Magic Sands

I got home this morning from spending nine days with my uncle and aunt, El Capitan and Tia L, down on the Kona coast of the Big Island. The only word I can think to summarize the trip is bittersweet.

Tia L was sick the day I arrived, and for a few nights in a row, she suffered chills and fever that interrupted her sleep and made her a little lethargic. Tia L has always been a highly energetic woman -- she calls herself "hyper" -- so she was a little frustrated. But she made the best of it during the days, still finding the energy to head down to the beach for a snorkel and a swim or a sunset barbecue, as well as quite a few shopping trips.

It also didn't stop her from attending her water aerobics class and taking me along. Nothing quite like Sweating with the Oldies in a pool surrounded by a deck so hot that your dear UCM burnt the bottoms of her tender Oregonian feet on it. Those old folks are GOSSIPY, man. They carried on through the entire class, chat chat chatting about the arcane details of island life and the infirmities of old age, not the least of which is the necessity of returning to the mainland for medical procedures they don't trust the local doctors to do.

One day, my youngest cousin, Spitfire, who's 22, a surfer and a certified pilates instructor, joined Tia L and me for the water aerobics class. As was the case with me, all the old people kept telling her, "If those floaties (used for resistance training) are too much for you, you can use these lighter ones." Spitfire and I kept exchanging smiles and laughs over the situation because those old folks were so convinced this rather tame water aerobics class would overwhelm us. What's up with that?

Tia L had a rash of doctor's appointments during my visit, but I suspect this is a regularly occuring thing. Not only did she have a "touch of walking pneumonia," according to the docs, she may also have some secondary cancers popping up. It is, I tell you, an OBSCENITY to see this vibrant 58-year-old woman being laid low like this. In my version of the story, she was supposed to live to be a really old woman, her long, luscious, curly black hair gradually graying and her loving and wise nature growing only more so to the point that she'd become some kind of sage. (In truth, she is very wise already, but I was thinking she would get really effing old, and she certainly was not suposed to lose that incredible hair of hers from chemo treatments.)

As has been the case throughout my adult life, we sat around some evenings -- she and Spitfire and I -- and smoked a little of the green goddess and "talked story," as the Hawaiians say. I love Southerners. They have the gift of chewing the fat as I have experienced with no other regional American culture. Tia L and Spitfire were both bred and born in New Orleans, and the "memorial day" (because Tia L refuses to call it an "anniversary") of Hurricane Katrina really revved up the conversation at times. So did any mention of The Notorious M.O.M.

I asked Tia L about doing a "life story interview," and she readily agreed. Her time has more distinct limits on it than the rest of us believe we have, and she is a consummate and colorful storyteller. So we agreed to videotape some of our conversations toward the end of my visit.

On Sunday, I took off on my own and tooled around the island in candy apple red Mustang convertible. Headed up to Hawi, then on to Hilo for the night by way of the north shore and its lush, dramatic coastline. (El Capitan notes that "lush" in Hawaii requires a prolonged pronunciation, dragging out the "ssshhh." One place I stopped, Luenpohoehoe, is what he calls "30-second lussssshhhhhh.") The next day, I spent a few hours with my cousin, MiniMimi, at her home in Puna, then headed to Waimea, where I passed the night in such decadent splendor that, had they served the breakfast in bed, would've made Dr. M think she'd died and found some kind of Four Seasons version of the afterlife (if the Four Seasons were all into ornate Edwardian furniture and chandaliers, that is).

In the shadow of Mauna Kea, on which the observatories are built, Waimea is about 2,500 feet in elevation, and the cloudless skies that night afforded a view of the heavens so startingly dark and clear that I was stunned to speechlessness. The Big Island is intentionally underlit -- and those streetlights which exist are those hideous sodium vapor ones -- to protect the night sky from light pollution. Even without taking the 20 minutes or so necessary for my eyes to fully adjust to the darkness, I had a view of the heavens that is unlike any I have ever witnessed, including my travels to secluded places like the Amazon or the Chiriqui highlands of Panama. It's more than just light pollution at play in Hawaii; there must be something to layers of atmosphere. The stars weren't twinkling like they normally do. They were eye-popping points of lights on a black canvass. Really stunning.

When I returned to Kona on Tuesday, Tia L and I began the interview. It took place in three settings over two days, and I taped a good five hours of stories. She touched on everything from her experience as the second of five (or six?) children born to alcoholic first cousins to her years working in a mental hospital in Seyschelles with the Peace Corps and the three years she, El Capitan, Spitfire and MiniMimi spent sailing around the Caribbean and South America while my cousins were a pre- and menstrual teens and Tia L was going through menopause (something El Capitan says no man should have to endure on a 45-foot sailboat). I feel like I have given myself a gift -- and created a "living" memory for my family -- in conducting this interview. Tia L is a fabulous subject, a woman who has lived life at full-tilt, a trait for which she highly credits my free-spirited, adventurous uncle.

