Hawaii, a paradise vacation that was never about paradise…

The current will always influence the past I suppose.

While I’ve planned to keep the content of this thing very focused on learning from the past, it seems, without even wanting it to, current life will creep into this journey. As a result, I’ve learned that I can’t, and probably shouldn’t, try to force out whatever is happening within my current day to day life simply to keep things genuinely focused on the past. I suppose when you consider it tomorrow what happened today will be a part of yesterday and while I’m taking everything in that is currently happening I’m sure I will learn more once I look back on it in the future. I’m not going to get into the details, but know that current life events definitely influenced this week’s post. I’ve started this post numerous times and it has changed each time, and I’m wondering if this one will stick. Only one way to see I suppose, and that’s to keep moving forward.

A trip to Hawaii with how many kids for how long?!?!?!?

In third grade my family took an insane vacation to Hawaii. I call it insane because it was roughly two weeks long, and even now, sadly, two weeks seems like a long ass time to be “away”.

Yeah, I appreciate that in this “gallery” there’s a ticket jacket, a paper airline ticket and the stub from a 1983 luggage tag, but if I didn’t have them what would I put here? Take that shit Marie Kondo, I’ll hang on to what I damn well please.

Also sad that I even think that taking time away from the “grind” is crazy. I think as human beings living within society we might catch ourselves saying something like, “oh, I couldn’t get away for that long”, which emphasizes that there are many aspects of this thing called life that we probably don’t entirely do the “right” way, or at least, for sure, things that I don’t necessarily do correctly. That being said, I know there are some of you that don’t think this way, and recent stories of friends being in, coincidentally, Hawaii on a two week vacation and then while there just deciding to stay another week, are absolutely outstanding. I look at you folks and think, man, those are some cool ass people that are living life.

The great thing is that in third grade there is not a lot that you are responsible for so the impact at that time wasn’t that big of a deal to this fella. So my family goes on this two week jaunt, and I mean the whole family, my Mom, my Dad and all six of us kids. As some background, we also didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of money, and depending on how you slice it, we had even less than that, which made this thing an even bigger deal.

Damn my family is kind of cool.

Just the drive to the airport sounds like a major event, let alone the flight, the hotel rooms, the meals, the excursions…my oh my.

Ah, an ambitious family about to take on Hawaii, during a time when boyfriends and girlfriends could come all the way to the gate and not have to get on the plane.

I have three kids and a lovely wife and there are times where I can’t wrap my head around all of us getting into the car and driving down the driveway. I’m exhausted by the time we get to the mailbox. Kudos to the ambition of my family to embark on this trek. I was just a newly nine year old kid that had everyone do everything for me (ok, to some extent, I’m now a 46 year old kid that has everyone do everything for me, but let’s keep focus on then). I think my Dad had saved a bunch of airline and hotel points from his travels with work and decided he was going to unload them all for this trip, which helped address that whole cost thing. As I recall, I think he had work that was taking him to Hawaii and we were coming along for the ride. Pretty cool when I think about it now.

The firework images in my brain probably don’t do it justice…

Funny thing about this adventure is that I don’t have many memories of it. Strange as a post for a BLAWWWWG that’s focused on firework memories that ingrain themselves in your brain. Don’t get me wrong, there are some, but they may be manufactured from assumptions and “I think that happened”s. The first is an image I have of my Dad in the first class cabin of the airplane. I think my Dad booked two seats in first class for him and my Mom. I also think my older siblings took turns occasionally sitting in those first class seats, probably my Mom’s idea and an example of how she wanted to share the “wealth” with her children. This was a common theme throughout my life as my Mom would take the crap end of the stick so her kids could have something that wasn’t totally awful. The number of times my Mom probably bit into a burnt or gristly pork chop was probably too many to count. That being said, I think I got screwed out of first class seat sharing because I was small, which I have to admit makes sense because that’s what I tell my wife when we go on trips together. She’s the small one, 23B for her as well.

…but the plane alone made an impact…

So in my memory my Dad is standing in a row of two seats in first class slightly leaning over the chairs in the row in front of the one he was in, laughing and drinking a glass of champagne. I’m not even entirely sure that is a real memory, but it is one of the images of this trip that is there, etched in my brain. I also feel like it was almost a lounge like cocktail hour vibe, like we were just hanging out, which I suppose could’ve been prior to take off.

The other thing that I recall is that there was an upstairs portion of the plane that I believe was also first class seating. I remember someone taking me up there to check it out, probably my oldest sister as rules tend not to apply to her, and I think I recall my oldest brother being in one of the seats. I remember being shuffled out of there rather quickly and I think my brother was probably more annoyed by me being there than the flight attendants or any other passengers were. I remember finding it fascinating that there was an upstairs to the plane. The plane, I think, was a big deal as I’m fairly certain this was the first time I was ever on one. Like no shit, not only am I on a plane that’s gonna fly like a bird, it has a section where you just have cocktails and an upstairs. No wonder I have strong firework images from the plane.

…and then the other 12 days.

