Tides of Maui in My Heart, Undulating Emotions

Walking out of the dog training orientation class last night (it had been booked several weeks ago), I realized that for about an hour, I had forgotten. Having been distracted by the heart-warming and very funny instructor.  My heart lurched, a feeling of clashing emotions: grateful for the distraction and simultaneously guilty for being in a position where I could forget, even for a moment. Maybe like the daughter did in Shrinking when she realized she’d forgotten her Mom’s birthday for the first time since her mother had died.  It had only been a week.  A week since Lahaina died, and the Island of Maui was so struck, not just in Lahaina but Upcountry and Kihei-side too. My heart beaten and bruised.

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One evening I caught my Dad with his 'drinkie-poo' (aka Jim Beam on the rocks) in hand hanging up the kitchen phone with my Aunt Eleanor, Ely [Ellie], everyone called her.  

"Talkin' to Aunt Ely, Dad?" I asked.  

"Yup," he answered.  

"That's nice. How's she doing? What'd she have to say?" I asked.  

"You know, it's funny," he said, pausing thoughtfully and almost melancholy.  "I was pouring my booze and stopped.  I thought, I needed to add the ice first, then the booze, so I don't "bruise the booze" with the ice, " laughing softly and warmly to himself, "it's what my big sister always said.  So I thought, 'well, geez Russell, why don't you just pick up the phone and call her?'  So, I did."   

"Did you tell her that?" I asked.  

"Yup," he answered.  

"Well, what'd she say?" I asked.  

"She said, "whatever it takes, Russell,"" he said, offering nothing else. 

"What'd she mean by that?" I asked, feeling at this point like I was picking tiny stubborn walnut fragments out of their unrelenting shell. [Perhaps my Dad was training me at a young age to ask 'open-ended questions'.]

"She meant, whatever it took for me to think of her to pick up the phone. Whatever works.  The important part was, was that I picked up the phone."  

I still love that.  I relish in this roux. 

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I called an old friend last week.  It had just been 2 days, but it was the tragedy that prompted my call.  I started to text.  What we all do now days.  And all I could think was, "nope, just pick up the phone."  We had the best chat, for a long time; we really caught up a bit.  I miss her.  She's like a big sister to me, my hanai.  I remember her from when she was in her early 20's.  She remembers me from when I was like 5. Now she's in her late 60's and I'm in my 50's.  It feels like there is no way it could have been that long. 

I reached out to a few different people last week.  Tragedy does that to you. Mutual and shared tragedy.  

I no longer live on the island, but I ache for all of my loved ones there, for the land, for the people.  All I can do from here is send money, and relatively speaking, I can even do precious little of that.  From far away the ache, for lack of a better word, is numbing.  That pain, when something terrible has happened and at night it takes seemingly forever to finally fall asleep so fatigued from shock and grief. And then you wake, and ever-so-briefly wonder innocently about the world, only to realize the tragedy is all true.  Lahaina is gone.  It's people torn. Their loved ones in shock, awe and pain and forever unkindly changed.  

Even though I spent many of my hanabata days at the sands of Wahikuli, watching whales and fishing boats and canoes paddling across the horizon, taking a stroll with my grammie under the Banyan Tree to cool off, countless days through my youth and as an adult up and down Front Street, watching it grow and change, and learning how to surf off the pool at Puamana, then surfing a killer south swell one night off the beach there.  It was a constant, a part of my childhood and happy memories with my parents in the 70's.  

The emotions undulate from far away; I am not there.  I have not lived there for many years.  We even moved my parents away in October of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, from their home of 50 years,  for health reasons.  That was my last visit.  We needed them to be closer to my sister, so we could care for them, having had our newer family anchors thrown in the sea that is the mainland.  So I do not know.  I do not have the right to begin to understand or feel or mourn.  Whatever it is, it is nothing compared to what the island is feeling as a whole.  Only the people there know. Only they understand.  The rest of us are outsiders.  And, selfishly, for this I mourn too, I am malihini now too. 

But then my life has suddenly stopped in so many ways.  I am unable to think well, unable to concentrate.  Unable to get through a day without suddenly being hit with a wave of pain and loss.  My children, born on the mainland, and thankfully unable to grasp the impact, ask me often, "Mom, are you o.k.?"  Well, yes.  I am 'okay'.  But the ridiculous ways of pretending I am not 'feeling', are just not in my bandwidth right now.  I cannot 'pretend'.  But right now, I have a home, pictures from my childhood, my computer to write, a pen and paper to call my own, my books to read and my family to hug.  So I hug them close, even closer now than ever before. 

From far away the ache is constant for those tied deeply.  But then, there are the undulating emotions.  

Waves off the pool, learning to surf, not off the beach

Who are the people I know who have been lost?

Who was trapped that I knew that I did not realize lived there?

We must wait. I must wait. We must pray. We must send love and all the support we can.

But also I am angry. We were not there. You, reporting, you were not there! The infuriating coverage from the sickening sensational talking heads and news writers who do not and will not ever understand.  The real estate cronies, merciless, shameless and virally opportunistic vultures who have already had the gall to approach those affected. They really do exist.  This evil is really here. 

They dare to hold judge and jury already over a place they know not, in these wee hours of fresh wounds. They were not there.  It is so easy to cast judgment after the fact, to say what should have been done. To state what was “known”.  News flash, they were not there. They did not feel the wind. They did not experience the smoke. Had they been there, they would have been drinking their Maitais at Kimo's probably wondering where their waitress was, rather than sounding an alarm they say now "should have been sounded". They did not breathe the horrors that those who did see, hear, taste, smell and feel; only those there can ever speak of that, if they are ever able to. Who are you to press blame from the outside and after the fact? You offer only vinegar in the roux, you sour it.

The remainder of us must be only loving and caring and learning from them, from this, and listening to them and for them. This is no time to press or give blame, surely there are so many already terribly blaming themselves, who mearly need comfort.

God doesn't protect us, rather, he wants us to live boldly in His name.  And this is what so many of the Maui people are already doing.  #MauiStrong