This week has been a whirlwind after returning from Hawaii in the middle of the night last Sunday and ankle surgery last Tuesday. Plus, the Blazers are in the playoffs for the first time in 5 years. Yeeehaw!
We made the trip to Maui as part of a combined family vacation and visit with my Uncle Daveyboy who's been deep in a battle with prostate and bone cancer since the Holidays. Good news...after facing near defeat in January, he bounced back with the help of chemo therapy. Advantage Daveyboy. Besides an occasional stomach pain and sporadic insomnia, his day-to-day life has returned to a stable state and as he proudly notes "I eat like a horse". I'm not sure if he means sheer caloric quantity or the bales of leafy Mr. Ed veggies (or both), but he looks great thanks to waves of support from family, friends, angels and caregivers.
We also overlapped with The Goob (aka my Pop) visiting his Bradah Daveyboy. The day after arriving, our families spent an afternoon at the uncrowded, wind-protected yet thorn-ridden Malealekelaala (sp?) Beach. It was surreal to watch The Goob and Uncle Daveyboy cradling little Buddy with a beach backdrop and deep azure ocean. Then, out of nowhere, Daveyboy whipped out his Bible and questioned our knowledge of John 3:15 to which Bunny point-blank fired off a concise recitation. We duly noted that Buddy is the only begotten son of Bubby, who is the only begotten son of The Goob.
"Best ye be begettin' before ye get forgotten" - Bubby Reno, 2009.
Bunny christened River (aka Buddy Rio) with a new nickname on Maui: Wubby. An all-too-appropriate name as the tropical weather revealed layers of "wub" as he turned two (months) on Hawaii. Wubby also figured out how to sleep 9 hours at night during the trip. With that kind of sleep, anywhere feels like vacation to newborn parents. But, it certainly helped to have Heavenly Hana smoothies and fresh Ono grilled fish salads just outside our doorstep.
We stayed down the road from Uncle Daveyboy's farm, in the quaint little bustling beach town, Paia. Bunny remembered the charm and good vibe of Paia from our last visit to Maui in 2002 when a 1-month-conceived Lilly Star was going through rapid cell division inside Bunny's belly. Maybe that's why Lilly's a natural Pacific Islander: swims like a fish, gracefully hulas with wavy hands, tans effortlessly, and prefers barefeet. Upon her return, Lilly found the Aloha immediately at the Nalu Kai Lodge. Our low-key 1960s retro accommodation was easiest to enter directly through the middle of the town's primo gelato shoppe.
Most mornings, we'd wake up really slow and then connect with our Maui family (my Uncle, Aunt and cousins plus Bunny's cousin Kate who lives with her daughter, Zoe Paloma, at the other end of the island), but we also had a neighborly coincidence one sunny morning at the Lodge tiki bar.
First Bunny whispers, "Don't look now, but I think that guy in the hammock is our neighbor from across the street back in Portland." Bunny notes familiar faces nearly everywhere she goes, but she's certain that this guy (Ambrosio) is our neighbor, so I encourage her to confirm our destiny.
Meanwhile, Ambrosio's fiance (Melise) is laying on the cordovan watching us watch her groom and thinking, "That little girl looks familiar."
As it turns out, Ambrosio and Melise were living across from our house for the past two years and remembered Lilly Star as the sweet pixie who would always offer raspberry greetings to her neigbors. Somehow, we all ended up at the same 9-unit Hawaiian lodge at the same time, so we celebrated with a big tiki Surf & Turf BBQ family dinner to honor both Daveyboy and our new friends/former neighbors. After marrying on Maui, these lovely newlyweds are off to a honeymoon on the Big Island and new residence in Bavaria. Ausgezeichnet!
My Uncle calls these strange, reassuring coincidences Maui Magic. Believe it baby!
Aloha!
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