waves away

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...

I don't know why I'm hung up lamenting time "wasted" or not well enough spent when we're not scurrying all over this island getting sunburned. It's not logical. Staying close to home base and eschewing excursions keeps us out of the car, out of the tedious island traffic; all that time usually spent looking at the road and the tailpipes gets spent looking at the sea and the sky. We save money on gas and bar drinks. The hours patio lounging and napping under billowy curtains are the same as all the hours in past years sitting on the smoking bench gabbing. We just had quiet this time instead of social, resting instead of running, using this respite to be more inside our life than outside. But the doors are all flung open here and the barrier between in and out is a thin one, so by Monday I made a peace with this alternative kind of time. There are things that can not be reconciled, though, nor blogged. Physical and emotional pain that followed us into the m...

The rooster was with me at sunrise. I actually woke from a restless sleep at 5 the first morning on Kauai , made some tea in the dark, and sat on the balcony waiting to see the ocean as the light very slowly bloomed. I first spied the rooster across an acre of rolling lawn, on the ridge near the old smoking bench. When our eyes met, he hopped his way to right under my balcony, looked petulantly up at me, and began a cockadoodledoo that would last, uselessly, until noon. Things are changing in my Shangri La. The drive from the airport to the condo seems shorter and there is no more need to linger on the way. The resort property is under renovation so its splendid lobby and convenient poolside party bar, among other buildings, are hidden behind mesh fences that rattle in the wind. I wonder if years of construction gunk have poisoned the grounds, because the grass is patchy in spots and some trees are pruned past foliage or parched gray. Surveying the property on a walk the first mor...

The road from Nashville to Memphis was almost unremarkable, flanked by bare gray forests and barely rolling hills. An apt reflective canvas, probably, for moving across the first road that took me past the Mississippi , that showed me south. Almost 15 years further along in life, here I was riding backwards. And where was all the lush green and hallowed ground of my Highway 40 memory? Dormant? Further east? Fabricated? It just now occurred to me that I would spend the next two days in my own Matrix. One corroboration -- it was still a three-hour tour, and a swift one with my sister behind the wheel. She took one work call, and then we talked about old friends and future vacations. Approaching the city, much as we had on arrival in Nashville , we merged incorrectly at a freeway interchange; missing our downtown exit. We drove a full circuit around Memphis before accessing our Beale Street portal, but then Katie found some Marc Cohn on her phone so we could cruise in like bona f...

A long time ago I drove all the way across Tennessee . Afterwards I thought I knew a lot about it, but I didn't even know it had the distinction of bordering more states than any other except Missouri , with which it is tied. I've been through seven of the eight states Tennessee borders, but I didn't have this fun fact in my pocket until it was put there by a tour guide cousin in Nashville just weeks ago. Three trips to Tennessee behind me now, I hardly know anything.  Technically it's not my own but my sister's cousins who live in Nashville ; technically my sister and I have different moms, and it's hers whose niece has settled in Tennessee . But we like moving beyond labels in this mixed family, so my sister's cousins invited us both to stay with them for a few days. I'd only stopped in Nashville long enough to eat a sack of White Castle burgers, that long time ago. I wanted to see more, to fit a missing piece into my Southern puzzle, and my...

It's the year of the monkey, swinging through the branches of many trees. The year of extra space to fill with reading, writing, geography tonic, general wellness. It starts in Austin at my third annual MLA convention. I could have used a warmer jacket, but otherwise I brought everything I needed and nothing more; I did not arrive late, did not get sick, did not see everything and did not mind. The Texas sky was dark when I first saw it. Our flight from Seattle, which sucked up the ripest part of the Wednesday, finished by circling awhile over a carpet of spectacularly blushing sunset clouds. On the ground it was a drizzly night. Through the fissure where the plane met the gangway came enough air to let my nose know that we were in a happy place: it was southern air. Lots of people probably want me to call Texas "west" -- sorry, I'm not going to be able to call it anything but "south". Not Dixie south, but distinctly below 35° N latitude. That Aus...