Am I Really Here?

The good news is the plane found Hawaii. Since we landed in the dark, it could have been Kansas for all I knew, but I was so happy to have touched down safely I didn't question it. As soon as I set foot inside the airport though, it was pretty evident Don Ho had been here. Despite the sorry lack of coconut tatas and swooshy grass skirts (I guess the late shift couldn't wait for us any longer), there were plenty of other clues. The letter K was everywhere. Random apostrophes appeared in heavily syllabled words on sign after sign. Tiny bubbles floated all around. The decor was distinctly 70's and prior. There was an unspoken question in the air: "Why update? You'll come anyway." And the guy who I let go before me to get off the plane went from "Thank you" to me to "Mahalo" to the pilot in less than 2 seconds. He was from Indiana. I know this because he was very tall and pale and probably played basketball in high school. Driving to the hotel I was still skeptical it might all be a hoax until I saw Likelike Highway and the signs for Waikiki. And of course, I am staying in the Pink Palace of the Pacific. Hours (days) later, I sit in my room overlooking waves bullying surfers to the shore over and over and I think, holy crap. I'm really here. All these years I have imagined Hawaii an impossible adventure - mostly because a honeymoon seemed unlikely and the actual airplane ride just as ridiculous an idea (both threatening a rather lengthy plunge), but here I sit. In the middle of the freakin Pacific with no other land mass of consequence for thousands of miles. I am a mere speck on a mere speck. Merer! I did not fully comprehend how mere until I googled Boston to Honolulu. Apparently, you take a couple of major highways across the northern part of the continental U.S. through Montana and such and you get to the Pacific coast where you turn left and then KAYAK south for 2,671 miles (or something like that). Then you turn right on Franklin Hwy. This will take 16 days. I assume that's because you have found one of those high speed ferries out of Mackinaw to tow you. For once, I'm relieved to have flown. Bird strikes have delayed others in our party from arriving, so I'm even more relieved to have flown when the birds were wreaking havoc at some other airport. I've been here for a morning and an afternoon and I've already visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Intense. Intense in the sense that so many lost their lives so many years ago and yet when you're standing there, you feel like it was just yesterday. They show an amazing documentary with actual footage and a very good retelling of the events that took place that fateful day in December 1941. It's so good when the Arizona explodes you actually jump out of your seat a bit and I honestly was a little terrified it was happening for real. I can't imagine living in that time when one day everything seemed so peaceful and the next, well, instant hell. Walking through the memorial, feeling the rush of the breeze over the water, staring out at the harbor and trying to understand the meaning behind such sudden and lasting destruction was unsettling. I wish I knew how moments like that really sit with the person on the other side. The one who made the call to attack. The one who thought this would be a good thing in the end. All it did was lead to more lives lost and more what might have been's. The power to change the future is in any and every one of us, I suppose. Unfortunately, some are more comfortable on a bigger stage. If you have the opportunity and can stomach the flight (if I can, you can) to visit this state so many call "paradise," take the 75-minute tour of Pearl Harbor. I'm not being flip when I say the $3 hotdog is outstanding - it is truly a nice bonus with a little catsup and a bag of corn chips (bring an extra $2 for the vending machine soda). But the lesson, the standing there and seeing it for yourself, is far more worthwhile. I learned I may be a speck, but every life has meaning. Every life gives something to the next. Consequently, you should do everything you can to get the most out of yours. So enough sitting...I'm off to smile at some people on the beach.

Scattered Pictures

I am equipped to take a picture of anything at any time. I used to rely on my photographic memory, but now I have a little thing called a cell phone. This means I can drink more, remember less and be reminded later of all things that are probably best forgotten. I can also document any wrong-doing, compare strange babies and see the inside of my pocket at random intervals throughout the day. I can snap indiscretions. I can capture joy. I can take pictures of my breakfast. I remember when cameras were special. Back in the day when they were huge and heavy and you had to put film in them and once you closed the back you didn't dare open it again till all the pictures were taken. People who had cameras were good at taking pictures. It was their craft. Others respected it because camera people had special powers. They could make a bulky box with a roll of plastic in it freeze a moment and preserve a memory. They knew how to frame it up, not to face the sun, whether or not to use a flash, how to hold 'er steady and just the right moment to press (and hold) the button. The results were crisp and seemingly real. The smiles fresh, the colors like fruit you could almost taste. A picture was a special thing. You'd wait a few days for it. And it always came with 11 or 23 or 35 others you could flip through, careful not to get fingerprints on the faces. Sometimes the pictures would be a mix across several months because you just didn't take pictures that often. You took four or five at confirmation, then your family went to Albuquerque and then you graduated. All on one roll. You'd pick out the three best ones and find good frames for them. You'd take your time undoing the frames, pulling out the fake pictures of a fake family celebrating fake times so you could make it real. Then you'd hang one on your dorm room wall (following strict regulations regarding holes vs. double-sided mounting tape) and prop one up on a shelf and tuck one in the corner of your loft and voila! You've got pictures. The ones without frames would get tacked to a bulletin board or pressed into an album or left loose in a drawer. Now my unframed photos are in my cell phone, on my hard drive and littered across cyberspace. I've gone through at least three digital cameras since they were introduced and all of them have literally hundreds of pictures hanging out inside them that I haven't looked at in years. I have folders upon folders of pictures on my laptop as well as on my iMac as well as on my 360G external flash drive. I have pictures I took with a set of digital binoculars at a Tiger game. 57 pictures of Tigers at bat, Tigers in the field, the umpire's butt (heh-heh), the scoreboard (it was 2-0 in the 3rd), what the hell am I gonna do with them? Well, I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do with 'em. Delete. Those pictures are just like the ones in the drawer. You never throw them out. You don't know why. But you gotta hang onto them. Even the bad ones. I should take a lesson from my Dad. He started scanning all the family photos a few years ago and now he has them all saved and organized by the instant they were captured on film. He even identified people in the pics (I think he made up some names). But I'm too lazy and I don't have nearly the breadth of photos he has. And mine lack historical significance. Unless you think a drive-by shot of the hotdog statue in front of that hotdog place on the Cape means something. He was putting ketchup on his own head! I guess I think the camera is kind of taken for granted nowadays. If you wanted to, you could take a picture of every second of your life and skip journaling altogether. (Please don't do that.) A picture is worth 1000 words, they say. I guess they haven't seen the inside of my pocket.