Christina and I had a discussion during our time together here in Hawaii about the general abuse of the word, “need.” We both agreed that one can almost always replace the word “need” with “want” any time it’s heard in another’s expressions.
What needs, we asked ourselves, do we truly have beyond air, water, food, shelter, and human compassion? We found it difficult to define any.
As my time in Hawaii passed at such a heavenly slow pace, it occurred to me during a moment of happy contemplation that there is one time when I feel comfortable using the word, “need.” When used in the past tense to describe a kind of unexpected fulfilment of something one hadn't even thought to ask for, it’s hard to construe it as anything but an expression of gratitude.
This thought came me to as I was realizing how much my depleted and perhaps even wounded soul was being so deeply nurtured by both this extended stay in this tropical paradise and, most importantly, by the celebration of life and living that is at the center of my friendship with Christina.
“Boy, did I ever need this,” I couldn’t help but think.
I met Christina just over a year and a half ago when she was the massage therapist who gave me two incredible massages during the week Cyndi and I spent in Maui during our three week trip to the Hawaiian Islands. The pivotal reason Christina and I were spending time together during the race’s stopover, however, was that she also gave Cyndi two great massages.
One full year later, after Cyndi and I had amicably parted ways, Cyndi sent me an e-mail about her search for a massage therapist in her new location. “Someone like that woman in Maui would be ideal,” she wrote. “She was the best massage therapist I’ve ever had in my life.”
Prompted by the coincidence (“There are no coincidences,” Christina keeps telling me) of having come across Christina’s business card only two days earlier while sorting out the clutter in an long neglected pile of papers on my desk, I thought that goodness deserves to be acknowledged. So I dug up that business card again and forwarded Cyndi's e-mail to Christina, adding my equally enthusiastic affirmation.
Coincidentally (“There are no coincidences,” Christina keeps telling me), these thoughts arrived at a pivotal time in her life and made far more of a difference to her that I could have ever imagined. A correspondence began, slow and simple at first but deepening in nature as time passed. In only a matter of a few months plans were made to try to meet again when the Clipper race docked at Oahu, around 100 miles from her home in Maui.
Once our proximity to Hawaii allowed me to give her our actual arrival date, she purchased a ticket to fly to Honolulu on the day that would follow our arrival.
As I stood waiting for her in baggage claim at the Honolulu airport, I pondered how I really didn’t know what she like beyond vague memories from 19 months before. As I thought about this, out of the corner of my eye I only had a brief chance to glimpse the image of an approaching blur of bare arms and blonde hair before those arms were wrapped tightly around me and that hair was pressed against my face.
“This must be Christina,” I joked to myself and allowed my spirit to drop fully into the emotions of finding so much relief in a moment I’d been taking so much comfort from in advance. I’d been long pondering this moment while cold, wet, tired, discouraged and so many other states of mind during the challenges our crew had been through in the preceding months.
As I’ve written, Christina and I had planned an unavoidably intense time of togetherness crammed into the three days she cleared on her calendar, and with no choice but to spend that time on Oahu, an island that interested neither of us. When the ten day delay was announced, we flew back to Maui where she could return to work and we had the freedom to spend time together at a much more leisurely pace; a few hours on some days, an afternoon or an evening on others, and a full day on a few occasions. The coincidence ("There are no coincidences,” Christina keeps telling me) of the boat maintenance issue occurring here in Hawaii suited us both so perfectly.
I stayed on an organic farm with a few cottages for rent just a mile down the road from her home. Each morning I was blessed with the view of the sun rising over my toes on the ocean just down the hill from where I slept. I took to running every other day and would savor that achy feeling of my legs being used for the first time in such a long, long time.
Christina loaned me a guidebook which listed many of the waterfalls and pools to be found in any part of Maui but of course her knowledge of the local area exceeded any written record. We’d hike to and swim in pools of a surprisingly comfortable temperature beneath dramatic falls and bath in the joy of two people who both felt that the other not only got it (i.e., life) but got each other as well.
On days when she’d have no free time, I’d drive over to the opposite side of the island where the beginner waves were to be found and rent a surfboard for the day. Sometimes I’d take her guidebook and head off to find something that caught my interest. I spent 12 hours one day circling the larger part of the island, stopping to swim in this pool, climb to that waterfall, visit Charles Lindberg’s grave just past the town of Hana or, a mile or two past that, stop at a fruit smoothie stand in the middle of nowhere that had customers generate the electricity needed to run the blender by riding on a bike with an alternator connected to the back wheel.
Another day I drove back to Hana to hire a motorglider and pilot for a one hour flight (that ended up being 90 minutes, we were having so much fun) to enjoy the island from above. It was also the first time I’d flown anything since the last time I was at Quest Airpark in Florida over two years ago.
