Today I drove a rental car from a creepy port in Honolulu to a secret entrance of the Hyatt rental car center in Waikiki. Void all words in that sentence except Honolulu and Waikiki and visualize covering my mouth and telling me to get over it.
Driving here in Hawaii was making me crazy nervous because I waited 72 hours to try it. Or in reality, 18 years to try it from my first visit here, but it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad because people here are actually SO KIND and I’m starting to get the “Aloha Spirit” thing that I’ve heard mentioned. Where else in the U.S.A. can you cross 3 lanes of stand-still traffic to make a left turn from a far right lane? It’s glorious.
That being said, things here are different; glorious, but different.
I’m a little panicked trying to figure out where to live but at the same time spoiled and comforted because even if the government quits providing us with money to pay for a hotel we will be ok. After this Summer I think we can stay in a hotel for several weeks just using reward points. This leaves me grateful and at my wits end because it means we’ve been living in a hotel for over two months at this point.
What does this have to do with 1947? Well, I believe that was the year a brave woman brought her only child and her sweet, swelling belly here to Hawaii to live at a time when things were not so comfortable and “easy.” My Grammy sailed from the East Coast of the United States to an island, thousands of miles away, when there were no cell phones, internet or easily placed long distance calls. She arrived and upon placing her feet on dry land exclaimed, “I have come here to die.” Or at least that is what she told me when she explained her move to Hawaii many decades after it was completed.
I flew here on Hawaiian Airlines with free red wine, a delicious pasta lunch and my kids plugged in to unlimited movies for $5.99. I am living in a hotel room while a friend cares for my dog and a housekeeper changes my sheets daily. Are things challenging? Sure. But is this a harrowing experience? By no freaking means.
So today, as I vocally cheered myself on as I drove from Honolulu to a weird, one way street in Waikiki, I realized how ridiculous I would appear to the woman who came 69 years before me. But she’d love me anyway. And today she made me so brave in the face of simple, First World entitled challenges. And maybe I was a little embarrassed of myself for feeling so challenged but gosh was I so grateful that she came before me and gave me the courage and the strength to be brave. She never judged. And I miss her.
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Published by whoajennie
I am defined by moments that have gotten me where I am today. One of those occurred on a spring day in southern Spain about two years ago and my life has never been the same since. I was frozen with fear and exhaustion after several months of traveling with my best little entourage and our backpacks. After receiving a sweet, encouraging message from an old friend I loaded us all up for one of the most amazing days of happy accidents in all my life and probably my entourage’s too, seeing that they were 5 and 7 at the time. We drove to Ronda Spain, followed by Granada and in less than 12 hours had more adventure and excitement than many years hold for the average person. That day changed me. It defined the second act of my life and led me to today, writing this in the hopes that I can quit living life by the book and start writing my own story. I hope you’ll come along for the ride because I anticipate it being filled with many more days that end in a gypsy cave with music that grabs my soul and shakes it around…or something like that. But that’s a story for another day.
Today I am more simply a 37 year old wife and mother that refuses to be defined by the basic expectations of those roles. My entourage is most frequently composed of two very good listeners who are big thinkers and huge feelers. They are elementary in age but wise beyond their years. When we are lucky, their superhero, my quiet, witty, adorable (wait, he says I can’t say that because I’m describing a man, not a puppy so he told me to say average but who are we kidding, he’s pretty cute…) husband is also along for the ride. We homeschool so we can be with our kids as much as possible, give them room to breathe, read all the books they want, practice cursive or checkers, develop skills and passions…and to travel of course. They love to travel as much as we do. They love new places and we don’t have to minimize our experiences because they are young. It’s easy to adapt big experiences to little bodies when we plan ahead and come prepared. That being said, we don’t take them everywhere. Sometimes we do things as a couple or we take trips with other people on our own because part of a healthy marriage is having healthy friendships with each other and others.
We moved to Kailua, Hawaii Summer of 2016. 3,600 miles of driving and 2,800 miles of flying after selling and packing up our home in North Carolina, here we are. It’s glorious, beautiful, breezy and I love it. There’s enough here to keep us busy for the next 3 years but we still plan to travel and that’s where you come in. We don’t tend to do things half way and we like adventure. People tell us all the time that we “take so many vacations.” This makes me laugh a little because not every trip is a vacation but hey, I know we have a lot for which to be grateful. Because I know not everyone lives the way that we do, for a myriad of reasons, I’d love to create a place where it feels like we can take you along. I want to build my entourage. Why not? The more the merrier.
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