A New Year

I arrived on Kaua’i January 1, 2020, and rolled my purple carry-on straight to the beach, after catching a hotel shuttle to Kalapaki. The sea! It had been months since I immersed, and longer since I’d surfed. My swimsuit was in the outside pocket, and I changed under my clothes. Boots off, socks off, body into water. Oh, the relief! I am washed clean of grief, at least temporarily.

Later, I leave the Uggs and socks under a palm tree, slip on sandals, and hitchhike to the westside. In between rides, I call Coco, a woman with a short-term rental studio near Pakalas, a surf spot within walking distance of her ranch. “Yes,” she says, “it is available at three o’clock.” Perfect. I am salinated for the first time in too long, I am hitchhiking for the first time in my life, I am looking at the actual island, not a guidebook, and I am not scared, because this is a new day, a new year, a new life. Exactly what I need. Exactly what I want. I am listening for the next direction, one by one.

Kaua’i began calling me in Florida, where I had moved in an effort to reconcile with my mother. “Are you kidding?” I replied, “Puerto Rico is closer, and has surfing too.” But Hurricane Dorian shoved me west across the continent, and when I finally rested at the edge, I bought a one-way, non-stop ticket to the Garden Island. She just wouldn’t shut up.

I had survived the worst Xmas ever, seventeen days of hateful comments from the woman who birthed me. Why did I stay? Why did I stay when I was a teenager? Why did I keep going back?

Because I remembered the mother who lullabied me to sleep well into puberty. The camping mom, showing me the wonder of the universe. The tap-dancing mama teaching me a “Tea for Two” routine. The candle-and-jewelry-making madre. The midnight mass mum. The horse-drawn-caravan-for-two-weeks-in-Ireland ma. The storytelling maman who could make me laugh until I peed. She was still in there, occasionaly glimpsed.

But this time her twisted behavior knocked the rose-colored glasses clean off my head. I saw clearly that I could not help her. Not only that, she didn’t want my help. We had been enmeshed for so long, leaving was like severing a limb. I was expert at intuiting her moods, and anticipating her needs. But what do I need? What makes me happy? And the more I listened, the more I could hear: the ocean, solitude, writing.

I first heard whales underwater while swimming off the coast of Kaua’i. The sound so energized me that I swam straight for shore and ran out of the water laughing, dancing in circles. Is it true? Is it them? I dashed back in to listen again. Yes! I floated in their song a long time. Emerged with a peace I had never felt before.

Now in México, I hear them through Habibi’s hull, and some nights their lullabies twine with my mother’s as the sea rocks me to sleep. Grief melts away under the stars.