Unlike every other morning in Hawaii, our last day dawns completely – almost eerily – still. Save for the chirping of birds that are invisible to my eye, there is no sound: no wind, no manmade noises.
The plate of cat food I’d put out last night – intended for the diminished, injured tabby whose ribs are clearly outlined, who has visited us a few nights in a row – is licked clean. Whether by him or another cat, who knows, and it doesn’t matter but I bought several cans in hopes that the next people to sleep in these beds, to lay on these lanais listening to the absence of wind, will be so moved by his meows as to want to feed him. I know I cannot save him, can barely do anything at all, I know he has survived until now without random me in his path, but I will remember him, as I remember and think of the injured dog I once met in a hot springs in Sicily, or the dying one I gave water to in the alley behind my aunt’s house one visit.
There are tiny, almost invisible ants here that dash over the sparkling quartz of the kitchen counters. One runs up my arm and it is as if a ghost has come calling.
The sky lightens further. A single pink hibiscus – my child, who has learned to go underwater on this trip, calls it a hibiscuit – trembles, sensing movement in the air that I cannot, yet. An air conditioner next door kicks on, the sound rumbling and so large that the birds’ chirps are suddenly contested. Is it my imagination that they increase their volume in response?
In the ocean yesterday, I finally saw the appeal of snorkeling, due largely to a mask that fit; in the past, water has sneaked in, making it impossible to relax. But yesterday was intoxicating and I will take it with me: the underwater distance to the rippled sand; the schools of tiny silver fish that flashed momentarily turquoise when they turned; the silence that fully enveloped me as soon as my head broke the surface. From the shore, snorkeling tourists look silly; becoming one of them, I felt honored to glimpse a world that is not mine.
Another air conditioner, more birds.
Yesterday, driving, we found ourselves in a cooler part of the island, and stumbled onto a road lined with these otherworldly plants, bushes whose flowers were shaped like pineapples. Hundreds, thousands, of those plants, going on and on. It felt like the same magic that existed years ago in the place where I now have spent a decade of my life, when I came across a million butterflies taking flight all at once.
Nature, sounds, discovery, delight. Silence. All of it is everywhere, if we pay close enough attention, if we listen, if we watch. If we are willing to be amazed.
The palm fronds begin to strum against themselves, and I hear my child inside. The day begins.
