The sand on Ha’ena beach is coarse and golden and it’s scattered with chunks of coral and broken seashells. Little crabs dance in the line the foam leaves on the sand while the sun goes down and in the morning, the sand is piled in pyramids along the tideline, the remnants of little crabs digging their way in for the night. The clouds are shaped like the heads of the Where the Wild Things Are monsters, horns and all, and they peer across the misty bay while the sun comes up. The air smells like salt and flowers.
We stumbled out of bed early this morning to catch our interisland flight, resentfully tossing our luggage in the rental car. The road was covered with birds, mynas and roosters and little red hatted cardinals and one elegant white egret, they wait until the car is right on top of them to skitter to the edge of the road. There’s very little traffic. A kid sits at a bus stop, he’s wearing a green baseball jersey and playing a ukulele, two sisters slap across the street in flipflops; they’re wearing backpacks loaded with school books.
J. schlepps the ukuleles (yes, that’s plural, there’s the one I traveled with and the new one that I bought yesterday) and hefts them into the overhead bin. The plane arcs out over the blue Pacific and I lean my forehead against the oval window. Our stopover in Honolulu is too long, we couldn’t get on the earlier flight so now we watch the parade of Japanese tourists, many of them in surgical masks, probably because yesterday the first cases of Swine Flu were reported in Hawaii.
I’m tired from getting up early, but more than that, I’m so sad to be leaving the islands. This is an imperfect paradise, with traffic and vog (that’s not a typo, it’s volcano smog) and eight dollars for a gallon of milk. But I love the diversity, the bright yellow taste of island pineapple, the sound of the ocean, the array of green. Those sweet, sentimental songs that speak of island longing play in the imaginary soundtrack in my head. Here in the main terminal, a band plays and two dancers sway through the moves of a slow hula.
In fancy I am lead back to dear old Diamond Head
Honolulu, I am coming back again.
We stop to listen and because I know the words, I sing along.
You bought the uke?!