Time to Live the Dream: Headed to Hawaii
It’s really hard to say anything nice about 2020. It has been a year full of loss, disappointment, and strife — it’s been missing aloha in so many different ways. Yet, we kept trying to find ways to incorporate moments of bliss or peace into our everyday lives. We filled a small plastic pool with sand, so we could put our feet in and pretend that we were at the ocean; this was especially helpful when all the beaches were closed.
We watched as our trips kept getting canceled. Our annual March anniversary trip never made it out of the planning phase as my dad neared the end of his journey on the earth. At that time I thought this pandemic would be over and we could take my mom for her birthday in July, and she could get away from the events of the last year. Nope, that wasn’t happening either. We watched as Hawaii remained shut down. And, when you look at their limited medical resources, you understand why they need to be protective. There has also been a wonderful argument made that this has been a time for the aina to be healed from all the damage that tourism has done. Hawaii was the first state to pass a bill banning the sale of sunscreen containing chemicals believed to harm coral reefs, starting in 2021 all sunscreens must be reef-safe.
We’ve been holding our breath about our November trip to Kauai. We usually try to go for the Old Sugar Mill Run. We knew that the race cancellation was imminent, but what about the trip? Then one day I caught my husband researching houses in Kauai. In my head, I was thinking “shouldn’t you be looking for a job?” Another wonderful artifact of 2020 was dual unemployment in the house. We both have different strengths. I can plan the whole trip, but he is great with the details. He was looking at rental houses in our favorite south shore area, Poipu Beach. Since we are taking my mom with us, we had some specific requirements like 3–4 bedrooms, a private pool, and the most important, the west-facing lanai for our nightly sunset viewings. To figure that out, it takes an extensive reading of Google satellite maps.
Clay proposed to me that we look at renting a house for a month. Provided Hawaii allows for Covid-19 testing to avoid the fourteen-day quarantine, when else would we have this kind of opportunity to test out living in Hawaii? His new job is a permanent remote gig. The kids are not going back to the classroom until 2021. And, I could finally run She Lives Aloha how I wanted to — from the islands.
You’d have thought I would’ve been jumping up and down at the idea. Instead, I became paralyzed with fear. Pack up and move for an entire month? Would our dog sitters be able to be here for the month? How do we have all the materials for distance learning? Could I teach my kids for six hours a day? What if this doesn’t help accelerate the business? To settle my mind Clay wrote out a document with all the considerations, including how do we get monthly medications, how much is renting a car for a month, and how fast will the Internet at the house be (it will need to support four multiple streams)?
Though, I think my biggest fear is what if Kauai isn’t the place I remembered. What if everything that was familiar is gone? Then I remembered that Hawaii has never been about the stuff. Yes, who doesn’t like a good Spam musubi and a Shaved Ice? What it’s really about is that feeling when you’re standing in the ocean and looking out on the horizon, and breathing deeper than you normally do. You are replenishing your body and soul from the deepest part of the universe. With that I said, let’s do this.
We paid for the house today, so we’re now hoping that the visitors who are going before us to Hawaii, stay safe and responsible so we can join them soon. Stay tuned as next time I’ll write about what it took to get the right house and how you plan for a month of living versus vacationing.
