tsunami

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another talent.
Glass eater.
Fart lighter.
Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God for small favors.

Anyway…the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified.

Ginger was feeling sick and went bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. It felt like gallows humor, like the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background.

Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way.

Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott. (You can hear it on my 3/11 Instagram)

A voice cleared its throat.

A young man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night”. His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. I was thinking Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out.

Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterwards I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens, rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surf board or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? Was the sixth floor high enough? What was going to happen?

I turned off the TV. The dark room fell silent and instantly I felt a drop in my anxiety level. You can get sucked into the endless loop of death and destruction—it’s addictive, like a drug.

I unhooked the CNN IV, grabbed my phone, inserted my ear buds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. My jaw throbbed. I’d been unconsciously clenching it for hours.

My mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear I decided to calmly ask a question.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? You mean I get a vote?  This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary.

Somehow, instinctively I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Thailand, you can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it. To the palm trees only, NOT into the pool and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I no longer remember.
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean…Do NOT get near the water…We are on lockdown…stay inside your rooms…

It must be happening crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…echoed in my mind.

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool, and our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen for a year!

Why the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God (Scott) for small favors.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, headed directly toward the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Of course it was coming in the middle of the night! Fucking three a.m!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified.

Ginger was feeling sick and went bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable.

I went back to our room, shivering with anxiety under the blankets, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background.

Right around midnight they got the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way.

Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared it’s throat.

An extremely nervous young man’s voice, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night”. His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination he was the pimply faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had.

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out.

Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterwards I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surf board or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high up would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I turned off the TV, the room was dark and quiet and instantly I felt a drop in my anxiety level. You can get sucked into the endless loop of death and destruction—its like a drug.

I unhooked the CNN IV, grabbed my phone, inserted my ear buds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

My mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually relaxed into a half sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary.

Somehow, instinctively I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me, to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Thailand, you can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it. To the palm trees only, not into the pool and not into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water, We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool, and our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

IMG_0914 (check it out)

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to tell it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, and also because its come up a lot lately—and besides, it’s a fuckin’ great story.(*Also because as of tonight 9/16/15 there is another tsunami watch in the Hawaiian Islands after a large earthquake in Chile).

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010 I went to Hawaii with my friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after Atik (my store) died.

Oh who am I kidding. We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel. I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”
All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible videos from the tsunami in Thailand.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up Hawaiian tsunami.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he was reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never; and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink for a toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

“But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story”.

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone; you don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanos to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami.” I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami.” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up.

Damn I love my husband. He cohabitates with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills.
He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is…the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Neither of us had any idea and I for one breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breeching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. It was extraordinary. The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one.

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly,no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip. I’m still not sure why.
We made dinner in that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later it felt like 911 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was: turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the anchor’s face for the local Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening”, he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, “Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was again filled with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine; he mouthed my prophesy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

IMG_0910 (watch this)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen for a year!

Why the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God (Scott) for small favors.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, headed directly toward the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Of course it was coming in the middle of the night! Fucking three a.m!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified.

Ginger was feeling sick and went bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable.

I went back to our room, shivering with anxiety under the blankets, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background.

Right around midnight they got the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way.

Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared it’s throat.

An extremely nervous young man’s voice, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night”. His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination he was the pimply faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had.

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out.

Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions,”Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel.” he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterwards I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surf board or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high up would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I turned off the TV, the room was dark and quiet and instantly I felt a drop in my anxiety level. You can get sucked into the endless loop of death and destruction—its like a drug.

I unhooked the CNN IV, grabbed my phone, inserted my ear buds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

My mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually relaxed into a half sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary.

Somehow, instinctively I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me, to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Thailand, you can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it. To the palm trees only, not into the pool and not into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water, We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool, and our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

IMG_0914 (check it out)

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to tell it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, and also because its come up a lot lately—and besides, it’s a fuckin’ great story.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010 I went to Hawaii with my friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after Atik (my store) died.

Oh who am I kidding. We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel. I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”
All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible videos from the tsunami in Thailand.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up Hawaiian tsunami.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he was reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never; and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink for a toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

“But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story”.

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone; you don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanos to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami.” I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami.” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up.

Damn I love my husband. He cohabitates with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills.
He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is…the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Neither of us had any idea and I for one breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup. There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance) that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breeching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. It was extraordinary. The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that a one.

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt. The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly,no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip. I’m still not sure why.
We made dinner in that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later it felt like 911 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was: turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the anchor’s face for the local Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening”, he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, “Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was again filled with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine; he mouthed my prophesy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

IMG_0910 (watch this)