Memories Are the Best Things We Have

Hand in hand, jumping over sidewalk cracks and crunching leaves on the long, weekly walk to the library. Big boy ‘work’ time in the café together—one writing down words and the other absorbed in a Nook. Night night kisses—one on each cheek counted with our few Italian words—uno, due. Hiking over and under fallen trees to the top of Giggle Hill, crawling carefully through the owie barbed wire fence, high-fiving safely on the other side, lying on a cushy picnic blanket and gazing up at tall trees that sway and crackle in the island breeze while munching on fresh pineapple and upcountry strawberries, baking a fancy cake full of organic coconut and fresh lime for the ‘rents… perfetto (one of the other Italian words we know). Memories with Jaden are some of the best treasures that I will take from Maui.

Sometimes we are ready to go when it is time to go. Sometimes we are never ready. Sometimes we are only apart geographically and see the same moon in the night sky. Sometimes the ones we love pass from this earth. We remember small details that seemed so insignificant in the moments they happened, a word, a glance, a sideways smile. These small things find their way back home to our remembering… and we are together again.

So much has happened on this tiny island in these few months. Jaden and I shared many firsts for him, some will be remembered, some forgotten in his young mind, but yet they will remain as a knowing in his heart, and in mine, of who we are to each other. We share a love of hiking and the outdoors, playing hide and seek among the forest trees, climbing and jumping off old logs. Loving trail cycling as I do I couldn’t help but buy him his first tricycle. He’ll be tearing down singletracks in no time. (Scottish Highlands, here we come!)

‘Hot sand on toes, cold sand in sleeping bags. I’ve come to know that memories are the best things we have.’ ~Ben Howard

Sometimes we get to choose whom we love and sometimes life chooses for us. My daughter has this great thing she does where she writes short-term bucket lists and actively creates memories she wants to take with her and share with the ones she loves. It is good to think about what experiences and memories we want to create with those we have loved for a long time or have come suddenly to love through circumstances that have bound us together, and not leave it all up to happenstance.

Life in the here and now—sometimes it’s just plain painful and sometimes it’s painfully perfect… both experiences pass through in their own time. Although island life is not a permanent choice for me at this time, I have created a life here with my family and it has come to rest in the painfully perfect category; I sometimes wish it could last just like this forever. But it was not meant to. Life moves us all forward and go we must. The going part comes, and then the coming back together part comes once again, sometimes soon and sometimes longer than we feel we can bear. When one’s life is rich with treasured memories and experiences, it seems they find their way home as small mercies when needed the most.

I have just had a birthday spent camping on the shores of Hana and many memories have become treasures in my heart, from getting no sleep the entire weekend (but tons of writing on one of my books) due to the couple who not only smoked but inhaled and stayed up ’til dawn laughing their arses off, and the people who chose to set up camp next to my tent in the middle of the following night in spite of a dozen empty sites, to the bliss of a long hike in the forest (Jaden made it the entire way), Jaden hanging out in my tent after sunset talking, munching on snacks and laughing ’til our stomachs hurt, fresh strawberry papaya for breakfast and cafe-quality cappuccinos on the edge of the ocean with a trusty Bialetti and stovetop frother. Memories… this songwriter knows what he’s talking about.