”You know about the Big Island don’t you?” the doctor asked me.
“In what regard?” I said.
“The Big Island doesn’t have the facilities your husband might need in the future. He would have to go to Honolulu. The Big Island isn’t for you.”
Looks like we have another reason for leaving this island—although not a reason we want.
Husband Dear was fine when Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I got home from Southern California, and here I was blogging, chatting about the food—Point Loma Sea Food crab sandwich is the best in the world, and has been for 30 years. I was chatting about our wonderful trip, about my food poisoning, yuck, (not the crab), and three days later Husband Dear suffered shortness of breath with fluid build-up in his lungs. Yuck, yuck, yuck. A skipped medication and then re-taking it sent him into a crisis with Congestive Heart Failure. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Three days in the hospital, and a couple of days of rest and he was up and rearing to go. Where? I don’t know, but he was ready.
Actually cruising the island was it. On Thursday he circumnavigated the island. I was reluctant to have him drive, but he wanted to, was perky, clear headed and alert. We took DD to the airport in Kona. A conglomeration of miles gave her a free ticket, and leaving from Kona instead of Hilo, it only took 4 ½ hours to get to LA. (Another house-hunting trip.) Beats the stop in Honolulu and the stop in San Francisco and the entire day it took for us on our last trip. On top of it, the airline gave DD and BD the entire row of 3 seats. BD napped and played with Kiekis behind him, high-fived the passengers, and had a ball. It was a day meant for miracles.
So there we were half-way around the island, about 40 miles from Pu’u Hononua O’Honaunau, The City of Refuge. We had been planning to visit it as HD missed DD’s and my earlier trip. The serenity was not as gelatin-silent as my first visit, but miracles rolled off the lava like the mist that blows off a cresting wave.
First the weather gave us a window of non-rain. It had rained on the drive, even in Kona where they get dribbles of inches of rain, while we get feet of water. So we ran between the raindrops—my family agrees that that would be a good title for my Hawaiian book. What do you think of Running between the Raindrops? Anyway, when the sprinkles came again we left.
Second, a Native Hawaiian stood under a palm tree carving a Tiki god and talking to a small assemblage of people. He said when he was a child the elder would sit the Kiekis down and have them watch the sunset. “What do you see?” he would ask.
The children were afraid to answer, afraid to get it wrong, but when pressed they would shrug and say, “The setting sun.”
What you ought to see is that “There is life beyond the horizon.”
To the children the island was their entire world; they didn’t know or understand how life could exist beyond the water. I took it to mean there is more for us as well. There is life beyond the horizon. Hey, maybe that’s a title. Which do you like better?
Third: an epiphany, remember the excited Tiki god who was there to tell us that when our blocks are cleared the zest for life returns?
I believe we came here to heal emotionally and to begin to live again, not to buy our little property and nestle in and live out our life. No no no, there is life beyond the horizon. Meet you in LA for lunch.
--A life lesson from Baby Darling: “If you hear music stop and dance.”
