Sarah, thank you for this.
– Watching the Princess Bride on Showtime five thousand times while I read and re-read Jane Eyre and sipped at various punch concoctions I practiced with the cooking shows. I was eight.
– Sneaking into the pool with other families because I was too young to get in by myself.
– Walking down Copp Rd. to the liquor store to buy rice candy and blackcurrant Koala Springs. Walking back home and stopping for a rest in some high grass, the beautiful Filipino postal worker stops her little white Jeep and hands me a plumeria.
– Eating guava at camp with the other children, on a cliff on Keanae Peninsula overlooking the Pacific. There was a sea-spout near the cliffs that blew with every wave.
– Marching back to our bunks after midnight prayers, smelling of OFF and dampness from the constant rains.
– Sleeping outside in makeshift forts and tents with my little brother, showing him the constellations. Also, napping with my baby sisters in the sunshine.
– Biking to get my summer haircut the day after school let out. My mom always let me take the change and spend it at Woolworth’s.
– Long, sunny afternoons by myself outside, reading Little Men in my favourite tree.
– Jumping off the bridge in Hana Bay.
– Fireworks at Lake Gregory, every year without fail. Later, my junior year, , and Jenny and Kristen and E. and all of us were parked at Lake Arrowhead listening to Steve Miller band and waiting for the fireworks to start. We hiked to one corner of the lake and sprawled under the pines in a great heap of bare legs and jeans and watched the fireworks.
– Pioneer days in Crestline
– Playing in the streams at Iao Valley, naked with my siblings. Swinging from vines into the water. Trying to rub the bellies of every single Buddha we encountered, missing the ones that were too high to reach.
– Eating sushi for the first time at one of the construction sites my dad was working at, sitting bare-legged on the shell of the second-story and looking out over the island, while teaching the little boy next to me how to eat with chopsticks. The absolute butchering of my English with pidgin Hawaiian that had my mother aghast when I returned home.