We swim out to Mala wharf to dive. Not scuba, free dive. I have confessed to Brad earlier that morning that my heart is not in scuba diving this trip. There are tears when I say it. There have been many tears recently. I cannot dive because I feel that I am drowning on land. Life, in the form of despairing thoughts and a heavy heart, closes all around me, and so I cannot imagine feeling liberated by heavy equipment on my back. Artificial breathing mechanism. The smell of plastic and neoprene. I cannot imagine anything but panic greeting me at the bottom of the ocean. And so we don’t dive, and I feel terrible, because it’s all he wants to do. I am letting him down. I have let everyone down.
But I want to swim with a sea turtle. It is the only thing I can imagine that could bring me peace. So we snorkel out to Mala wharf, and I am shocked to discover there is zero visibility, which makes me more glad and less guilty that we didn’t dive. I am swimming in green soup. Brad is also surprised. We see divers descend, so we think there must be something down there. Brad breathes up then dives down to investigate. One minute later, he surfaces.
“There’s a thermocline. About three feet. As soon as you get through it, it’s crystal clear. Come see.”
It’s not that I don’t believe him, but I don’t like it. I don’t want to swim through the haze. I don’t know if I will make it to the other side. I don’t know what I will find there. I can’t see the way.
But there’s only one way.
I ask Brad to hold my hand. We breathe up together, then we dive. Two seconds later, we make it through the murk. He’s right, it’s clear. Before I have a chance to look around, before I get my bearings, the first thing I see is a sea turtle. Brad and I look at each other. We point. I can’t remember the dive signal for turtle, but we don’t need it. We both see it.
I can’t smile with a snorkel in my mouth, which reminds me that I shouldn’t have it in my mouth while submerged. So I take it out, and I smile. I follow the turtle for a bit, then I swim up. I don’t notice the thermocline on the way up. There is turtle, and then there is sky.
Further out, the water clears from the surface, and I can see sixty feet of visibility from the top. A reef grows on the remnants of a pier destroyed by a hurricane. Beauty and ruin. I follow four turtles before I am too tired to swim any more. When I go back, I am surprised by how far out we’ve come. It’s a long surface swim back, but I’m not worried. I backstroke, noting each passing pylon on the wharf as a sign of progress.
Back on the beach, I tell Zelda that we swam with turtles. She’s amazed, but not jealous. She gets in the water with Brad while I watch from the beach. Moments later, a turtle lifts its head from the water right next to her. Perhaps it’s the same one. I grab my mask and rush out to join them. I think it likely that the turtle will have left by the time I get there, but he hasn’t. He’s foraging for algae, and he likes this spot.
We float there for a while, we three plus one. The turtle doesn’t seem to mind our presence. Neither does he welcome it. I am full of wonder, and he is the picture of apathy. Perhaps that’s why I am drawn to him. He is completely unimpressed with himself, and it doesn’t bother him at all.
My daughter and I get henna tattoos in Lahaina. She chooses a narwhal on her ankle. I, a bee on my shoulder. Underneath the bee, I ask the henna artist to write: Bee still. I find it clever. My daughter is concerned. She says, “Mommy, you can’t get a bee on your shoulder or bees will think it’s their friend and land on you and sting you.” I assure her that won’t be the case, and I won’t get stung.
The next day, I get stung. I am on a zipline in Kapalua. Halfway down the line, I pass a mango tree, and I hit something hard. My arm hurts. I am euphoric from having just flown down a mountain, so I’m not too upset. I feel a tonic of elation and concern as my entire body slams into the brake on the end of the line. I just flew. My dream. But my arm hurts. I look at it and see something that looks like a bloody burr sticking out of my tricep. Perhaps I didn’t hit something after all—not something large anyway. Perhaps something hit me. It’s not until I see a lethargic bee crawl across my shoulder and fall to the ground that I realize what has happened. Poor bee. Minding its own business with a mango tree, murdered by my insatiable desire to fly.
When I tell Zelda this story, she is happy to find out that she was right.
I am running along the Honoapiilani Highway, making mental notes of everything I love about this island—the things that make me want to stay. I spend most of the three mile route wondering if I could really do it. Move to an island. I feel as though an island is the best place for me, but I don’t know if my reasons for that are good or bad. Do I want to isolate myself because I can’t stand to interact with the daily reminders of my own failures? Or is my desire to disappear in the middle of the ocean a healthy next step for the an ego that has long been terrified of being forgotten? I don’t know, so I take stock.
A man drives past me on a moped. He’s not wearing a helmet, but it’s not because he’s trying to impress someone.
I’m standing at an intersection waiting for my signal to cross. A truck turns right in front of me. I’m in their way, so I back up onto the curb. The girl in the passenger seat looks at me with aggressive eyes. I brace myself for a middle finger, because that’s what happens all the time in L.A. Instead, she gives me shakaz. I’m so surprised, I don’t have time to reciprocate.
There are other things, not so idyllic and more familiar. Unhoused drug addicts in Paia with sunburns and tattoos under their eyes, acting as vigilante parking valets in exchange for money. We don’t let them park our car, but I give him a few bucks.
Resorts bum me out. I imagine the coastline, rugged and sacred, before the Ritz moved in with their golf courses and their pine trees. I heard that a tech billionaire bought 98% of Lanai, pushing Hawaiian families off the island in favor of a tourist industry that caters to the uber rich. The only choice left for locals to make a living is to be in service to the colonists. My family talks about this over dinner, horrified, but I look around at the condos lining our beach, the McDonald’s across the street in Kahana, and I wonder if what we are a part of is really any different.
My favorite place on Maui is the lava fields past Makena. I love the coastline on the way there. The rocky coves with sleeping turtles. I love the lava rocks; it looks like another world. Wherever I go, I always seem to find land’s end, and it is the ocean that stops me from going further. I stare out at Molokini crater, the waves white capping in the afternoon wind, and I wonder what it is I am running from, and where I will finally want to stop.
We visit the Maui Ocean Center and learn about Humpback Whales. The mothers birth one calf in a two-year period of time. They focus their energy and their protection on one calf, and I feel vindicated in my choice to have one child. My little whale who deserves all my protection. We are sitting in a theatre watching a 3-D movie about whales. The calf plays and then swims along the back of its mother, and my daughter—my baby—crawls onto my lap to stare up at the whales with me. Whale cows form matriarchal pods. The women swim together, help each other, raise their calves together. I feel grateful for the small but heartfelt matriarchal pod I have back in Los Angeles, though we all still feel so alone. Maybe it would take moving to an island to help with that, or maybe it would just be worse.
At night, I sit on the patio to watch the sunset over the ocean and play my traveler guitar. I learn Aloha Oe. It is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.
Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe
E ke onaona noho i ka lipo
One fond embrace
A hoʻi aʻe au
Until we meet again
In Paia, a full rainbow forms over town, and my daughter cries out in wonder, “This is my first rainbow!” She has seen a rainbow before, when she was a baby, but she doesn’t remember, and so this is her first rainbow. There is so much I wish I didn’t remember, and so much that I am grateful that I do. I wish I could forget the first moment I arrived in Hawaii so I could have the joy of living it again for the first time. The tricky price of memory. Sometimes there is regret. But also my daughter’s first rainbow.
A second one forms alongside the first. It starts to rain. Everyone is so happy, and I wonder if anything I have ever been upset about has been worth it.