Speaking of my uncle, throughout my visit, he was up to his regular hijinks, although my aunt's illness seems to have tempered his behavior a bit. In keeping with his insistence that I try new things (an insistence I share enthusiastically), he bought me a big coconut bowl full of kava juice, claiming it was a good "narcotic." The shit made my lips and throat numb, but otherwise did nothing to my mood. He also introduced me to passionfruit, and my aunt introduced me to dragonfruit.

One day, we went to Spencer beach on the Kohola coast for an afternoon of snorkeling and a sunset barbecue. El Capitan and I were exploring the coral reef in an area where the bottom was perhaps 20 or so feet deep. Given the depth and the turbidity caused by the surf, I had the distinct feeling of being in open water. It was mostly overcast that day, as well, and I found the limited visibility at the surface -- which did not persist when I would dive down to the reef -- to be a bit disturbing. At times, I could not see El Capitan even when he was 10 or 15 feet away.

Presently, I started to get what I call "the shark creeps." This doesn't happen to me often. In fact, it was the only time it happened on the entire trip. I had the distinct experience of being watched, of danger lurking nearby. But I couldn't see jack shit aside from the reef and fish immediately below me, and when I would surface from a dive, I saw nothing on the water's surface that would concern me. I would scan for El Capitan, see his snorkel 25 yards or so away and go back to my business. But I found myself consciously spreading my arms and legs wide and thinking, I am a human. You don't want to eat me. This here white meat won't taste too good to you. Shoo, shark, shoo!

After maybe 40 minutes of this, the shark creeps were simply too intense for me to enjoy the reef anymore. I told El Capitan I was swimming back to shore. When we got to the shallows, El Capitan said, "Well, now that we're near shore, I guess I can tell you: See that Hale (Hawaiian archeological site) over there? The Hawaiians used to sacrafice people to sharks there. I guess they must have cut them up some first or something. But they'd toss them in over there." He was pointing to an area just north of where we'd been snorkeling.

They were sacraficing people to *reef* sharks? I asked, a bit incredulous.

"Well, there are probably some reef sharks around here," he replied, "but mainly that's seems to be a nesting place for hammerheads and tiger sharks."

TIGER SHARKS?! ... Your UCM was not pleased. She did not tell El Capitan of the shark creeps she'd been having, though, because she knows what El Capitan's response would be: "There are sharks everywhere." UCM, however, was not thrilled about having been lolling about, unaware, in the surf near an area where tiger sharks nest with their young.

Later, I told Tia L about my shark creeps. She said, "Oh, you were probably picking up on all the spirits of the people who were sacraficed there." She's very mystic. I was not persuaded.

When I was in Waimea, I had a phone conversation with S2, and when she asked whether El Capitan had found a way to put me in harm's way again (because last visit, he tried to get me to jump out of a lava tube and over a cliff into the sea, when there was no obvious way out of the ocean), I said, Well, I was totally getting these shark creeps at Spencer, and then he told me there was a nesting ground nearby.

This wouldn't be a story worth mentioning if it weren't for the headlines on my last day on the island. Turns out Spencer, as well as three other beaches on the Kohola Coast, were closed because of "numerous" daylight spottings of tiger sharks in the shallows, as close as 25 feet from the shore, for several days in a row. Tiger sharks are notorious for being scavengers -- in other words, they'll sample *anything* from surfboards to pigeons to your dear UCM -- but it is highly unusual for them to be lurking so close to shore, and broad daylight is a strange time for them to be on the prowl. They are very dangerous, and the only responsible thing is to close the beach to swimming and surfing when they are hanging out in the vacinity.

Of course, I can't empirically prove that my case of the shark creeps had anything to do with an actual predator giving me the eye, but ... ugh .. that's just creepy.

So on my last day, I'm showing El Capitan the newspaper and going, Uh, I was totally having the shark creeps when we were snorkeling at Spencer, and El Capitan was replying with his usual, "There are sharks everywhere," whe he says to me, "So are you afraid to go in the water now?" I replied, truthfully, No, but I'm not going to Spencer or Hapuna. He suggests an afternoon swim at Magic Sands to play in the surf (another one of my favorite things).

