I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, and also because yesterday (and this morning) mark the five-year six-year anniversary—AND it’s a fuckin’ great story.
If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And don’t give away the ending.
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In the spring of 2010, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Loss can make a person lose their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.
Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tai’s, 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 and 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 said, stirring my drink with a hot pink plastic monkey. “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 guffawed as he flagged down a waiter in order to catch a buzz and grab a seat on the crazy clown car I was obviously driving.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving”, I argued back with conviction.
“I can’t take you seriously with that pink money in your hand.”
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 to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.
Still laughing he mumbled under his breath, “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, filled with the fragrance of jasmin and 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, it really felt like Paradise Lost.
That’s when it hit me like a bolt of lightning.
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’ve gotta tell ya, I 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 as a detour from the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active.
It was extraordinary! Everyone said so. Even the guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like this 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 that day. I hiked alone down the beach to a little cove that was billed by the locals as “swimming in a tropical fish tank,” There was nothing. Literally not one fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed because suddenly, there were no whales.
We made dinner in that night and by 9 pm I was just the right amount of sun-kissed, buzzed, full and sleepy. After my shower, I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol. 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: Huge Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.
I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, my bare feet sliding on the polished floors, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys! Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I yelled, grabbing 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 up 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 face of a local anchor at the 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, I saw his Adams apple quiver.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”
The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.
I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.
Then I saw him out of the corner of my eye. My husband flinched. It got my attention and when I looked his way our eyes met and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Remote in hand, he turned toward me slowly and deliberately. His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.
Then with no sound, eyes locked on mine, he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.
The shrill wail of a Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—a tsunami was imminent.
To Be Continued…
