Life of Wry

It’s leave Hawaii day. I think the transition from a tropical island vacation to summertime Central Valley is one of the more jarring ones. You go from verdant, moist, soft, nurturing, and mildly pleasant, to brown, dry, brittle, harsh, and brutally hot. From dewy to dusty. From Hawaiian time to California time, in every imaginable way.

I always just gasp inside. The transition requires a few deep breaths.

However, it’s home. And of course has its own lovelinesses. I know this.

And nice that the return included a rejoining of our teeny family.

Just a few shots on the day:

Driving from the round peninsula of West Maui, to the inbetween landmass where the Kahalui airport is, you get a nice look across the water to the summit of Haleakala… look for land peaking out through those clouds…

We drove to the airport with Darlene and Jacob and scattered, because we were on different flights. In various of the check in lines and agricultural check points, we saw Denise, John and Helena. They were flying with Yali, Aaron, Kelsey, Daniel and Carolyn, who we didn’t see. Jordan and Reed had departed earlier.  Felt like the reverse of the Big Chill.

Bye bye everyone. Mahalo for everything.

Peter, in the window seat, snapped a couple parting shots for me … so here’s one of those, fuzzy but unmistakably Hawaii:

And otherwise, we did a lot of this.

Of note, while in the Honolulu airport, with a couple of hours to pass, we had a leisurely lunch and a [hugely satisfying for me] debrief of some of Peter’s impressions of Hawaii and the experience of celebrating graduation with these four friends. It was so absorbing, we nearly missed our connecting flight to Sacramento. We were the last aboard, laughing and shaking our heads down the jetway.