For a long time, El Capitan, Tia L and I are out bobbing in the surf at Magic Sands. Most of the waves are breaking with two- or three-foot faces, but we are out beyond the break, riding the swells. El Capitan swims off, comes back making some funny shark gestures with his arm and tells me a story about how once, when he was in the Seyschelles, he and Tia L and a bunch of friends dropped acid and went snorkeling. One of them made her arm look like a shark fin sillouetted in the sun, and everyone else freaked out and "started crying like babies because we all thought we were toast," El Capitan said as he bobbed in the swells. Tia L announces that she is done swimming and will be going to shore. El Capitan and I stay in the ocean.

Then he says to me, "Hey, UCM-i (this part of the family still calls me by a diminutive childhood nickname), we haven't done anything dangerous while you've been here. Let's say we find some trouble right now."

What do you propose? I ask.

"Let's mix it up with the boogie boarders and bodysurf some of the bigger waves," he says. "You can't go home without a little rough action. If there's not a chance you'll break your neck, you can't say you've had fun."

So swimming with the tiger sharks doesn't count, huh? I ask, noticing that the surf has become larger in the time we've been out bobbing around. There are now large swells and waves with faces up to five feet or so, and I haven't bodysurfed in years because the Oregon coast is too fucking cold to do that.

"You didn't *see* the shark, did you?" he asks. When I shake my head no, he says, "Then it doesn't count."

So we swim closer to shore and start catching some of the waves. Most of them are two or three feet, which is a decent-size wave for bodysurfing, especially when you're competing for space with a bunch of gung-ho boogie boarders. I'm having a little trouble at times catching the waves just right. I push off too late and the wave breaks as I'm launching. I push off too late and I can't get the full ride. Sometimes, they seem like they will be a good ride but the wave fizzles.

Then, I see this wall of water rising above me. I feel the strong pull of the current on my legs, dragging me out to sea. El Capitan, who is a foot taller than me, yells, "This is gonna be a hot one! Be careful!" just as a decide to lauch myself up into it. The face must be about five feet and for a minute, I bodysurf the sucker. Then it breaks on top of me like a ton of bricks. In a flash, my head is pushed down so forcefully into the sand that I am totally upended, ass over kilt, and I'm flipped by the wave, smacked down on my back and trapped beneath the surf.

Having nearly drowned once before while whitewater rafting, the rushing foamy whiteness that's throwing me around like a rag feels a bit too familiar for comfort. Stuck under the water and pinned against the sand, I feel the tow dragging me out to sea, and I know another wave is about to break on top of me. I scramble to find my footing and get it just as the next wave comes roaring in, giving me the second saltwater nose enema in as many weeks. I shake my head, which is matted in sand, and El Capitan, who's about 15 feet closer to shore than I made, surfaces, laughs and yells, "Now *that's* more like it!"

We ride the waves for another 5 or 10 minutes, until a cramp in the front of my shin becomes too bothersome for me to continue. We hit the showers on the beach, and sand is pouring out of every edge my suit has to offer. My crotch is so full of it that there's no getting clean.

Spitfire is having a party that night. I go to her place and shower and put on dry, clean clothes for my evening flight home. We are celebrating a little girl's birthday. The house is populated by a cast of characters I've come to know over the past week, the endless parade of interesting people who compose El Capitan's and Tia L's social circle, some of whom they've known for 30 years. They have more friends -- and keep them longer -- than anyone I've ever known. People who get to know El Capitan and Tia L are usually quite taken by their enthusiastic living.

Which is why I have to call the trip bittersweet. Because as the time for me to leave for the airport approached, there was a growing sense that I may not again cross paths with Tia L, who has been such a powerful influence in my life -- someone who inspired my dreams, my wanderlust and reflected for me the most positive image of myself that I have ever known (she told me the other day, "To me, you were always the most interesting, gregarious and fun member of your family, even at age 8 or 9"). Three tiimes, we shared a prolonged hug, and as I was walking out of the party with El Capitan, she gave me the fiercest look and said simply, "I love you."

At that moment, I felt doubly blessed. Not just for having known and shared life with such an incredible, loving and strong woman since childhood, but also for the presence of so many others at that party. Had there not been a lively birthday party underway, had Spitfire not been commenting on the flavor balance of her potato salad, had Forest not been smiling meekly as I thanked him for the palm bowl he wove for me, had Spitfire's boyfriend not been tending to the chicken and lamenting the short time we had to visit, had the woman who's moving to Panama not been shouting across the lanai, "Farewell UCM-i!", I would've been unable to divert my eyes from that fierce look of Tia L's and would have burst into the most outrageous display of tears over the unfairness of that wretched cancer.

Instead, I met her eyes with whatever look it is that love and admiration and sadness at parting manages to etch on my face, and I replied, "I love you, too."

I certainly hope it's not the last time I see her. But if I have to have a parting memory, this would be it. With death lurking on her horizon, Tia L was sipping a beer, enjoying a party and still radiating a love of life and everything in it.