As we grow older, the horizon begins to fade away

As I mentioned before, many people now ask where we live, not where we're from. It's still a cool feeling, I'll admit. But we do, of course, meet other vacationers and we make small talk, like on Wednesday nights when we hit the local mall to watch the free musicians/hula dancers. We met the father of a young family from Port Moody BC, who is going through all the same stresses and life experiences that we have gone through in the past five years, and our conversation with him is the inspiration for this entry.

While the small talk ensues (with whomever we might be chatting), they are nodding, anticipating our answer to the standard small talk question of "How long are you here"; and we say 6 months, they do a rather exaggerated double-take. The subsequent facial reactions to our reasons for doing it range the spectrum from incredulous, doubtful staring to a knowing, admiring smile. It's the people that do the latter, that get it.

The "get-it" refers to those who know that this decision had very little to do with sitting and relaxing on a beach drinking rum (not to say that we don't do that). And now, with 6 weeks into this excursion, I can't say that I haven't thought about money issues and possible loss of position in my career. The plummeting Canadian dollar, world market freefalls and recent layoffs in my old company made me do a more subtle double-take. But a few minutes later, I shook my head and remembered the purpose to doing this...

To reconnect with my partner, my children and myself.

Anyone who has a job, kids, spouse, friends knows that the minutiae of life often gets in the way of that feeling of connectedness. Those profound times that you remember you had when you were younger, greener, when there was so much to learn; moments that one just doesn't seem to have so often anymore. So, at the risk of sounding flaky, either to our friends or strangers, the re-discovery of those connections is the reason we did this.

I'm not putting myself out there as some sort of model for the way to live life. I know I've mucked up situations in my life many times, and I may very well be doing that again now. However, if by talking about our reasons behind our very small adventures, it inspires even this one person in a Wailea mall to make a profound change in their life, then I'd be pretty damn happy. And the world would be a happier place for it, too. Some of you know that the title of this post quotes a local, by the name of Jack Johnson. When I first heard this song, we had already made our decision to do this, but listening to the lyrics in that song cements it to this day.

I'm 99% sure that the money and position-in-life issues will be looked after - somehow. And it's not like we've simply thrown our future to the fates. As many of you know, we're rather pragmatic, anal-retentive, planners by nature. We did and continue to do things to help this adventure happen. And at the end of the day, for the people that had that incredulous, doubtful stare - I think it's those things that they're curious about. For them, maybe I'll write another blog or book or something on that part - the nuts and bolts of taking your young, average, middle-class family on a mini-retirement. The mini-retirement being somewhere between the annual-trip-to-somewhere-warm-with-a-pool and vagabonding. It's attainable; it takes a bit of planning, some room on a line of credit and a willingness to take a chance.

To quote another song, please don't let me be misunderstood. I know that there's a whole lot of folks who are in absolutely no position to do this. I'm not so egobound that I don't recognize that, and I am most thankful for the good fortune in my life. But for the middle class folks that I meet here or at home, it is possible. Possible to reconnect with that same feeling we had when we were young, or that we normally reserve for 2 weeks out of a year. And then, when we go home, we won't let the horizon fade away.

Childcare - anyone? Please???

A friend recently teased me because I said Hawai'i like Hawai (stop) ee. The matter of fact is that the glottal stop is one of the main rules in the language. And me, being the perfectionist that I am (and right now, particularly in tune with languages) am trying to pronounce Hawaiian words the correct way. There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian language, 5 vowels and 7 consonants. Like Spanish, Hawaiian vowels are always pronounced the same way and separately. You don't blend them like in english (e.g. weather). And the apostrophe denotes a glottal stop, like when we say "uh-oh". I don't sound like kama'aina, but I'm trying...


This past week has been rather quiet. Once I got sunned, salted and sanded after my trip back to Vancouver, I was all healed and ready to take on the next four months. It's so funny, after going back to Vancouver, I felt like I'd been away for so long (it had been a little less than 4 weeks), but my return to Maui felt like the real start to this min-retirement, knowing that I have four months now until I return.


My dad arrived on Tuesday after his long trip from YVR to LAX to OGG. He was alright, I was pretty impressed. We have taken him around to our favourite spots, Big Beach (where we couldn't swim with either him or the kids, due to awesome huge waves), Pa'ia & Ho-okipa (where my dad asked me in front of many tourists if I ever surf there - I love him for that), Lahaina & down to the lava fields south of Makena. The trip to Lahaina was quite funny, we got all dressed up for Halloween, the three adults were pirates and the girls were fairies. We did fit right in at the biggest Halloween party on Maui (and possibly Hawai'i). The highlight of Neil's night was seeing a supermodel dressed as some sort of sexy bunny and mine was a man dressed in a leather penis holder. Nothing else, just a leather penis holder. Not really sure what he was trying to be, but hey, how often do you get to see a man wearing a leather penis holder???


The week has been pretty quiet, I think my dad is quite amazed that we pretty much don't do much except go to the beach and drink. But without childcare, we can't really do too much. After one month, Neil and I are feeling this very strong need to "escape" our children. Please, don't get us wrong, we love our children more than anything. But we're really tired of them. And just between us adults, I think they're tired of us too. Okay, correction, we're not tired of them, we just need a little break for some couple-time. You know, nothing fancy, a walk, a coffee, some surfing or boogie boarding. Ooooooh, or how about getting drunk together at the local pub and stumbling home, or a morning hike in the crater, or scrabbling on all fours along black lava to a massive blowhole or a really long road trip where you drive with coffee's in your hands, snack whenever you want on whatever you want and pull over to take a hike inland to a really cool waterfall... Okay, for all you non-parents out there, you're thinking "just do it and bring them!" But for all the parents out there, we know you feel our pain. There's just so many awesome things to do here and our kids are just a little too little to do them all with us. We don't want them to get hurt or even worse, whine at us...


But - it's only 4 more weeks till Neil's parents come and I think we've told them (and any other house guest) that the only charge for this hotel is that you have to take on a bit of childcare. They're awesome and we know we'll have some alone time when they come. But in the meantime, our surfboards will have to collect a little more sand instead of salt, unless we can find someone else to look after these rugrats.


So, the moral of this story is this and I'm not sure how many parents will tell you this. Kids are a loud, highly irritating encumbrance. But I'd take that pain over any fleeting moment of drunkeness, gorgeous vistas or adrenaline. The End.