I shared my flying history with the pilot and, once clear of the helicopter routes continuously circling the island, he gave me the controls and didn’t take them back until just before we landed. As we taxied back to the apron, he volunteered, “You know, now that I think about it, I'm relatively certain that the only person who’s flown my airplane more than you have is me.”
I had to fly back to Oahu on Monday, March 31st to be ready to join in with the final pre-race boat preparation on April 1st. Two days before then, Christina rearranged her schedule to give us a completely free Saturday to explore and enjoy. We spent the morning snorkeling and were rewarded with some beautiful views and even a very leisurely encounter with a turtle who, after allowing us such close proximity for a minute or two, dropped down to 30 feet and took a nap underneath a coral shelf.
A bit chilled from so much time in the water, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on one of her favorite beaches nearby.
We laid on the sand; her on a towel, all aglow with grace, elegant femininity, golden hair full of sunlight and lightly tanned skin, me dripping wet from a few swims, laying directly on the sand and looking more like a piece of chicken that had been dipped in batter and breadcrumbs and was ready to fry. I noticed a fair number of the people around us were uniformly concentrating on a point out in the water. “You can see many whales here,” she explained. I looked out and in only a moment later I saw the dorsal fin of two humpback whales a few hundred yards out from the shore, which seemed amazingly close. As we both gazed out on the water, a humpback fully breached, looking exactly as the image below, which I’ve pulled off the internet from a whale watching site.
Christina answered my slack jawed expression by informing me, “You can hear them if you go in the water.”
“Right here?” I asked, incredulous. “Right here off the beach?”
“Right here,” she answered.
I immediately got up and waded out into the water. Once past the breaking surf, I swam a bit further out then took a long breath and dropped to a few feet below the surface. Once I stabilized myself there, I heard what sounded like five or six whales and they sounded as if only just out of sight. I heard squeaks, rattles, whines, growls…all right there just out of my reach but so intimately in my own ears.
Awed and amazed, I eventually swam back to the shore and dropped to my hands next to Christina to lay beside her, forgetting once again that if I had dropped on my elbows instead, my hands would have remain sand free. Now, with my sandy hands, every time I scratched my face or rubbed my nose I deposited another streak of sand onto my wet skin. If Christina (sand-free and the image of natural beauty as she reclined on her towel) was amused by my lack of...of...something (can't think of a name of what I lacked), she graciously did not show it.
My first morning in Maui, Christina drove over with a serving of the fruit smoothie she'd made herself for breakfast in a wineglass she'd held in one hand while driving over the mile to the farm and my cottage, skillfully avoiding any spillage on the rut-filled dirt road.
Later that day as we explored the organic farm, she picked up a flower from the ground, had me smell it (much like an iris but more subtle), and told me it was a palmeria. It looked like perhaps what leis are made of. Later that evening after we'd had a great and full day together, I said goodbye to her in the gravel parking lot of the farm and walked back to my room in the darkness. Once I climbed the steps, opened the door, and turned on the light, I saw that she had taken the wine glass in which she'd given me the smoothie and had washed it, then floated the palmeria flower in it.
Each time thereafter when we'd meet at my place, the introduction I was treated to on every occasion was the slow, almost ponderous sound of someone ascending the wooden steps to my room. Her face would emerge first and, like the unfolding beauty of a sunrise, her body would rise into view, always with either a palmeria or some other flower she'd found when walking the short distance from her car.
It became an association of happiness to me, this rising image of her body and spirit in the window by my door, bearing natural gifts.
Most days, then, I had fresh flowers in my room, offering the space in which I lived a lingering fragrance that would remind me of the time we were sharing, the peaceful feelings, the love, the goodness of life, and so much more.
What a coincidence it was, then, that at the just time I needed something as graceful and beautiful as this experience in such an enchanted land with such a dear friend, events conspired to delay our departure by 10 days and make all of the above possible.
“There are no coincidences,” Christina keeps telling me.
I completely agree.
Once I flew back to Oahu on March 31st to join in with the pre-race preparations, it was amazing how many people told me they'd never seen me so something or another. Some said happy. Some said glowing. Some said other things along those lines. All attributed it to my having spent those days with Christina on Maui.
Well...yes...spending time with someone so delightful certainly has got to put a spark in one's step but that's not the point. I'd ponder trying to explain positive energy or the peace one finds in truly being understood. I'd contemplate trying to talk about loving and being loved in a sense most simply cannot fathom. In the end, however, I'd just smile and thank them for their own positive energy.
Christina was, is, and will always be such a blessing, no doubt, but the true source of all this goodness is to be found from within ourselves.
At this point in my circumnavigation of the globe, I needed that lesson so desperately.
