I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth, and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each of us
on that dusty road. I suppose
there is reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.

-Mary Oliver

When my husband first started talking about a possible move to Hawaii, I had a lot of objections. First, I said, “We can’t move to Hawaii. I don’t like the sun!” And then there was the fear of earthquakes and lava flow, and finally, the ocean. Ocean all around, so far as the eye can see. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of being sea-locked. After two years, I still feel a sense of profound relief each time the plane touches down on this island. I always have an irrational fear that the plane will somehow miss our island and we’ll be plunged into the turquoise Pacific.

I especially didn’t like the idea of tsunamis. Our first apartment here was located in the tsunami-evacuation zone, and call me neurotic, but as much as I liked the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, I had trouble sleeping. As a Midwesterner with very little experience with the ocean, I didn’t want to turn my back on it for a minute.

Within a few months I learned that Hawaiians rarely built homes beside the ocean. They knew better. And with that in mind, we moved up the mountain to a 1,500-foot elevation. Now, we are far from the clutches of any renegade waves, but we can still watch the sun set over the Pacific every evening, when we’re not hemmed in by VOG (volcanic smog). This morning, as I made my coffee in our still-dark home, I glimpsed the lights of a cruise ship idling in the harbor. The ocean is a constant backdrop to our life now, and while I still don’t trust it completely, I am comforted by its beautiful expanse.

Like a lot of people who move to Hawaii, we don’t make it to the ocean as much as I would have imagined. Most people who live here work multiple jobs to survive, and my husband and I both find ourselves perpetually swamped with work. It’s hard for him to find a healthy balance between his work as a priest and his work as a web developer. Both jobs are endless, unpredictable, demanding and rewarding in turns.

And for me, as the caretaker of our current home and primary caregiver to our two children, It can be hard for me to pull myself away from the tangle of weeds in the front yard, from the bamboo that always needs to be trimmed back (warning: don’t ever plant bamboo if the opportunity presents itself) the mountains of unfolded laundry and the unswept floors.

But the other day I woke with a profound sense of excitement, as if I’d just arrived here the night before and I suddenly remembered that I’d landed in Hawaii. And I told myself that for once, I wasn’t going to fritter our day away on details as I so often do. I packed up our suits, Natalie’s little shovel and bucket, and my current favorite book of poems, Mary Oliver’s Red Bird, and we headed down to the sea.

I have this sense, more and more with Natalie, that her childhood is slipping away. I don’t want her to only remember me with broom or laptop in hand. I want her to remember me also, in her mind’s eye, as the person who stood beside her ankle deep in the tide pools, reaching for starfish, letting crabs skitter across my open palm, uncovering wonderful with her.

Photo by Amber Schley Iragui

Poetry Wednesday