Life of Wry

The ladies wake up early and have breakfast on their lanai.

They marvel anew at their good fortune to have selected such a nice condo along the Ka’anapali coast:

Our place is actually nestled back in that greenery behind Darlene and, in case you forgot, looks like this:

After a walk on the beach to check out the environs and nearby condos (thinking ours the very best), eating seemed a high priority. So we headed a few miles past Lahaina to a place called Leoda’s, famous for its pies–both savory and sweet–and sandwiches. Yes, this will do.

We split a sandwich called “Pork, pork, Mmmm Pork” (grilled butter white bread, proscuitto, duroc ham, applewood bacon, salami, swiss, grain mustard, house balsamic) and another, the Seared Ahi (grilled rye bread, seared fresh sashimi grade tuna, avocado, caramelized kula onion, jarlsberg cheese, local basil pesto, garlic aioli and watercress).

And some islandy iced teas.

We also took home one each chicken pot pie and meat ‘n potato pie (which came with a side of horseradish)… for a later night when we didn’t feel like cooking (that was every night).

We chased those sandwiches right down with a shave ice that we got next door at the general store.. all crazy with various tropical flavors, a foundation of ice cream, and topped with cream, as though.

We drove back through Lahaina. While I’d been there before, I’d forgotten how lively and beachy (and touristy) it was. Very fun concentration of shops, restaurants, bars, galleries. I had not forgotten this banyan tree. A jaw-dropping tree of impressive diameter with roots that drop and take hold throughout its sizable canopy. It practically spans an entire square city block.

Walks are pretty along the Lahaina harbor…

Two son-less gals about town on an island far far away, we could be utterly spontaneous. We saw some guys on a forth story roof tuning guitars, looking like they were ramping up for a night of music. We found the stairs and headed up.

Turns out this is Mick Fleetwood’s restaurant (of the same name) and was crawling with boomers who had done their Lahaina homework. This was a great score. We settled into a place at the bar, ordered some fancy drinks, and were treated to the sundown ceremony at Fleetwood’s–a bagpipe concert, of sorts (because Mick is faithful to his Scottish roots).

First, here’s us at the bar:

Aren’t we goofy?

Here’s part of the drink menu (I got the Lime in the Coconut and D got the Mezcal Mule):

And here’s our bagpipe serenader as the sun set:

When he finished, the band took over and played all kinds of familiar rock tunes. Awesome.

And that was pretty much our Sunday. Hoping the boys are also having a fun time.

The next eight posts will be all travel log–pictures & commentary to document Peter’s post graduation trip to Maui. Now… that said, I don’t really have many photos that show Peter’s and his compadres’ adventures, as the boys largely imposed and enjoyed a parent-free vacation–most of the time, we parents were banished, sent off to enjoy our own adventures. Those, I have pictures of. Where our adventures intersected, which happened once or twice, I have some good kid shots… and will post, of course.

I am assembling the Hawaii vacations posts now, a few days following our return, but am composing each day’s summary in the present tense for that day. (Like I need to explain this…)

Here goes…

We picked Darlene and Jacob up at their house this morning at 4:30am, then hung out in the Hawaiian Air part of Terminal B. The Peet’s side (v. the Starbuck’s side, where the Southwest gates are). That was nice for a change! It’s always fun to watch the sun rise as you’re preparing to take off on a fabulous vacation:

Here are our travel companions:

Darlene…

Jacob (and Peter)….

I got to sit with Peter for both legs of the journey. Happy mom.

Verdant Maui! We arrived on the island, after a short layover in Honolulu, at 11:35am.

We hooked up with Reed-who’d flown in on another flight–in the Kahalui airport…

We made quick work of the car rental (not really), and headed to Mama’s Fish House, on the Hana Highway, just outside Pa’ia, to meet the others for lunch.

Parked the car, entered the grounds, and got our first on-the-ground beach sighting of the trip; ridiculously, tropically pretty :

Satisfied beach boys:

We all (our entire 14-person group) ended up in different dining rooms. Here’s our table (and yeah, the first of many umbrella drinks):

Also the first of many fish dishes. This was a swordfish-like fish, can’t remember the name, but excellent. The menu gives credit to the fishing boat and fisherman/woman who caught the fish, which was cool. That fresh.

Very pricy, but very worthwhile.

After lunch we walked around a little more…

… then headed back into Kahalui to provision up at Costco.

