The Noisy Hawaiian Fishermen

Sometimes, not very often nowadays, but sometimes people ask me what it was like to live in Hawaii.

I lived in Hawaii (Maui to be exact) for 18 months while I was in 6th and 7th grade, but I think Maui was a part of my life way before that.

You see, my Grandpa worked for American Airlines and back in the day it was easier to fly stand by, and we used to fly stand by to Maui almost every year from the time I was little.

My mother would probably tell you that it was never easy to fly stand by, I was just little, so everything was an adventure to me.

Eventually, my grandparents bought a condo on Maui in Kahana and that's where we would stay whenever we went to the island.

My grandparents condo was located on the end of this condo/hotel complex. The opposite end from the swimming pool, which is just unjust to a child who feels like it takes forever to trek down the stairs and across the property to get to the pool.
Especially when I would forget to wear my zori's (flipflops) and would try and run from the shade of one palm tree to the next to make it to the pool.

In my little world, I owned that condo/hotel complex and everyone else was just visitors from the mainland. I was sure no one else knew all the nooks and crannies of that place. No one else knew the names of the secretaries in the main office, how to get to the roof (eventually they figured out that a few of us "locals" knew how to get to the roof and one summer they built a gate with a lock going up to the roof-so unfair), and which elevator buttons would stick. It was like a Hawaiian version of Eloise at the Plaza Hotel, only I was at the Kahana Reef.

Anyway, when my grandparents retired, they moved to their condo on Maui and a few years later, my mom married my step-dad and we followed suit and moved to Maui too. (My parents and I lived on the opposite side of the island, which I think was a ploy by my step dad to at least keep some distance between him and his new mother-in-law).

There are so many things that I remember about Maui and feel some sort of kinship or tie to, that I could probably spend the whole month of November blogging about the island, but I won't.

However, I will become nostalgic for a bit and describe one aspect that speaks to what Maui really is.

And no, it's not the Maui Car story. That's for the next day.

For this to make sense, I should specify that the Kahana Reef was right on the beach, so one could conceivably drink their coffee while sitting on the white sand and watching the waves roll in.

Next to the Kahana Reef, on the side where my grandparents lived, was a little grass shack and a very noisy family of Hawaiians.

To this day, I have no idea how big that family was.

Here was my routine when I would stay with my grandparents.

Each night, my grandparents would pull out their sofa bed which was located right next to the lanai (patio) that faced the beach. They would kiss me goodnight, I would open the patio door and lay down on the sofa bed to let the ocean breeze wash over me and listen to the waves. I would peek out to see the moonlight on the ocean. I would watch the gekkos crawl across my grandparents living room wall (it's okay-they look like lizards, but they are cuter and eat mosquitos). I never felt safer and more at peace than I did in those moments. I could hear the family of noisy Hawaiians next door "talking story" around the fire pit they had built. I would fall asleep to the sound of waves and distant laughter.

Each morning, right at sunrise, I would be awakened by the noisy Hawaiians.

You see, this family made their living as fishermen. Which meant fishing at sunrise.
Every once in awhile they would take a break and not go fishing, but it was pretty much a given that those noisy Hawaiians would be talking up a storm, piling in their little boats with their nets, and rowing out to sea to go catch some fish.

They were the most mysterious people in the world to me.

Sometimes I would get up and go sit on the beach and watch them row out to sea.

Most of the time I would groan and roll over and hope they got out to sea quick enough for me to fall back asleep.

I would pull myself together enough to exchange my jammies for a bathing suit and go walk on the beach in the mornings. I would always walk slowly by the grass shack, trying to see what it looked like on the inside. Trying to catch a glimpse at one of those Hawaiians. If I was lucky enough, I would get to wave at some small child in the family, and they would wave back.

It's been a decade since I've been to Maui. It's been way longer than that since we, and then my grandparents moved off the island. When I went back ten years ago, I actually stayed at the Kahana Reef. One story up from my grandparents old condo.

The little grass shack wasn't there. It's been replaced by some other hotel. I felt like crying when I realized it was gone. I had no ownership of the hotel or the little grass shack, but I still felt as if someone had bulldozed over part of my childhood without asking me if it was okay.

I hope wherever that family went to, they're still fishing at sunrise.