No doubt you’ve been following the scenes of disaster from Maui… How could you miss them? They’re all over the news.
And there but for the Grace of God…and a handy divorce court…go I.
DXH loved to travel. Every vacation, nothing would do but what we had to jump on a plane and fly someplace.
Personally, I was less of an enthusiast, having spent my entire childhood and early teens traipsing around the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. But whatEVER.
We had discovered Maui before my son was born, around the time we made our first trip to the Hawaiian Islands. We stayed in a high-rise condo on the beach, where condo owners (from what I could tell) rented out their apartments to tourists. It was gorgeous. And a lot of fun.
So a few years later…he wants to go back. At this point, our son is about three or four years old. And I’m none too enthused about spending two weeks in a hotel with an energetic kidlet.
Solution: we took my step-niece along to babysit! By that time, my widowed father had remarried, producing a fine stepsister (a Superior Court judge) for me, and she had a teen-aged daughter, very sweet, smart, and responsible.
It appears that our hangout is right where all those fires are raging, or very close too it. We roamed all over Lahaina. If we were there again now (and yea verily, it is August, the month most Phoenicians try to leave town!), we would be in the middle of all that.
Far worse, though, would be to live there. Hundreds and maybe thousands of people apparently have lost their homes and their livelihoods. Even those who have escaped that kind of loss are living through a horror show.
Well, it can only be hoped that somehow this disaster will be brought under control. It certainly is a terrible thing to contemplate, to say nothing of having to live through it.