Here’s a shot along the way of these wonderful trees (not sure what they are, but they’re all over). I just love their canopy:

Hawaiian Costcos have lots of tropical fruit…

We first dropped off the boys (and a few bags of food) at their condo (Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort, North). The Bairs have a time share here. Five boys in one part of the condo (Peter, Jacob, Reed, Daniel and Jordon), and two 20-something women (Daniel’s sister Kelsey and her friend Carolyn) in the adjoining unit. Yali and Aaron were in another part of the North complex, and Denise, her daughter Helena, and boyfriend John were in the South complex.

Here’s Peter on their 6th floor balcony overlooking the ocean and pools. It did not suck.

Darlene and I drove north a couple miles to our place, an Airbnb unit I found–the much smaller, quieter Kuleana. The grounds at Kuleana are very well tended–clean, tidy and beautiful. We also later learned that the management is very fussy about every little thing… which is good, and helps to ensure that everybody’s visit is as perfect as it can be.

Our unit, completely adequate and thoughtfully featured, is about 50 yards from the water’s edge, a short meander away:

Here’s unit 309: second floor, on the left…

And the view from our lanai (I took the next few photos the following day, but wanted to post here to illustrate fabulousness):

Our beach is wonderful… semi-secluded, sandy, with a great view of Molokai and Lanai.

This is me all happy and pleasantly surprised… because you just never really know what you’re going to get with these things:

And back to today… here is Darlene as we sat on our beach (or in Darlene’s case, stood in the water) and watched the sunset:

Day one: exceeded all expectations.

A week after the fact… Jim, Peter and I finally got to celebrate Peter’s graduation from high school!  Between all the activities of last weekend, and then getting ready to take off for La Jolla and the UCSD orientation (which didn’t happen because Peter got sick), and then four days of Peter’s being sicker ‘n a dog… we just weren’t able to celebrate. But tonight… we did.

Peter’s choice: Buckhorn Steakhouse. Of course.

I always enjoy the drive to Winters, but it was especially dramatic this evening because of the heavy cloud cover:

And a couple other farmland shots…

Here’s the Buckhorn…

And Peter and Jim, while we waited for our table to be ready.. (do you think they look alike?):

Good dinner, great conversation, and a few clinking of glasses.

I’d spent a couple of hours this afternoon collecting my thoughts–finally–about how his graduation from high school touches me. It was a bit tearful, but mostly a gratifying exercise. He opened our cards when we got home, but hasn’t read my comments yet. They’re long, and he still has a lot to do to get ready for a 4:30am airport departure. I expect he’ll read them at some point, and take in some of what I said, but I also suspect the writing was more for me than for him.

Love that boy.

The high in Davis today was something like 77 degrees. And there’d been talk of rain, which didn’t materialize, but still. Seventy seven. In Davis. In June.

Riding along A Street, past the sociology building on way to lunch this afternoon. This view caught my eye.

Big doings on A Street. A water line going in, on its way to campus.  Hopefully, this means A Street gets a resurface soon.

(Yes, slow news day.)

~~

More notably, Peter and I are in Davis. We were supposed to have boarded a plane today for San Diego, where Peter was to attend orientation at UCSD tomorrow and Friday (and I, parent orientation). But Peter came down with a horrible sore throat, fever and headache yesterday. Jim took him in for a strep test this morning and Dr. Honeychurch recommended against the trip. Hard to share a dorm room with a stranger when you’re sick, not to mention it’s kind of uncool to expose said stranger to whatever germs you’re carrying. So we canceled. Incredibly bummed. Rescheduled orientation for September, just prior to moving into the dorms and starting school. Not ideal, but that’s what it is.

We got credit on our flight for a future flight–thank you Southwest–but the hotel was not so agreeable. Not even when I said we had a UCSD freshman and we’d love to simply move our reservation to September, and then would likely be returning guests for the next four years. Wouldn’t budge. I consider that horrible customer service, so will never go back. And you shouldn’t either: Inn by the Sea, La Jolla. Scratch them right off your list.

I’m still deep in the zone of wondering how this happened, how Peter and all his friends grew up so fast. It never seemed fast. Until now. Now it seems very fast. They used to be tiny and cute. Now they’re huge and manly.

Here are a few little men…

Jacob, Eli and Peter, Peter’s 10th birthday:

Reed and Peter, 6th grade graduation:

Peter and Walter, learning to blow bubbles, Southwest road trip, June 2007:

Peter and Daniel, first year of Crush, Fall 2008:

Peter and Jack, San Francisco birthday, age 12:

Tuolumne Meadows with Eli, summer 2009:

For just a sampling.

On to more mundane topics.

As if arthritis and the utter (unfamiliar and oddly embarrassing) loss of muscle tone were not enough, along come floaters.

