Strong Like the Sea, стр. 61
I don’t have a lei to give, but I do have something that might work. I run to the car and hurry back with my new angelfish made of lauhala leaves and place it beside Auntie’s lei as a splash of green beside nut-brown beads and pale yellow shells.
When we load into the car, the quiet fills all of us until we pass the tsunami signs and turn onto the road again. We stop to eat the buns with sweet pork from the market, but I barely have time to swallow my food before Dad bundles us back in the car for a short hike by ‘Akaka Falls.
Dad charges up the path. “This way!”
But I keep pace by Uncle, who practices new grumbling techniques all the way up the steep incline. “Hmph, since when did this trail go straight up?”
“Looks like same path to me.” Auntie touches a flower beside the path. “Same trees, same mountain, same waterfall . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. Same birds, leaves. Rocks,” he mumbles. “Always with the hiking.”
“I think Dad is going for adventure.” I jog backwards up the path. “Exploring the wild blue yonder and stuff.”
“No wild blue up here.” Uncle nods toward the ocean. “Out there is the blue. You want exploring? Give me a kayak at sea and we’ll get somewhere.”
“I think maybe you’re right,” Auntie says.
“Of course I am,” Uncle nods. “Wait—right about what?”
“One change from before.” Auntie’s voice is solemn. “I see it now. Big one.”
Uncle glances ahead and back. “Yeah? What kine?”
“More complaining!” Auntie laughs, and I giggle, but Uncle scowls.
“Bah, the both of you.”
I keep wondering what Mom would say or show me if she was here. Would she be happy we came without her? Sad she missed it? Everywhere I look, she’s there at the front of my mind, like my glasses have Mom’s picture stamped on the lens.
We sail through the sights with Dad at the helm, his will pulling us like kite-surfers bound to the wind. It’s exhilarating, and wonderful, and lonely, and sad. But I play along because I’ve never seen him try so hard. He needs me to pretend everything’s fine, so I do.
At last, we drive to the Rainforest Zoo, but the farther we go, the slower Auntie walks, Uncle at her side, hand in hand. Though when we stop at the white tiger habitat, it’s Uncle—not Auntie—who leans against the rail with his face all red.
Dad watches Auntie wrap her arms around Uncle, and suddenly wherever else we were supposed to go after the zoo magically disappears from the schedule.
That night, as Uncle sips his tea, we play Uno and Hearts. Turns out, Auntie is wicked good at both, but Uncle is the one to watch out for.
“Again?” Auntie waves her cards at Uncle. “What! All the time, waiting fo’ the last minute to steal my victory? One minute almost asleep with your tea, the next you take it all.”
Uncle shuffles his cards with a straight face, but he’s laughing on the inside. I can tell.
“He’s like the sea,” I tell Auntie. “One minute he’s calm and gentle, and next thing you know, he whooshes in with a rogue wave and sweeps everything away.”
“Exactly.” Auntie leans across the table and fake whispers to Dad, “This one’s smart, hah? He can’t fool her.”
Uncle chuckles. “Well, it’s like they say, never turn your back on the ocean.”
Spam and Hawaiian fried rice make for a super yummy alarm clock. First the crackling of Spam and eggs sizzling on the griddle with the rice. Then the smell! It’s a sneak attack of savory deliciousness that fills the whole house. I breathe it in and wake with the taste on my lips.
I eat so much for breakfast I almost have to roll myself into the car for our drive.
First stop on our schedule is Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. Dad says the museum that was always Mom’s favorite was perched right on the edge of the cauldron with a lookout down into the crater, but after the 2018 eruption, more than a thousand earthquakes shook everything all up inside. All the shaking made the museum too unstable to ever open again. Now it’s pau, finished. Closed forever.
Instead, we go to the Kīlauea Visitors’ Center. It’s still near the crater, but far back from the ledge. All my life, I’ve heard stories of Madam Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes and Fire. How could I not? They say hers is the power to create or destroy. And when Kīlauea erupts with smoke and fire . . . she is creating still.
“Such teamwork, yeah? Six volcanoes working together to make our island: Mahukona, Kohala, Mauna Kea, Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kīlauea.” Uncle passes his hand over the diagram, pausing at each peak. “You’ll see a lot more of what Kīlauea can do before we’re done today. Kīlauea isn’t like cartoon volcanoes that poke straight up in a tall cone and erupt out the top. She’s full of lava tubes and caverns that spread out from the center and carry magma sideways into vents and fissures all over the place. On Oahu, we see where the volcano has been. But here, she lives and breathes beneath our feet.”
“Want to know my favorite volcano?” Auntie sidles up beside us. “The one building Lö’ihi, the brand-new Hawaiian island growing under the sea.”
“Maybe in a hundred years you’ll get to see it,” Dad says. “But today, it’s time to go. We still have a lot of ground to cover.”
We drive all the way down to Punalu’u Bake Shop to taste Mom’s favorite malasadas and get sweet bread for later, but Uncle’s way more excited to backtrack to Black Sands Beach, where green sea turtles and Hawaiian hawksbill sea turtles sun