted the courtyard and a duo of ukelele players serenaded us. On the way back from brunch we picked up groceries to host a reciprocal dinner for Jes's family at our place. The girls spent the afternoon poolside while I took a walk down to Brenneckes, bought another sundress, was struck again by how dynamically great that beach is -- for New Year's Eve or just a Monday -- and came back up the hill for a respectable degree of exercise in the flattening 3pm heat. We whipped up mango coladas and a bountiful taco bar for our guests, and ate on the breezy patio as stars began to pop across the sky.

Each night's rest in the cradle of a plush king bed and ocean lullaby improved considerably for me; by the start of the new week there were no more 3am wake-ups, and by forgoing the sunrise again on Monday morning I managed eight straight hours of sleep. We went to craft hour at the activities center (formerly our hula lesson venue) and painted ceramics: Steaven the turtle, Pomegranate the tiki, and Lyla the shark. The therapy of simple brush strokes set us up for a soothing afternoon under the increasingly hazy sun of Poipu Beach, where we people-watched, sand-decorated, boogie-boarded, and encountered two monk seals and a close up sea turtle. At sun set there was Aloe's first shave ice and wandering around the west-facing cliffs of the resort as the waxing moon rose into the clearest, calmest night yet.

It was the warmest night, too, and while we studied the moonlight's tattoos on the purple sea, enjoying taco bar leftovers and lava flows, our black and white kitty cat came back to his favorite post. Jessica tiptoed out the screen door before dawn Tuesday and scampered over to the Grand Hyatt to join their morning yoga class. She came back aglow at 8am and banged out the remainder of her grading while Aloe and I checked on the turtles in the cove. The day was extremely still and close, congested with milky clouds that diffused the searing UV sun into everything. How astounding now, how as soon as the wind is absent you forget how you'd forgotten it could be gone for days, your kingdom to get just another breath of it back.

It's Florida hot, Aloe said, so we didn't stay out on the rocks long, and soon enough, to validate her assessment, the sky let go a little and poured a half hour of compact rain straight down. As the pavement steamed we went out for a mini-adventure back on the Mahaulepu trail. We put our flimsy rental car to the test on a thoroughly washed out road, then explored the shaley cliffs and jungle cave, pet the nursery tortoises, sheep, and a red dirt Palomino. 

Aloe built a sand castle on a sheltered beach along a river and then we went back to Brenneckes for another three scoops of shave ice slurped at a picnic table in the muted thick-spread sun. There was more pool time and then sushi dinner at The Dolphin in the KuKui'ula shopping mall. The fireplug fell asleep at the table and then woke in the middle of the night overheated, but Wednesday a hint of the breeze returned to cut the stifling temperature just enough, and the girls got their grand capstone adventure on Captain Andy's snorkeling catamaran up the NaPali coast. 

I dropped them in Port Allen at 7:30, then drove to an empty lot behind a ball field on the other side of the harbor and watched them sail away. Grateful they were so content to stay on the south shore all week instead of sacrificing long hours in the car to see everything their first time. I went back to the condo and sat in the quiet, doing laundry as if I lived here, clean clothes I would pack before bed time. On the lanai of the first room we ever stayed in as owners, now tying up a kind of circle, staring at the blue water brightening in shimmers under the ripening sun, the cloud layer breaking away, whale watching, the waves still still, the wind stirring the fragrant air around the bird music just enough to hold me for maybe four years, maybe longer. Turning it over and over in my skin, banking it all to take with me.

I stopped in Hanapepe before picking up the girls to buy a chocolate croissant for the morning and the best avocado sandwich ever from Midnight Bear. After Koloa mill sherbet, souvenirs, more reflection from the lanai, and a nap, we finished with the ultimate dinner at the Hyatt's Tidepools and the ultimate walk home along the booming surf in the full moon light. This morning we stayed outside until the red orb in the east and the silver one in the west hung directly across from each other, like handles on either side of a bucket that holds the whole sea, making it small around me as I float, attuning my life to this endless small space, right in the middle. Mahalo island, for now and always.