I learned about floaters when, after a couple weeks of staring at this little hair-like line out of my left eye, I emailed my primary and ended up in the office of an ophthalmologist, who, after dilating my eyes and giving them a thorough exam, concluded the line wasn’t a symptom of detached retina (the bad thing they need to rule out) and was, predictably, a floater (a benign sign of aging that concerns nobody but me).

So, yeah, this is annoying, but good, in that it won’t lead to blindness kind of way.

Says the interwebs:

Floaters occur when the vitreous, a gel-like substance that fills about 80 percent of the eye and helps it maintain a round shape, slowly shrinks. As the vitreous shrinks, it becomes somewhat stringy, and the strands can cast tiny shadows on the retina. These are floaters.

Age-related changes to the eye are the most common cause of eye floaters. As light passes from the front of the eye to the back, it passes through the vitreous humor, that jelly-like substance inside your eyeball.

Changes to the vitreous humor can lead to the eye floaters. This is a common part of aging and is known as vitreous syneresis.

The thick vitreous begins to liquefy with age and the inside of the eyeball becomes crowded with debris and deposits. The microscopic fibers inside the vitreous begin to clump together. As they do, the debris can be caught in the path of the light as it passes through your eye. This will cast shadows on your retina, causing eye floaters.

I like having my eyeballs dilated. It makes everything really bright and is weird and fantastic. But even better, it’s like having brown eyes (well, black eyes, really), which I think, as an ongoing thing, would be really cool (said the person with the disappearing light blue eyes).

A selfie:

See? Dark eyes. They show up. They pop!

Until the pupils shrank back down.. back to blue. (Hey, didn’t Amy Winehouse write a song called Back to Black?)

Starting to feel it today….

The Peter projects list is shrinking with many anxiety items checked off:

• Senior year: a wrap
• Baseball: a wrap
• College: researched, applied to, heard from, narrowed down, chosen..and re-chosen
• Major: picked
• Registration, housing contract, dorm application, orientation: in process
• Pass Spanish 6: done
• Graduation: done
• Graduation gift: in process
• Grad Night: done
• Graduation party: done
• Grad trip, vacations, summer schedule: planned
• 18th birthday: in process

A sense of relaxation is welling up…  hasn’t overtaken the end-of-high school-transition-to-college anxieties fully… but it’s beginning its surge. Checked a lot off the list this weekend.

Today… just hung out with Matty and Michael, enjoying the hell out of a day I didn’t have to plan and execute. Brunch, a matinee, two more grad parties… bring on the wine!

I so enjoyed Matt & Michael’s visit. Here’s a pic, in front of Mishka’s of course.. pre-movie iced tea on a lovely warm, but not too warm, afternoon:

~~

This was also the day we learned of the murder of 49 people in an Orlando gay bar, with another 53 injured in yet another mass shooting. Again an assault rifle. Again a disaffected,  discontent, misled, confused young man who had easy access to a machine gun. Again, after the rampage, guns sales soared, again contributions to the NRA spiked, again the spewing of hysterical rhetoric about how the government will soon be after our guns. An added dimension, because it’s election season: one presidential candidate is exploiting the tragedy with renewed promises, if elected, to restrict Muslims and anyone from a Muslim country from entering the US, and embellishing that with hints at installing surveillance equipment at US mosques. The candidate, capitalizing on fear and stoking hatred, bellows over social media about getting tough on dangerous immigrants once and for all, because nobody else is, and claims he is the only leader who can keep us safe, and then congratulates himself for also being the only guy with the guts to speak out on radical Islamic terrorism.

Deeply saddened by this whole sorry state of affairs.

People should not be dying at the hands of unstable people with ridiculously easy access to military-style weapons.

I couldn’t let the moment go without a celebration. For us, parents of one-and-only’s, every event, every milestone is a one-time deal. It’s all one-and-done. So we have to mark these occasions as notably as we can. They only come around once.

We’re a funny mix. Me, who loves ceremony and ritual and is a serious occasion marker, married to Jim who does not stand on formality (to say the least), raising Peter who’d just as soon disappear into the shadows with nary a whisper. Both Jim and Peter are the opposite of people who draw attention to themselves. I know this. I contend, however, that Jim appreciates it on some level, especially if I do most of the planning, and Peter will like it one day, as his story is told in pictures and remembered in random memories of events he claimed he didn’t want to be a part of.

I do this for Peter, even though he could seriously take it or leave it and would really, honestly, rather leave it. However, as an only kid with not a lot of family around, not even a kitten, (though once he had a fish named Ladybug Sandy Goldie), I feel like we have to create a community around him whose support he feels. I want him to know he’s a part of something bigger, even if he’s siblingless, even if we’re a small unit of three, and I want him to always know he’s loved and known in his community. That’s me projecting a whole lot of my own values and needs on him, god knows, but what the hell. It’s a good excuse for a party.

