United States of America - Honolulu

Over the past ten months, we’ve stood in many long immigration lines and waited for our passports to be inspected and stamped and have hastily filled out other documents in a travel-induced haze before landing in yet another country.  On several occasions, we crossed borders on land in some of the most godforsaken towns I’ve seen where bored officials held the power to allow my little family to jump through another hoop in order to keep moving forward.  We’ve purchased entry visas, some reasonable, some exorbitant, and stood in queue hoping our research was accurate and that we had filled out the forms in accordance with the statutes set forth by the sovereign nations in which we were hopefully about to enter.  

A few days ago after a nine-hour, overnight flight, we stood in yet another long line in an airport, half asleep and holding our passports and immigration forms as we waited to gain entry into another sovereign nation.  At one point, as we slowly made our way through the line, I happened to glance over to the corner of the large room drably decorated by the inspiration of bureaucracy, and there by itself tacked tightly to the wall, was an American flag with its familiar red, white, and blue colors, and I knew we were home, and I didn’t mind jumping through another hoop at all.

Home in this case was in a much broader context as we had just landed on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—Honolulu, Hawaii which as of August 2, 1959 became the fiftieth state of the United States of America.  As the cordial lady at the immigration desk checked our documents, I thought back over the last twenty-four hours, which we would somehow magically repeat due to crossing the international dateline, and I marveled at how just the day before we were taking pictures with the Sydney Opera House in the background, and now we were preparing to explore yet another place as a younger man I never thought I would see.  

We left Auckland, New Zealand, before sunrise after walking over a mile from our hotel to the airport in frosty conditions in order to avoid the fifteen-dollar-per-person shuttle fee and checked our bags at the ticket counter wondering if we would see them again over twenty-four hours later.  As I knew it would, the month spent in New Zealand flew by as we experienced daily discovery of inspiring natural beauty and genuinely nice people, but as the days of May dwindled, we were ready to move on knowing that we were getting closer to home.  Our flight had a twelve-hour layover in Sydney, Australia where we landed just a few hours after leaving Auckland, and we checked our travel-stained orange backpacks into an airport locker before summoning an Uber ride into the city.

The air was a good twenty degrees warmer than it had been in the Shaky Islands, and we enjoyed lazily exploring the downtown streets before finding a flavorful beef and rice lunch at a busy Chinese cafeteria.  We killed another hour by taking advantage of the free wifi at Starbucks before joining an early afternoon walking tour which promised the sights and history of Sydney, the most populous city in Australia.  Our guide was Indigo, an energetic, well-spoken university student who did an excellent job informing our group about the attributes of her home town during our two-and-a-half-hour stroll through the historic districts.  The tour ended at the harbor late afternoon, and we were treated to a memorable view of the opera house with its iconic shells glowing in the light of the setting sun with a pink and purple sky beyond.

We had a quick dinner before catching an Uber ride back to the airport where we waited to board an overnight flight bound for Honolulu. Thanks to modern medicine and a couple of Harry Potter movies, it seemed much shorter than the actual nine-hour journey.  Miraculously, our luggage was waiting for us at the carousel after the immigration process. We quickly booked a shuttle to our hotel in Waikiki piloted by a gregarious young man who gave us the lowdown on all the places to get tasty cheap food near our accommodation.  

After a short ride, we pulled up to the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani hotel, our home for five days in Honolulu where Deena’s mom stayed numerous times when she worked as a flight attendant back in the 1960’s.  During a video call, Deena’s mom told her when she stayed in the hotel she never imagined that she would have a daughter who would visit the same place with her own family one day—a tear rolled down my cheek while I listened to their conversation.  We settled into a third-floor room with a balcony overlooking the pool and eye level with the branches of tall palm trees. A tray full of kona coffee was ready for brewing.  After a long nap, we found lunch at a Japanese noodle house, walked through the lobby of the historic Surfrider hotel across the street, and stepped onto the soft sand of Waikiki Beach with the volcanic cone of Diamond Head sweeping up from the blue water of the lagoon.  Deena and I shared a smile and stood there with our arms around each other for a long time.

