Well the first days are the hardest days, don’t you worry any more
‘Cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door
Think this through with me, let me know your mind
Woah-oh, what I want to know, is are you kind.

Uncle John’s Band, The Grateful Dead.

I am lying on my bed at the Ritz Carlton reading. .

They have upgraded my room  to “Luxury Fire Lanai Ocean View “ from the standard garden view guest room I had reserved. There is no explanation for the switch, my “BonVoy” status was another victim of Covid. I suspect Liam may be behind it. He knows that this trip is stretching my finances and he has a soft spot for his uncle. Whatever the reason I am grateful. Not because it is a bigger room. It isn’t. But I do have a view of the ocean and a fire pit and can easily imagine sitting there at night, fire crackling in the pit, glass full of bourbon in hand staring out at the Pacific hoping to catch a pod of whales breaching.

I am an inveterate reader. The type of person that always has a couple of books going at one time and another couple on his nightstand or in this day and age my Kindle ap waiting to be started.  Thank God for the Audible, Kindle and Apple books app on  my phone and iPad during the pandemic. I don’t know if I could have managed the last seventeen months of the pandemic without a constant source of new reading material. Being transported into the universes of an author’s imagination allowed me to forget that for most of this time I have been alone. “Travels with Charlie” by John Steinbeck was one of my favorites. Not only is Steinbeck’s prose brilliant but took me on an adventure of rediscovering the country after the authors felt he had lost his connection to it. Something I could relate to acutely. Not only because of my isolation but because the country under Trump and his acolytes no longer resembles the country in which I was raised.

The point is that is no surprise I am reading. Nor that I am doing it from my bed as opposed to the by the pool or on the beach. I am tired and right now I am very content with being hugged by my down comforter and enjoying the view of the Pacific in air-conditioned comfort. .

It is not even a huge surprise what I am reading. One of the habits I developed over years of nearly constant travel is to always have a book about my destination handy. It didn’t matter whether it was nonfiction or fiction. Reading a story about a place or learning a bit of its history allowed me to connect to it in new ways. more deeply. I especially like reading mythology probably because it is a wonderful cocktail of fact and storytelling. Which is why I chose: Hawaiian Legends: The Legends and Myths of the Hawaii: The Fables and Folklore of a Strange People by King David Kalakaua.

He is an engaging writer despite the fact his style is rooted in the middle 19^th century. He reads like Dickens might had he been born in Maui not London. What has been surprising to me are the effort  Kalakaua takes  to connect ancient Hawaiians to biblical times. As proof he points out that the origin humans in the Hawaiian mythology, Ku and Hina, were created from dust and had life “blown into them” just like Adam and Eve. Hawaiians circumcise their males as do Jews and Muslims. . He says it is supported by anthropological research pointing to the physical similarities between semitic and Polynesians peoples.

I think King David Kalakaua is trying too hard to make a connection. Perhaps it has something to do with his name although I suspect it has more to do with the missionaries who flocked to the islands in the early part of the 19^th century. No doubt they helped the natives “see the light” by equating their myths to those in the bible. Adoption and inclusion of native culture into Christian mythology has been a hallmark of evangelism since Peter.

The person I would love to talk to about this is my dad. He was an intellectual, a scientist and a professor. He loved breaking down theories down to their basic premises and then examining those microscopically to see if you could find a flaw. A colleague of his once described as a man who upon seeing a herd of white sheep would proclaim “lets drive around to see them from a different angle to make sure they are not black on the other side.”  We have had these types of conversations a lot over the years as he and I were eager travel companions. I remember arguing with him in Israel about whether or not the rock, in the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock, was the actual place Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed. In Alaska we talked about how the indigenous people arrived in the new world. Was it a “land bridge” or by sea? In his native Vienna we discussed the barbarian hordes. Sadly when we were in Hawaii together, we never discussed this. We talked about other things.  

I cannot have this conversation with Dad now because he has been gone for five years. Even after all this time it is hard for me to say he is dead. This is not because I can’t accept his passing. I can. I was holding his hand when he left. Watching someone transition from this world’s existence to whatever may lay beyond creates a kind of post traumatic shock that is hard to shake. It provides a finality but experiencing the razors edge difference where life can exist one second and then be gone the next makes you think, or perhaps hope, that the difference between the two states is perception. What are my symptoms of my PTSD?.  Most of the time it is just ghost memories, like his love of mythology and hotels that have “enough” towels.  But on occasion, especially since my days of Covid isolation, they have taken on more corporeal manifestations. They are no less maddening, hurtful, nostalgic, painful or scary. They are just more real and leave a more indelible mark on my state of mind. Instead of conversations there are monologues with most of the talking taking place on my side.

It occurs to me as much as unimpressed with Hawaii when we visited the last time there is no doubt that he would have liked this room. Dad judged hotels by their showers and the quantity and quality of their towels. The Ritz would have gotten the Dabuk seal approval.  Not only does it have six programmable shower heads with various levels of massage, but water temperature is also set by thermostat not successive approximation. My shower had been a sybaritic delight. After eighteen hours of travel among the unvaccinated I had felt the need to clean down to the molecular level. As I lay down on the California King bed with its snow white down comforter I think “Pretty good Dad..” And I can almost hear him mocking me with “Lets see if it is still this good tomorrow.”

The ghost of my father reminds me to call my mother. My friend Des once called me a “Mamas” boy which when he saw the look of horror on my face, he quickly added reassuringly “So am I.” I am really not though. Mom does not really control my life. Well not much. For years, or at least since Dad went away,  I have been her primary care giver. I am the one who takes her to the store, the Dr, to visit family and friends. She lives alone and with little to serve as distraction she tends to worry about all nature of things from Donald Trump to whether her printer is running of ink. I assuage her fears when I can. Letting her know that I have reached the hotel successfully is a worry I can take off her plate. Okay. It also makes me feel loved to know that my well-being is an integral part of hers.

I look at my watch. It’s almost 4pm here so it is nearly 10pm back east and if I don’t call her now, I know she won’t be able to go to sleep. I touch her speed dial on my phone and after a pause of a couple seconds her phone begins to ring. And ring. And ring. Eventually, I realize she is not going to answer. This doesn’t worry me too much. It has happened a lot recently. It just means she is doing something else.

I hang up and a wave of fatigue sweeps over me like a band of rain in thunderstorm. I place my glasses on the night table, tuck a pillow under my neck and close my eyes. I fall asleep without even thinking about it.