The party in photos:

I loved the invitation (boy, did I love it). Here’s the cover (an oldie but goodie, you’ve seen it before), Peter on his first day of kindergarten:

And here’s the inside:

And then the usual decorations, food and drink.

Michael helped me decorate the house.  He’s got flare. First, we blew up a buncha balloons.

And put them all over with selected other congratulations paraphernalia:

I loved the piano detail:

Michael chose ancient photos of Peter to put in this garlandy thing:

I particularly liked the inscription on the cake. I told Peter I think he possesses characteristics that will carry him well into the world–curiosity, kindness, decency, loyalty to his friends, intelligence, humor, good sense, resourcefulness, playfulness… things like that there… but if I could send him off with a parting word of advice, it would be:  don’t procrastinate. (I guess that’s two words.) Procrastination is his M.O., his calling card, and will be one of his biggest challenges to overcome. It earned a spot on his cake. That big a deal.

The food was from Nugget, and colorful…

I forgot to put out all the cheese and crackers I’d gotten.

Here are Solly and Peter, before folks started arriving:

Here are guys in conversation… baseball guys: James, Daniel, Walter, Solly, Peter:

And guys in formation…. Jordon, Reed, James, Daniel, Solly, Peter. (There but not pictured: Sebastian, Ray, Kiara, Jacob. Unable to come: Jack, Eli and Daniel B.):

Mostly it was family, some close family friends, Peter’s immediate circle of friends and their parents.

Jim recovered from a two-day bout with either a bug or food poisoning, and I think he–we all–had a great time.

So there!

If you work on something for the better part of year, you really want it to be a success. You want to end on a soaring, positive note and feel like all the effort, all the grief, was worth it.

Mission accomplished.

I was dubious. I had my moments of wondering who this was all for. The hundreds of volunteers, the tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars, the excruciating detail I doubted anyone would ever appreciate. I never questioned that all the effort was to benefit the kids, but I did question the degree of parental and community involvement. At times, it seemed so far over the top, I really had to wonder if the whole Grad Night enterprise would not benefit from a massive overhaul, a revisit of the mission. After all, all healthy organizations go through, or should go through, that exercise. It seemed like Grad Night was collapsing from the sheer weight of something that was over-organized, something that had become the Winchester Mystery House of events, something stuck in a lot of dated paradigms, but with a tinge of modern fixes slapped on. And when you’re in it, stuck in processes that are the way it’s always been, you get bogged down. I thought maybe we were losing the vision a little.

Old administrators have a hard time being worker bees when things are not tight and efficient. There was so much I wanted to fix.

And.. there was a ton that worked really, really well.  So who’s going to argue?

And, best of all, we’re through it. It went off without a hitch. And I get to walk away. I will leave its revamping to future parents.

Most importantly, the kids who attended–some 500 of them–had a great time. They had a place to be, a place to release, a place to hang with friends in a fairly intimate setting. It was a huge gift that the parents and community gave them–a last great party–and I think they’ll remember it and appreciate the effort. Peter really and truly had a fantastic time. Stayed to the bitter end. Had stories to tell. This, certainly, is a good thing.

I’d taken Matt, Michael, Heidi and Manoj over for the public tours in the late afternoon on Friday, just hours before doors would open for the grads. I got a few pictures. The mood is really enhanced when the sun goes down and the lights come up, but there was a lot to be impressed by when the final decorating touches had been complete.

Here is a corner of the casino. Note the chandeliers. This room was all about Alice in Wonderland.

Here is the Hogwarts-themed music room where Boxer Bingo, henna tattoos, massage chairs and movies (Harry Potter, of course) took place. The brick and nighttime sky effect are achieved with wall paper. Every piece of furniture is brought in:

And here’s some hallway detail leading to Hogwarts:

This hallway, leading to the restaurant, is Great Gatsby-themed:

And it just sorta goes on and on. I asked Peter whether he enjoyed the Friends’ Cafe, a corner of Emerson that was set up to look like the Central Perk Cafe from the Friends TV show, with giant subway maps and NYC skylines and comfy furniture… and he’d missed that detail! He liked the mocha slushies they served though–his favorite of all the food, he said. I think that happens a lot. More detail than the kids will ever appreciate.

Peter said he’d missed Bernie Sanders, who welcomed students when they first entered the hall… I didn’t get a photo when it was all set up, but here’s a photo-op taken a couple weeks prior at an organizing meeting:

I have some final evaluations and wrap ups to do before I’m done with my duties, but for the kids, Grad Night’s a wrap.