Hawaii - Travels and Observations

This morning's post is a snippet about the cover photo on my latest book, Before You Go. My mother-in-law was a warm, cheerful, energetic, and kind of zany person, always up for a new adventure. She loved having our boys up to her trailer, and they have fond memories of epic summers spent with her. She was more friend than "mother-in-law" and had a knack for making you feel welcomed and loved. She genuinely enjoyed people.

Sadly, she passed much too soon, and she left my husband and his brother her Hawaiian timeshare. We have been there many times, and even though we were never there with her, it invokes good memories of her. The timeshare is in Makaha, on Oahu, right on a beautiful, quiet beach. The kids come out after school to surf, but otherwise the beach is fairly empty. It's a residential area, not touristy, and I enjoy walking around the neighbourhood, appreciating the azaleas and palm trees and listening to the crowing of the ubiquitous roosters. One such walk inspired the setting for Before You Go.

The photo on the cover was snapped from the timeshare's lanai, looking north and showing the neighbourhood I was walking through when the book's plot began to come to me.

With the travel situation with the U.S. right now (not to mention the cost of flying), we won't be returning to Hawaii anytime soon, if ever. I miss that luscious feeling of walking out of the airport (usually in the middle of the night) into warm, humid air. The constant background sound of the waves thundering onto the sand. The bone-deep heat of the hot tub easing my aching joints. The BBQ pork manapua served hot, like little doughy melt-in-your-mouth marshmallows, at the local 7-11. The kind friends we've made there. The delicious feeling of waking up knowing you have nothing to do all day but slather yourself in coconut-scented sunscreen and sit with a book on the balcony. Bliss.

On the other hand, the last time I was there, there was considerably more tension in the air between tourists, natives, and the unhoused population, and I left feeling very much like an unwanted colonial. It made me ponder in ways I hadn't before the role I play and the position I have inadvertently landed in in life. Some uncomfortable consideration of privileges I haven't earned and haven't been properly appreciative of. This new awareness is not necessarily a bad thing.