Take Me Away

My cousin Mike and his wife Helen have lived on Kauai for many years. They have endured hurricanes and a bad economy. Both their sons were born with autism.
Mike is an entrepreneur and Helen is an artist. Their boys are in public school.
My sister Kathy lives on the Big Island and she has been in Hawaii for almost 35 years at least. She wouldn't survive in California. She loves the islands and the island life.
I spent three years on the North Shore of Oahu and when I look back on it, I must have been a different person; yet, I am the same.
The humidity and the mosquitoes I have to remember. I tend to glorify those years when they were actually very difficult. We never had enough money and there were a lot of boring parties among our peers with everyone doing the same old thing: drinking beer and/or smoking pot. I was a mom and that limited me a bit. Lacy and Moss, my children, were quite an attraction. Everyone loved them. But I was the one who fed them and put them to bed.
I hitchhiked in those days and would go into town (Haleiwa) to the small library or to buy some groceries. More often than not someone would pick me up whom I knew. King Kamehameha Highway wasn't that busy...you could even walk down the center line sometimes with no cars in sight.
The surfers came in the winter for the big competitions. There was a little dissension between the locals and the non-locals but usually the locals had their own surfing spots and things weren't too bad. I recently spoke to a woman who had been over there and she said the tension is still there and probably worse.
Ah...to not know what we don't know....to behave moderately badly but not over the top.
To go back to being a juicy, young mom.
No. It's better now....