Home From Hawaii

Bernie and I are home from Hawaii. It is good that I did not blog during our trip. It would not have been nice words. I spent the first four days lost in the belly of the boat. The staff of the cruise liner didn’t like anyone referring to their ship as a boat, but I don’t care. BOATBOATBOATBOATBOAT…There, take that! That is for all the times I was lost and you didn’t give me a decent map. You told me something was aft or fore but how can one know that without going outside and looking at that big black tail on the ass, I mean aft, of the thing? BOATBOATBOATBOATBOAT….That is for all the times you expected me to remember the names of the 20 restaurants and which one offered coffee at four in the morning and which ones were free or had a charge. BOATBOATBOATBOATBOAT! That is for rock and roll music constantly blaring when  one is supposed to be lazing on a cot reading a book on a sunny deck with the waters gently rocking one to sleep. (I saw it in a movie)

Thanks. I feel much better now.

Hawaii, I am sorry I didn’t get to know you the way you would like to be known. Oh, my, you are beautiful! No photo can capture the thunder of your waves against the black rocks, the taste of sweet, dripping Hawaiian pineapple and the pasty feeling of poi against my tongue. I know there is an old Hawaiian man who would have loved to have us come by his hut and tell us the stories of his people. I apologize to the church our bus passed by, the one that housed the first missionaries. I would have loved to sit in the pew you’d reserved for me and pray to the same God you prayed to, the same one I pray to today. I know that the flowers wanted to rub noses with us the way good Hawaiians show their love but we saw most of you from the bus window. Fish, I saw you, you creepy ones and you graceful ones, and you little rainbows in the waters. But I still don’t know your names and your habits. It was all so fast. We barely became acquainted.

After this trip, Bernie and I know we are different kind of travelers. Some people travel to take a vacation, but as retired folk, we have plenty of vacation every day. We travel to learn and the world is our classroom.

This is a much better picture (uploaded by my son)…