For the rest of the day, we did our best to restrain ourselves from an all out feeding frenzy as we suddenly had available most of the treats we had fantasized about for so long, but we did purchase some Reese’s Cups, Cheetos, and a twenty-ounce bottle of Diet Mountain Dew, which I slowly tipped to my lips and let the ice cold, citrus-honey elixir flow exquisitely into my ten-month deprived mouth.  I considered buying a couple of cases for a Diet Mountain Dew bath back at the hotel, but that would have been borderline excessive.  As I checked some things on the internet at the hotel, I was amazed at the speed of the wifi. The kids noted their phones magically had 4G capability once more, and the TV had familiar programming where the show hosts used a language and accent that caressed our ears as we looked out to the deep blue skies through the rustling palm branches.  We ended our first day in Hawaii sitting by the pool listening to two guys in flowered shirts strum a guitar and a ukulele wondering if we were dreaming.

I’ve quickly discovered why kona coffee is such a big deal. The little coffee shop on the corner next to our hotel does a fine job of extracting a rich, fragrant brew from freshly ground beans.  They charge a reasonable price for a large cup, but the first time I bought one, I wondered why the barista asked for an amount slightly more than the price listed on the chalkboard.  It dawned on me that I was back in the US where tax is added at the point of sale and not included in the price display, and I realized how much easier it had been over the last ten months simply to pay the quoted prices.  It’s also easier to get over such a small thing standing in the warm, humidity-free air where an ever-present, refreshing breeze carries the sounds of voice and guitar harmonies and the honey scent of fresh flowers.

Sor far, we’ve taken advantage of the daily free programs offered by the hotel and enjoyed a lei-making lesson in which we strung purple and white orchid blossoms into long chains under the direction of Nate, a native Hawaiian who’s traveled to all fifty states over the years.  The following morning, Nate gave the children a ukulele lesson, and they learned to play You Are My Sunshine and a couple of other tunes popular with crooners. They picked it up fairly quickly considering we forced them out of bed at the ungodly hour of 9:00 AM.  

Waikiki Beach is one of the few places we’ve visited where the enormous view looks just like the postcards. The sight of a long line of surfers riding curling waves on colorful boards two hundred-yards out is striking.  The sandy-colored hotels bordering the lagoon look almost natural among the tall palm trees, and we’ve enjoyed several lazy sunbathing sessions on this famous stretch of beach along with hundreds of other tourists sporting smiles that match the wide ones on our faces.  I’ve been mesmerized by the color of the ocean extending from the shore about twenty yards out where the soft blue water has thousands of swirling, light green ripples which creates an iridescence that looks like a long strip of liquid opal.  We’ve done our best to savor the time spent together in this beautiful place while the days continue to tick by quickly as we anticipate our return to North Carolina.

There are a bunch of things to do on Oahu, and our plan was to do almost none of them but to enjoy some relaxing time on the beach and in the pool sipping drinks full of crushed ice and cherries and pineapple slices.  We did manage to make a trip to our phone-carrier store where we bought new phones for Deena and me and finally awarded the kids their very own phone numbers.  With those minor goals achieved, our only other major goal was to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, and we just about blew it.  Two million people visit the memorial every year, and the majority of them book their tickets months in advance which never occurred to us even after our scare at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.  After a little investigation, we realized that every single advance tour space was booked through July. Deena and I exchanged the same slightly panicked looks we shared when we realized we might not get into the Louvre or St. Peter's or the Frank house.  With some perseverance, we managed to make it into those places, and we weren’t ready to give up on the Arizona this late in the game.

