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.

Rooting for Your Dreams

One evening during my recent trip to Honolulu, I was sitting in an upscale sushi bar on Kalakaua Avenue – the “strip” – on Waikiki Beach. To my right was an empty seat, and on the other side of that chair sat an obviously wealthy Japanese woman and several of her friends. Five or six empty chairs were available down the sushi bar on my left-hand side.

As I sat enjoying a lovely miso-glazed butterfish and a Dancing Geisha (crushed blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries with tonic water and vodka), I noticed the restaurant had copies of their “house” music CDs available for purchase. I picked one up and was surprised to find that Bob Marley was the house music in a Japanese restaurant in Hawaii. And sure enough, “No Woman, No Cry” was wailing over the speakers.

At that moment, a woman slipped into the seat between me and the Japanese lady. She was barely five feet tall, and she wore board shorts, flip flops, and a Billabong surf shirt. Her hair was wet, and her clothes were damp. As she sat down, she shivered and said, “I just came in off the beach. It’s my birthday, and I’m treating myself to some sushi tonight.”

“Happy Birthday!” I said. We introduced ourselves, and then Millie began to study the menu. When she began shivering again, the Japanese lady looked at her and then took off the Chanel jacket she was wearing and put it around Millie’s shoulders.

As Millie thanked her, the Japanese woman said, “We take care of people here. It’s the Waikiki Way.”

Millie looked at me and said, “I knew it was going to be like that here. I just moved here from Washington D.C. last month, and I’ve already met the most wonderful people.”

Intrigued, I asked her why she’d moved to Honolulu. “I wanted to,” she said simply.

It can’t be that easy, I thought. It just can’t. As if she had read my mind, Millie looked at me and said, “In life, you have to decide what you want. I wanted to live somewhere with nice weather and with a beach. So I moved here.”

I’d heard those words before. In a television interview, Elizabeth Gilbert, the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, a book that became an international bestseller, said this about her success: “Every morning, you wake up and ask yourself, ‘What do I really, really, really want?’” And once you’ve answered that question, she said, you move in that direction.

I told Millie I admired her bravery and wished her well. As I left the restaurant, I heard Bob Marley singing, “Don’t worry about a thing/cause every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

I was still thinking about Millie the next morning as I put on my workout clothes, grabbed my iPod, and headed out for a long walk. I marveled at the courage it must take to pull up roots and move such a huge distance.

And then I saw it, the massive Banyan tree growing in Kapiolani Park. Banyan tree branches develop rope-like “vines” that hang from them and grow downward. These “vines” are actually aerial roots that take hold in the ground and grow into thick, woody trunks. With age, these new trunks become indistinguishable from the main trunk, and that’s how the Banyan grows. In fact, one particular large old Banyan on the island of Maui covers almost 2/3 of an acre.

Interestingly, in Hindu mythology, the Banyan is call the “wish-fulfilling tree" because of it's ever-expanding state.

I wonder if moving – or even going for what you really want in life – is really the painful all-or-nothing process we like to make it, the gut-wrenching decision to give up something meaningful for something desired. If we could use the Banyan tree as a metaphor and see change as more of a process of putting down new roots, of growing stronger by expanding, then maybe we can have the courage to pursue our heart’s biggest desires with the assurance that, indeed, every little thing will be all right.

A Scandalous Christmas

This morning at breakfast, as I sat eating fresh pineapple and looking out over Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head in the distance, an article in the The Honolulu Advertiser caught my eye.

Oahu, it seems, is experiencing a Christmas tree shortage. Hundreds of buyers got in line at 4 a.m. yesterday in hopes of snagging one of the trees being flown in at the last minute from Oregon.

For me, it brought back memories of the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 1995.

In the late 1980s, my parents bought a condo on St. Augustine Beach, and they were there every chance they got. Of course, they always spent the week after Christmas at the beach, usually leaving the day after Christmas to get there.

From the time we kids first married and the issue of scheduling our holiday gatherings arose, Mom and Dad were always great about saying, “We want everyone together, but it doesn’t have to be Christmas Day or even Christmas Eve. Sometime in the week leading up to Christmas is perfectly fine with us.” Part of the reason, I think, was that preachers work on Christmas Eve. And if Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, they work on Christmas Day. Like most families, for the Adams, holiday flexibility is a matter of survival.

In 1995, though, we somehow managed to celebrate the Adams Family Christmas actually on Christmas Day at lunchtime. Mom and Dad were planning to leave for Florida after the celebration.

We loaded our children into the car and drove to Grammy’s house. Morgan was five years old, and Lauren was not quite two. As we pulled into their driveway, Morgan said in a horrified voice, “Why is their Christmas tree in the road?”

Their limp and lifeless and sad tree was already at the curb on Christmas Day, flecks of tinsel blowing off the tree and across their yard in the cold December wind. They never have, and never will, live it down.

