North Shore

It seems like far too long ago now that I spent a week visiting my buddy in Hawaii. He was stationed in Pearl City for the Army for quite a few years and I was finally able to afford a plane ticket during my junior year in college.

My buddy is a country boy – and his giant truck seemed at least three times the size of my tiny little rental car. I drove that little thing up and down every road I could find on that island. In true form for me, I hopped from beach to beach, afraid I would miss the vast expanse of sky and ocean if I stayed for too long in one place.

But there was one beach that kept me coming back, day after day. Each afternoon, my buddy would call me when he got off of work to ask where I was. And each afternoon, I had eventually settled into contentedness at the same beach. “Elizabeth, are you kidding me?!” he’d say. “That’s THE furthest place from my house on this whole island!”

I would sit and bathe in the gentle tropical sun, periodically dipping in the waves to feel the rushing reminder of the ocean while watching the surfers far off. I had brought with me a plethora of books I had hoped to read with all of my free time – all cheesy romance novels. Once I had had my share of people watching and wave chasing, I would mosy back to my beach towel. I had the perfect routine down pat by the end of the week – put on my reading sunglasses, reapply sun-block, open back to the same page of the trashy novel that I was on for seven days, lay on my stomach, and promptly fall asleep mid-sentence. I would be rattled into a confused state of awake by the ring of my phone. I’d wipe away the little bit of mid-afternoon-beach-nap drool from the corner of my mouth, looking around in hopes no one was watching.

Then I would rinse and repeat.