Mahalo: Part One (Getting There)

Linette

Part One: Getting There

boys' room

My friend Linette repeatedly invited me to visit her in Honolulu, the place where she grew up, and one day I found myself saying yes. I had only the vaguest sense of Hawaii, something along the lines of palm trees, hula girls, and big surf, but the idea of seeing a bit of it with a friend who knew it well was appealing.

“It’s the only way to do it,” said Monte, urging me on. “Hawaii really is a different culture, more like a foreign country than a state…and to have a local show you around?  You’d be crazy not to go.”

Monte knows about my water issues, of course, and is fully aware that I am not one of those fun-in-the-sun types; what enticed me was this business of its being like another country, as well as Linette’s exuberance.

Bleak transition. Somehow I had forgotten about the prolonged misery of airports and airplanes that must precede all faraway travel adventures and invariably turns me into a scowling misanthrope. I’m up at 4:30 to board a 6 a.m. bus to LAX for a flight that leaves at 11. The lines for security extend outside the building, and it takes about forty minutes to get through. Oy vay.

Then comes the waiting and a joyless sort of people-watching through my ill-humored lens. It's a grand procession of loud people, fat people, teen-aged girls who dress like sluts and can’t complete a proper sentence, glazed-looking kids with their portable video games, folks in sweat pants carrying pillows, sleepover style, and parents schlepping strollers and car seats and big bags filled with fast food snacks and plastic toys and assorted paraphernalia.

One bold couple is wearing matching Hawaiian shirts -- intentionally, I guess -- and a large woman in peach capris and wedge sandals is kvetching to her companion, “If you would've just remembered to bring your handicapped card, we could have gone right to the front of the line.” 

I can’t explain it, but this crowd has a Florida vacation feel, and I am having some serious qualms about Honolulu now. I am beginning to suspect it might be something like West Palm Beach on steroids.

The boarding announcements start; all of us are about to be crammed together in a metal tube for six hours in the sky. “I gotta have a bloody Mary,” says the guy behind me. 

I’m not a drinker, and it's not even noon, but I understand his sentiment. I am already feeling around in my pocket for my trusty little vial of Ambien.

So let’s just skip the part where the plane, fully boarded, sits on the runway for another thirty-five minutes, and let’s not dwell on the long bleary state of suspended animation that ensues. It’s a miracle that we can do this at all.

Instead, we shall fast forward to Honolulu, where I have stepped outside of the airport into the sunshine, and Linette has parked right at the curb to pick me up, and she places a fragrant lei of pink plumeria around my neck. It's three hours earlier here, so I feel younger, and we drive to an overview where she points out Diamond Head and Waikiki, and we stop to look at the turquoise sea and banyon trees, and she shows me where her father used to surf.

A small gust of drizzle passes through, leaving droplets on the window and kisses on my skin, the first of many kisses from the sky.In the evening, we go to an outdoor concert on the grass in front of the Hawaii State Art Museum, and I hear for the first time what will become a theme song for the trip, a slack-key guitar rendition of “I’ll Remember You.” 

Afterwards, we walk a few blocks to the First Hawaiian Bank, which doubles as a gallery of contemporary art. We look at underwater photographs and paintings by local artists, all happily coexisting alongside the everyday furnishings of the bank business.

That night I sleep the sleep of the exhausted in what was once Linette’s brothers’ room, a room with surf magazines and posters and a big sliding glass door through which a lively breeze enters and flutters things about.Tomorrow we shall wake up rested and refreshed to a breakfast of fresh mango plucked from a backyard tree, and the world will be smiling again.

So stay tuned. Among other things, we're going to visit the palace, walk to sacred ruins, and sample the native cuisine. I especially want to tell you about my swimming lesson -- yes (gasp) I enter H2O and get horizontal in it -- with a legendary woman of the North Shore, and we'll island hop for a little sojourn in Kauai.

And so much more. A hui hou.