Hawaii Trip 1

For midwinter break, mom took me and Jason to Hawaii.  Julie, Laura, and Mary came with us too, making it the biggest band of travelers I’ve ever left the egg nest with.  We spent most of our time on the big island, at a resort in Kona.

Everyone was disappointed that my head was stuck in a book the whole time, even Julie.  Vacations are supposed to be fun and engaging, my mom nagged.  Sorry, I’m just not that interested in having fun lately.  I think I grew up too fast.  Fun is for the deserving and the blissful, not for me.   Every time I feel that sensation creeping on, I get embarrassed and repress the emotion, remembering how insanely jealous it makes people feel, and that I never deserved it in the first place.

My stepfather hated watching me have fun.  Many times, when I was having it, he’d interrupt it and throw a fit about some little problem.  So, there’s your explanation, mom.  Like Pavlov’s dog, I was conditioned to hate the most joyful feeling a child can have.  No wonder I wanted to kill myself last year.

The book I read was The Count of Monte Cristo, a thick unabridged version that Julie had given me a few years ago.  I wasn’t ready to read it at the time, but now it’s one of my favorite books.  The story of Edmond Dantes is truly inspiring.  Like him I was stuck in a prison, the dark night of the soul; like him I've come back from the dead to strike revenge on a life that wronged me.

We spent a lot of time at the beach.   Jason swam in the ocean for hours while I just relaxed on the sand, reading.  One day we took a little road trip around the island, to see the volcanos at 10,000 feet.  To our surprise, there was so much smoke up there that it was difficult to see anything.  What a let-down.  That was the only thing I’d been looking forward to seeing the whole trip.  On the other side of the island, we had dinner at this nifty Thai place.  The food was so spicy and exotic, I’ll remember it well.

The last thing we did before leaving Hawaii gave me a pleasant surprise.  We went to a place I had overlooked on my wish list.  When I was younger, I had this great aerial poster of Waikiki Beach hanging on my wall.  I’d imagine going there and living on the beach, high up in a condominium.   It would be rich, clean, and have exotic paintings hanging on the walls.   I’d have a view of the sea and the sunsets and everything between them.  I would run and surf, write my stories, and go to fancy restaurants with hot dates.  Every weekend I would climb to the top of Diamond Head, to get away from the world.

Visiting this place was like a dream come true.  The buildings that lined Waikiki’s shore were like a crescent moon appearing in the daytime.  Sailboats and surfers bobbed in the troughs of the ocean waves, receiving their embraces from the waves the way whales do when the tide is high.  Girls danced in drunken splendor on the floor of a Tiki grill, their laughter intoxicating me, their curves as bounteous as the flaming sun setting above the Pacific horizon.  After dinner we walked out on the beach, where all was serene, and the muck of Seattle’s winter was far away.  Puddle Of Mudd's Blurry played from the background of some souvenir shop, making me wish Sandra was there.