Chapter 14: Day 3: 7:11 PM continued

I wake up late in the afternoon and the room is dappled with light and shadow. I make no effort to get up. I have no place to be and where I am seems as good a place to think as any, perhaps even nap a little longer. But then I think of Fennie. She has not been walked since early this morning and she is not averse to leaving me messages I would have to clean up later if her walking schedule is not kept. I look around the room. Fenway, good girl that she is, is laying on the sofa directly opposite my chair making sure that some hobgoblin or some other evil spirit did not bother me while I slept. She is not alone. Sitting next to her is my mother or at least the early twenties version of her. Hair cut so it just touched her shoulders, wearing a white blouse with a princess collar, a navy cardigan and matching skirt. There is a single strand of pearls around her neck.

I am not completely surprised to see her. This is not her first visit with me during the last few months. They mainly occurred during activities that reminded me of her such as going to the supermarket I used to take her to on Saturday mornings or the hairdresser we both used to get our haircut. Or when I felt particularly alone. She rarely said anything. There was no need. Her presence was enough.

Today was different. She asked, “Did you like the book?”

I said, “I really did.” She looked at me the way she used to when I was young. The one she used when I would come home from school, and she would ask how school was. “Fine” was not an acceptable answer. She wanted details. What had I learned that day. Whom had I played with. Had I had any troubles during the day.  A full report. Not some dismissive thrown away line. Understanding her look, I continued “You know I love Verne. He writes with joy and a little snark. He beckons the sense of adventure in all young boys no matter how old they are. And he is a hopeless romantic, like me, so reading his book makes me feel as if I am reading a kindred spirit. Even the late nineteenth century style of writing, when the author is being paid by the word does not bother me because he uses glorious words, we don’t use any more like “pedant “and “savant.”

Mom smiled in the way teachers smile to encourage their students to go a little deeper. She asked, “What did you think of the book’s conclusion.”

“It was very romantic.”

“True. And?”

“I think he missed an opportunity?”

“How so?”

“At the end of the book Heather tells Oliver that they no longer need to search for the green ray. Her quest to find the ray, to ensure she finds love, is complete. She has found him, and her quest is complete.”

“And?”

“I don’t agree. Happiness is a constant struggle. Love, once found, needs to be nurtured and cared for. Joy and happiness are temporary states of being. If they weren’t we would never grow. And not to sound like a greeting card, or some television guru, everyone is on a constant journey to find happiness and to make sense of the world. Just because you have it now does not mean you will have it tomorrow. It is a never-ending journey. Not a destination. The obligation that we have to ourselves is to constantly search for our green rays, whatever it is. And if you find it, amen! But it shouldn’t stop because the sun has set on that day. There is always tomorrow’s green ray that needs to be found. And if you don’t see it, if you don’t experience it, that is okay too. Tomorrow gives you another opportunity. It is the struggle and the hope that makes the green ray special.

Mom smiles and says, “Top marks” and opens her arms beckoning me for a hug. As I attempt to extricate myself from the chair my book falls to the floor. I bend over to pick it up and when I look up, she is gone.

I feel the boat’s engines burble off. The boat is adrift, but Captain Kam has, with the skill of a sea goddess, positioned the boat so its stern is facing west. We are adrift. Waiting for the sun’s daily swan song. From where I sit, I can see on my right the black silhouette of the hills of the Kapalua peninsula jutting out into the inky blue of the Pacific.  To my left, the northern tip of Lanai and perfectly centered between the two, in a robin’s egg blue sky is the golden sun. The rest of my party has not joined me in the stern. I don’t know why. Maybe they are not interested in postcard perfect sunsets or seeing green flashes. Or maybe they just don’t know that the day is about to give way to the night. Captain Kam and Mo are also strangely absent. Perhaps they have seen too many sunsets for this one to matter or far more likely, knowing the captain, she feels her presence would be an intrusion.

None of my ghosts are here either. Mom, Dad, Desmond, Wen, Duke and Con and all the others have decided that, at the moment, their presence is not needed. I am alone and grateful for the quiet. The sun, now a brilliant yellow, with a tangerine halo, is a perfect circle just centimeters above the sea. The sky above it is an ombre of pumpkin to burnt sienna to apricot.

