Well-Preserved Happiness

The frigid temperatures most of us are experiencing have brought back fond memories of my trip to Hawaii last month. I’m not sure why, but during the entire trip, a little voice kept nagging me to spend every possible minute in the sun.

It went something like this: The sun is out. Get your ass into a beach chair immediately, and stay there until dark.

See, I’m kind of genetically blessed. I have the immune system of a crocodile and a stomach lined with titanium. I don’t get sick. But what I do get is SAD, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder. Winter depresses me, and every winter seems to be worse than the one before it.

Knowing that I am prone to getting SAD when it’s cold and I can’t be in the sunshine, when I am in a position to soak up some serious sun, that’s what I do. I never squander sunshine.

One of the pitfalls of prolonged beach chair duty, though, is the potential to begin looking like an actual slug. Especially when I develop an intimate relationship with the roving cocktail waitress. I mean, how great is it that a cute Hawaiian girl with a pleasant personality will bring me anything I want to eat or drink?

I spotted what I wanted to drink on my very first day in Honolulu. Duke’s, the famous Waikiki restaurant, makes a frozen concoction called a “Second Captain.” It’s Captain Morgan rum and banana liqueur blended with fresh bananas and a swirl of raspberry puree. Heaven in a souvenir cup, no?

Determined that I would NOT gain ten pounds during my week on Waikiki, I avoided eye contact with the cocktail waitresses. "Tomorrow. I’ll have one tomorrow" was my mantra for the entire week. And guess what? It dawned on me during the plane ride home that I never had a Second Captain.

While we're on the subject of captains, the first captain I ever knew in my life was my grandfather. He was a World War Two fighter pilot who, for more than thirty years, flew all over the world as a pilot for an international freight company. And sometime during the 1950s, he flew to Puerto Rico. I know that because after he died a few years ago, my grandmother gave me two bottles of Bacardi rum that he’d brought back from Puerto Rico in the late 1950s.

I put those bottles away. They would never be opened, I decided, not because they might be valuable, but because they were a cool reminder of my Pa.

I opened my cabinet the other day to find that one of the bottles is half gone. And I got upset. Someone had taken the only thing I had left from my grandfather. But then I remembered this quote, which has been attributed to various sources:

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini (or Second Captain) in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘Holy Shit! What a ride!’"

So in that spirit, I’m going to blend some banana liqueur and fresh bananas with the rest of Pa’s rum and add a swirl of raspberry puree. And I’m going to toast Pa with those words and enjoy every last sip of what I call a "First Captain."

Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. The liquor store is closed on Sunday, and I don’t have any banana liqueur.