This year, when it came time for me to decorate a tree, I understood how my parents felt. My artificial trees were ruined in the water heater flood back in September. Since I’m moving to Florida, I didn’t want to buy another artificial tree and then have to move it. But I didn’t exactly have a vehicle big enough to bring home a real tree.

I found a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina that would ship trees to my front door. I ordered a 6’ Fraser fir for the rec room and a 7’ one for the main level of the house. The trees arrived two days later, and Lauren helped me pull them from their boxes.

The 6’ tree was my height. And the 7’ tree wasn’t 7 feet tall. I grumbled, and Lauren laughed, but what were we going to do? Send them back?

After an hour of sawing off lower branches to get them into their stands, I was covered in needles and sap. I picked up the “6-foot” tree and made my fourth attempt to shove it into the stand. When it still didn’t fit, I began cursing and slamming the tree and stand against my newly-replaced hardwood floors while telling Santa where I wanted to put the trunk of that tree. Lauren’s eyes got big, and she said, “Mom, why don’t we take a break and go get some dinner?”

I went upstairs to grab a jacket and saw the 3x3 inspirational card I keep next to the mirror in my bathroom. It reads, “Attachment to the way things should be is the source of all your suffering.”

“Should” is a dangerous road. See, my family should be intact. My kids should all be home, and we should be decorating the tree together. I should be watching the man of the house wrangle with the artificial trees that never got ruined. My basement should never have flooded, and my beautiful house shouldn’t be on the market. “Should” is a recipe for misery.

So rather than sitting around and shoulding on myself, I’m in Honolulu to see Petras and Baptiste, the two boys from Europe who lived with us and are now a part of our family, play in a tournament in their last year of college. While Atlanta is enduring freezing rain, I’m sitting on Waikiki beach drinking a pina colada and listening to Bing Crosby sing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” I’ll be home on Christmas Eve to celebrate with my children, but because of scheduling difficulties, we won’t actually celebrate Christmas with my mom and dad and the rest of my family until the day after Christmas.

And since we’re leaving for St. Augustine after that celebration, my trees will be already down when all my nieces and nephews pull into my driveway.

They won’t be on the street, however. I’ve cut a deal with the guy selling trees in Honolulu. When I get home, I’m going to overnight him two slightly dry Fraser fir, and we’re going to split the profit. It will forever be known as the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 2009.

Since that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be. It should be a great Christmas.

Collecting Sweatshirts

I cleaned out my closet recently in preparation for my move to Florida. I knew it was time to get rid of some things when I realized I couldn’t see the Bon Jovi poster hanging on the wall. I started with my stack of sweatshirts that I no longer wear, since living in Florida means I won't need so many.

There was the U.S. Open sweatshirt from way back in 2004, the year Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Elena Dementieva for the women’s title and Roger Federer began his domination of the hard courts in Flushing Meadows. I put it in the pile to give away but then pulled it out. That trip was just too good a time to part with the only memento I possess.

I have a green sweatshirt from New York University. My daughter, Morgan, brought it back for me when she made her campus visit. My girl left for college last week, and given how proud I am of her, I will never be able to part with that NYU shirt.

The same goes for my grey University of Hawaii sweatshirt. Several years ago, my family hosted an exchange student from Lithuania. Petras now plays basketball for the University of Hawaii, and last December, my mother and I spent a week together on Waikiki Beach. We enjoyed great books and pina coladas during the day and cheered for Hawaii in the evenings. Unfortunately, Hawaii lost the Rainbow Classic tournament despite all the spirit I showed by purchasing a University of Hawaii shirt. But the shirt reminds me of a well-spent week with my mom, and it also speaks to how someone from the other side of the world can so quickly become a permanent family member. I’ll have it until the sleeves fall off it.

I also have a grey Oxford University shirt, one I obtained by accident. I took my three teenagers to England two summers ago, and we boarded a bus early one morning for a trip to Oxford, Windsor Castle, and Shakespeare’s home. To my complete consternation, we were hurried through our tour of the Oxford. I actually had to beg our tour guide to give me ten minutes to buy my kids each an Oxford University shirt. Somehow, I also ended up with the sweatshirt the guy in line in front of me paid for. I didn’t notice until our tour bus broke down an hour later and we were stranded on the side of the road in the chilly rain somewhere between Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. I opened the bag to hand my kids their sweatshirts and found the extra one, which I gratefully pulled over my tank top. A serendipitous sweatshirt that was free – life doesn’t provide many of those, so it’s surely a keeper.

By now, you might be wondering if I found one with which I could actually part.

I pulled out of the pile a navy blue sweatshirt with a banana on the front. Circling the banana are the words, “This sh*t is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S,” two lines from a Gwen Stefani song that was popular about four years ago. I bought it at her concert in November 2005, the same week I filed for divorce. It became my divorce uniform, my protest against the whole situation. I even wore it to my attorney’s office on the day I signed the settlement agreement that ended my 19-year marriage.

That’s the one I put in the give-away pile. Sometimes you just know when it’s time to let something go.