The last eighteen months have given the gift of time. Time to think unencumbered by the normal daily distractions of life. To evaluate where life’s journey has taken me and to contemplate which path I want to take next. As cruel and unforgiving as Covid has been it has also given me time with personal ghosts. Those spirits, that in other times, would haunt you in the middle of the night, and keep you from returning to your dreams. Most of those phantoms are no longer belligerents and are now allies. I no longer struggle with them but instead, when they visit, they help me in my battles for sanity and self.  The few I still wrestle with remind me that the journey continues, and I find peace in that too. 

A small gust of wind moves across the ocean’s surface, flattening it as if by an unseen hand. It disturbs a flock of seagulls who were resting in our wake, it brings with it the scent of the clean, crisp briny smell of the ocean and a hint of jasmine and hibiscus from the nearby shore. It is the smell of paradise, or at least this one. I wish that I could bottle it and take it with me. But as I can’t, I breathe it in, hoping that my memory will be an adequate repository for it.

The sun touches the sea. It is now a small globe so yellow it is almost white surrounded by a pyramid of saffron with a terracotta scarf that spans the horizon. It is descending rapidly now. It seems to have cast off Maui’s ropes as it urgently moves for the day to end. I appreciate its haste. How many times over the last sixteen months have I just prayed the day would end? Hoping against hope that when I woke on a new day that the nightmare of fear, disease and failed leadership will have evaporated in the night and been replaced by a world that more closely resembled the normal world that came before. But it never did.

Over time I have come to see it as a gift as had so many others. Instead of plodding along on the course we set ourselves on years ago we have been forced to question it. Confront the lives we are living and decide whether it is what we really want or is there a better way. While I welcome the night, and the rest that it brings, I know longer dread the days because the light of those days has made me who I am, and I am better than I was before.

The setting sun has shape shifted again. It is now a half dome with a core near white light surrounded by a saffron case. The sea is stained with golden highlights and there is a beam of shining gold that seems to start at our boat and run directly into the heart of our sinking star.

The halo changes. The sky above it is an ombre of pumpkin to burnt sienna to apricot. Slowly, by millimeters it descends into the sea. First a quarter, then a half, and finally just a fingernail of golden yellow. Then, without fanfare it dips beneath the waves and just as I think I will be disappointed once again, there is a brilliant flash of jade.

Kam is at my shoulder. She asks, “Did you see it?”

Without taking my eye of the horizon I reply, “I did.”

“And?”

“I am glad to have seen it.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“Honestly?”

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

“I was a little underwhelmed.”

“You didn’t think it was beautiful?”

“No. It was amazingly beautiful.”

“Then what?”

“I guess that part of it is that I have that looking for the green flash for so long to have it come and go in seconds and with as little fanfare as any other moment in any other day seems incongruous for me. I am not saying there should have been heavenly music and a bolt of energy pass through us leaving us physically and emotionally different, but it should have been more than what it was.”

Kam caught my gaze and gently said “You said that was part of it before I say anything, what is the other part?”

“Had this been even a few years ago, there were so many others I would have delighted in sharing this moment with…not the least of whom were Duke and Con. I wish they were around so I could share with them that I had finally seen the green flash and we could laugh and make jokes about it.”

“But…”

“Now that I have seen the flash, what is next?”

“Are you going to stop looking for it when you see the setting sun? Or are you going to say I wonder if there will be a green flash tonight and wait and see if you can see it again? Of course, you are going to look. It is like any other goal you have in life. When you reach it does not mean that is the end. It is really the beginning of what is next.”

“Then why I am I so sad?”

“Endings are sad until you decide that they are not.”

I look off to the west. The last light of day is an incandescent tangerine hovering at the horizon. I turn and face Kam and say “Perhaps, every once in a while, we have the time and the opportunity to look for the Green Flash. What a gift. If we see nothing but the last moments of the day that is great. We have taken that moment for ourselves. But even if we are lucky enough to see it nothing has changed. Every time I look at a setting sun into the sea, I will still wonder whether I will see the flash or not. I am not going to stop looking for them just because I have seen one. The quest does not end. The journey continues. No matter how many flashes we see or don’t see we will always look for it because that is our nature.

Kam smiles and says, “How great is that.”