Mahalo Blue Hawaii

We left China a month ago almost to the day and arrived in Honolulu three hours before we commenced travel. That’s sci-fi time travel so far in this century. We came for what we thought was a week’s visit, to see 91-year-old Mom and rub elbows with la familia.

An SF colleague who had a task to fulfill on the Big Island came over so we had the chance to sidestep firecrackers pop in Chinatown to usher the Year of the Dragon, and watch the Rainbow coalition parade down Waikiki on MLK Day. We also did the 44-x-30-mile island drive around Oahu, slightly bigger than Saipan’s 12 x 5-mile size, skipping the northeast geo-sixth due to time constraint and the challenge of traffic. The views afforded by the Punch Bowl, the Tantalus drive to the Top of the Hill forest park, and Pali highway added data to our 40-some year memories of coming-and-going this “gathering place” in the Hawaiian chain of islands.

Pearl Harbor has become a known historical location that occasioned FDR’s oft-repeated Dec. 7, 1941-designated phrase, “A day that will live in infamy.” America’s military might float’s the island’s economy, maintaining an aloha visitors’ industry, and a laid-back hang-loose ohana culture. CSG-9 navigates with the U.S. Pacific Fleet homeported at Pearl Harbor. Oahu is Uncle Sam’s babe draped with ilima lei down her Polyglocal bosom, and a pua aloalo (yellow hibiscus) in her hair while varied skin-hued Don Ho and Kalakaua kane consorts occasionally na kamalei the hula, don the bird headdress, or body surf the tame Waikiki waves.

Some less charitable wit has compared the island to a federal sheepdog, cuddly and comforting but has gotten too fat with entitlements and dole. That is not quite fair, having briefly labored with WorkHawaii’s workforce development in the late ’90s, though we might quietly add that since Barack Obama claims Hawaii as his home state, the Democrats have been having a field day; the internecine bashing done without apologies, while the unity is assumed under the rainbow.

Other than the oddity of Lady Lingle in the mix, the islands are mistakenly thought and considered to be ruled by a single party system, with the political roulette, now that Inouye and Akaka are bowing to age, consigned to a limited membership of the Case and Hirono, Cayetano and Abercrombie, Hanabusa, Mufi and Schatz, et al.

It does not matter. Blue Hawaii is America’s showcase for paradise.

A brother lives in Kapolei, Oahu’s second city that has encroached into Ewa Beach where youngest sister also settled 20 years ago into one of the Gentry-in-Ewa neighborhoods that transformed this former abutment to NAS’s Barbers’ Point and the railed Campbell sugar plantation into a polyglot of middle class dreams and glocal aspirations. Kapolei is shaping up as both a governmental and commercial center, with the added Ko’olina development resort rivaling any seashore comfort and convenience offered anywhere in the world.

My brother-in-law recalls that this is the third time I am making my “last” appearance in the land of the pacific palms. True. Been bidding my “goodbye” since Dad laid his head on peaceful Mililani in 2007. But Mom still rests her head in downtown Aala, thus this hurriedly packed sojourn.

But it is true that Blue Hawaii has become more an item of memory rather than a destination of future treks. We’ve left our heart in San Francisco, and swooned with the chairman of the board, New York, New York, but Elvis’ croon of

Come with me
While the moon is on the sea
The night is young
And so are we, so are we
Dreams come true
In blue Hawaii
And mine could all come true
This magic night of nights with you

tugged on our heart string when the pink elephant was still the tallest structure on Kalakaua Avenue in ’62, way past our bedtime nocturne.

We leave a family sans Dad, close knit on the outside but remarkable in sad dysfunction on the inside, a quality of our time of shedding layers of illusions and delusions more than the product of bipolar personalities, though all of that is kept in the stew. But as a sibling grandiosely declared in his unconditional acceptance of our idiosyncrasy: “We still love you.” That, me, and Blue Hawaii!

So it is “aloha” once more, and mayhap, finally, as KE takes us to the Korean peninsula and on to the Middle Kingdom of Manchu and Lisu, Hani and Nakhi, Mongol and Uighur, Han and Gaoshan, Chosen and Hezhen, Miao and Yao, Dai and Bai, Zang and Zhuang, Yi and Li, Hui and Sui, and as my beachcombers would say, all 56 kine!

We are going Red in the Year of the Dragon to traverse the geography of Xizang to Dong Bei, Yunnan to Zhejiang, and all points in between the next four years. As the adventure continues, our investiture on the venture requires full consciousness and total attention, not to mention disciplined deployment of meager resources.

“Go west, old man,” is our mantra. As a Zhongguoren once said: “We do not discover destiny. We create it, even as we construct the highway while we travel.” That, we will do. Aloha, Mahalo Blue Hawaii!