Sometimes Hawaii feels very much like Guam.
Coming out of the air-conditioned grocery store into the humid parking garage air just after 1am, I can't tell the difference; halfway I expect to see a sign pointing to Hagatna as I leave. Actually I can't think of a compelling reason why it matters whether I am here or there anyway.
Nearly thirty years ago I visited my father in Hawaii. He was temporarily exhiled back into the "proper" United States, a passing, if not uncomfortable, moment suspended between more permanant residencies in Guam and the Philippines. He stayed in a small white house in a quiet neighborhood. There are four things I remember about it- the color, the fact that he shared it with a roommate, the fact that there was pornography lying around, and the fact that his roommate had recently been pinched by the IRS for something like $13,000 in back taxes.
He took me once to a skatepark under a bridge, likely the Makiki park which is about 300 yards from my house where I now sit typing this. Life is truly a comedy. To think how funny it would be to walk up to him then and say "That boy will live here in 30 years"! Much could be added. "A few blocks from here his girlfriend who isnt even born yet will have acid dumped over her by a homeless crackhead and be horrifically injured". It is very likely that he took me to the Ala Moana mall where it happened, although I don't remember for sure.
Often on some side street I find myself looking at the houses and wondering if one of them is where he stayed. In the grocery store I imagine him buying mayonaise. In the dim light of a massage parlor, I imaging him forking over cash to the tired Chinese lady. I wonder if he walked here and there, or if he rode in a car or motorcycle. Those details were not impressed upon me. It's strange how we can do things and things can happen to us and the memories of those events be totally and completely lost to us, as if we were never there. Stranger still that somebody else may actually remember us from that moment. Maybe somebody remembers a daddy and little boy at the skatepark, who was too timid to try. The whores my father visited then are probably in their seventies now.
The first thing I remember from Guam is walking out of the air-conditioned airport into the humid night air just after 1am, and my fathers glasses fogged up, and the hopeful excitement on my mothers face.
