2021

A year. It’s been a year since I wrote about my life. I’ve been writing a lot - but for everyone else, work, kids documents, the web content that has become the head honcho in Covid…

I moved back to Maui last April. I, meaning, me and three children - April, meaning during the shut down of Honolulu.

I couldn’t talk about it for the longest time… i had to let everything settle. die. tenderize. so you can cook it through and digest it instead of let it infect you and kill you in time. Isn’t that what we do with pain? we let it sit. we wash over that stiff tightness in our chest and smirk with sarcasm to get through the days..until one day it no longer seems real or something else saves us?

Where does the alternative life go? the other reality we spent so much effort to become … when we let it go - it becomes like a series of movie clips arriving at random moments of familiarity… the smell of garlic, like they used to always start the sauté with, the ring tone that woke us every morning at that irritatingly early pre-dawn hour, the grey and blue linen covers that used to represent comfort and safety for so many years… i don’t think it truly ever goes away. i think it just becomes a softened scar tissue etched forever in our beings…bringing us a sickness and nostalgia all at the same time. 

What’s crazy is how long it takes to cry. not cry like it hurts - that happens continuously…but… cry like it died. saying goodbye to what will never be again. that … takes bravery. a bravery some never will have. I don’t really know if I’m brave but I know it’s taken everything in me to try to be.

I missed it here. The rain, the chill, the cow pastures and the quiet neighborhoods. no coqui frogs or crickets like big island now has everywhere - thank god, maui has kept its serenity in the mountains like i knew in my childhood. 

It’s been 16 years since I moved away from Maui. I’ve been back every couple years but usually just for a couple days or so to catch up with family… There was no Target or Lahaina bypass or even paved roads in some of the areas sloped on Haleakala. It’s still where kids ride bikes in the neighborhoods, doors stay unlocked, the mailman talks story with you, the local market has the favorite handmade baked goods from the grandmas in town. Everything closes early - I got used to the 2am bar life but in Maui, you are lucky if a place stays open till 10pm….

16 years living in a city had me running the fast lane but nothing has been more healing than being here again… remembering how to feel people without job titles, still muddied and no jewelry on - but with the 6th sense that city life masked away…

Crisp rain just heals sometimes. I forgot how much i love the flannels and need for a hoodie. Sometimes nature calls you. Sometimes your past calls you. I knew it had been calling me awhile - sometimes pain is the greatest teacher - forcing you to let go and believe in more…