With a little more research, we found out that the National Park Service releases three-hundred tickets daily to the Arizona at 7:00 AM so last minute losers like us have a small window of opportunity to score a visit.  So, at 6:59 AM yesterday morning, I sat on the edge of the bed with my steaming cup of kona coffee beside me, my new phone in my hand with the park service number entered, and my index finger poised over the dial icon like I was attempting to score tickets to a Led Zeppelin reunion except this was bigger.  The hour struck, and I dialed only to receive a busy signal—dangit!  But with my second attempt I reached a recorded message, which led to a live operator, which led to four crispy tickets to the 1:00 tour the following day—the relief I felt was like experiencing a brand new emotion.  We found out later that day that the city bus had a stop behind our hotel and a round trip would only cost fifteen dollars for the entire family.

We boarded the bus the next day at 11:00 and arrived at the memorial under bright sunshine and a brilliant blue sky.  After I gave the park ranger in the ticket office my hard-won reservation number, he printed out four tickets, and we were off to explore the on-site museums before our appointed tour.  The USS Arizona is a United States National Monument under the supervision of the National Park Service. Over the last ten years, we’ve visited countless national monuments along with twenty-three national parks from Alaska to Florida, and we’ve loved every one of them.  In each park or monument, Deena and I had the kids participate in the National Park Junior Ranger program in which they completed workbooks designed to enhance learning about the individual parks, and they were awarded badges after a park ranger had them recite the national park oath.  When Joseph and Deveny were younger, they loved completing these tasks and receiving another shiny gold badge to pin on their official junior ranger hats, and they have quite a collection.  Once they got into the teen years, the programs were met with resistance as they became increasingly uncool, but we made them do the work anyway—dadgummit, they’ll appreciate it one day.

As the bus entered the memorial complex, I noticed the familiar and much loved NPS arrowhead logo on the side of the staff building and I turned to the kids and said, “Hey guys, this place is a national monument,” already knowing the reaction I would get.  True to form, the kids responded with some of the best, well-practiced eyerolls and a few statements of protest, but their efforts were futile as we walked straight to the bookstore and acquired two junior ranger workbooks, and they accepted their fate.  

We spent the time leading up to our tour walking through the small museums designed to lead visitors through the events surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 that changed the history of the world.  Our favorite exhibit was the scale model of the memorial structure which was placed over the sunken ship. It gave us a clear perspective of its position in the harbor.  I remember as a kid reading about the negotiations between the US and Japan that took place right up to the day of the attack and how I felt anger at the deceptive nature of these talks as the Japanese aircraft carriers were already in place. Our tour began with an excellent movie about the attack, and it made one point about the event that was especially poignant:  the majority of the men who died that day never knew what was coming or what hit them.  As their lives were horribly interrupted, they never knew that the attack on Pearl Harbor would trigger events that would change the world and result in the United States rising to overpower its enemies amidst tremendous sacrifice.

I was not aware that in 1961, Elvis Presley performed a benefit concert in Pearl Harbor that raised over ten percent of the funds needed to complete the memorial, and I find it odd that many credible sources, including the National Park Service, list the final amount with variances up to ten thousand dollars.  We boarded a boat behind the theater and took a short ride across the harbor to the iconic memorial structure built over the USS Arizona, which now serves as a grave for nine-hundred servicemen entombed in the wreckage.  There are still 500,000 gallons of oil held in the hull of the Arizona, and it’s estimated that nine quarts a day leak out in droplets that rise to the surface of the water, an occurrence that will continue for five-hundred more years by many estimations.  I have always been fascinated with the oil leaking from the Arizona, perhaps because it’s a visible, physical link to a major event from the past, and I spent most of our brief time on the memorial staring at the water watching the inky black droplets rise and bloom into rainbow rings on the surface.  

Arizona turret

Oil rising to the surface

The memorial was well done and sobering, and we sat and talked about the events of that day over ice cream bars sitting in the shade back at the visitor center on shore.  The kids understood the magnitude of the attack, and due to the excellence of the memorial, we all had a better comprehension of the cost of freedom in a dark world.  I found a park ranger who was glad to administer the junior ranger oath to my children, and I was glad to see that they were actually proud to raise their right hands and repeat the words as they stood in a cool sea breeze on the shore of Pearl Harbor.