Here’s the good news, I’m not going to walk through all of the days of that epic two week vacation, and that’s mostly because, honestly, despite the significance of this trip, I don’t have many other detailed memories. I couldn’t swim at the time, yeah we didn’t have a pool membership, and I remember wearing some flotation device in the water at the beach. I was wading in the water and the undertow was messing with me and started taking me out a bit. I remember my youngest sister grabbed me and said something funny about me floating away and it didn’t seem like a big deal. I remember that part pretty clearly and I’m fairly certain my sister saved my life that day. They stop worrying too much about the sixth kid, luckily my sister didn’t want to lose her living play toy.

I remember the road to Hana and the associated death defying adventure of it and how damn long it took. We started in the morning on what was supposed to be a three hour trip in our rental car to check out whatever the hell was there, waterfalls or natural stream pools or some other weirdo sites that every tourist book says you should see.

I guess this is some of the crap we saw on the road to Hana. I seriously can’t remember any of it other than almost dying.

We started up this horrifying path and came back like nine hours later that night, which only made the drive that much more dangerous. I remember looking out my window on the way up and just seeing the drop off of a cliff, literally no “apron” on the road, just looking straight down at death. “Road narrows ahead” (if you know then you know) became a joke we’ve said ever since. My brother also getting some considerable road rage on the way down didn’t help the situation, I think I shit my pants about 5 times. After this lovely adventure, that took an entire day of our vacation and probably took 8 years off of each of our lives, we found out the road to Hana was nicknamed “Divorce Highway” and that they sold shirts like this at numerous t-shirt shops.

I kind of remember Duke’s restaurant and the Hula Pie that would become a staple in my Mom’s arsenal of desserts she would make. If you haven’t had yourself some Hula Pie, go get yourself some, that shit is no joke. The pie has it’s own promo video for shit’s sake:

I remember the Pearl Harbor museum and my fascination with the USS Arizona, but I don’t entirely even remember it outside of pictures, despite how passionate and fascinated I was with it. I remember there was this insanely advanced model of the USS Arizona that I wanted and my Mom wouldn’t buy for me. Turns out she bought it and I received it as a Christmas gift. I think it is still sitting, unbuilt, in my Mom’s basement. If I ever build it I’ll update this post with a picture. I think I promised that if they bought it for me I would build it. Maybe since it ended up being a gift I didn’t feel as obligated.

Once again, Marie Kondo can suck it as I kept this postcard and these pamphlets from back in the day. Looking back, it’s kind of weird that they had one in Japanese right?

Other than those things I don’t remember much more about that amazing, longer than culturally acceptable, had to take time off of school, vacation that our family typically didn’t go on. I suppose it’s not like I don’t remember anything, but still you think I would remember more, like the hotel, the restaurants, etc.

So what’s the answer, or maybe, what’s the question?

So here’s where it gets a little crazy then, from that point in third grade until, essentially, now, whenever I was asked questions or participated in ice breakers about my favorite place or where I would want to go if I could go anywhere I would always answer Hawaii. An interesting response given I’m writing more about what I can’t remember about that trip than what I can remember. That answer has instantly come to the top of my brain when asked that question for the past 37ish years. I couldn’t swim and I was on an island. I was nine years old, there is probably a lot of cool stuff about that trip that I couldn’t even partake in. I’ve since been to 30+ countries, have been on trips that literally went around the world, have seen a fair amount of our great 50 states, and yet, without fail, “Place where you would like to take a trip to?”, “Hawaii”…without fail.

The thing is that I don’t think it was ever about the physical destination but about the fact that I wanted to revisit that point in time. That point in time when my entire family was together, together in a place that I believe made every single one of us happy in various ways, together and individually. We were together and there weren’t any negative distractions (ok, it also didn’t hurt that it took place in paradise). I wanted that back, I wanted another chance at it. Take me to Hawaii, in 1983, take me to the place where my family is together and happy. That’s what I remember, not in exact images, but as a whole. I can’t remember a time after that in which we were all together, at least not in any prolonged amount of time, and definitely not in a time of pure shared happiness. There is no other time in my childhood that was happier than those two weeks with my ENTIRE family in Hawaii. I’m sure of it.

Also, my Mom, who maybe wouldn’t always get the pictures developed timely but when she did she was sure to do a quality job by writing on the backs of every single picture (which has made this endeavor much easier and more informative), apparently thought it was important to note that our waiter was Steve…for one reason or another.

P.S. (I know I can’t leave well enough alone, but things are fluid currently) – This post may ebb and flow, despite the lack of a cornucopia of exact firework memories, I’m pretty sure I’m not done visiting this one yet. And maybe that’s the point, while there are many points for me as a part of this trip, maybe the grand thing here is that sometimes the feeling and the essence of it all is more significant than the firework memories this thing generally spins around. Honestly I don’t know, I’m still learning, that has become clear to me this week. Also, sometimes when you look back things appear different than you may have remembered, maybe there’s a different perspective you weren’t aware of then, maybe not, but for now I’ll just close it with this: