Page 1 of Big Island Sunrise
1
Lani
“Welcome to Hilo, folks.” The pilot’s voice crackled over the speakers. “The local time is 3:27pm, and the temperature is seventy-five degrees fahrenheit.”
While other passengers crowded the aisle, Lani stared out at the Big Island’s lush greenery and pearl-gray skies. Tears of relief coursed down her face, mirroring the droplets of water that ran down the outside of the airplane window.
She’d finally made it. She’d escaped.
She was home.
Lani dried her tears and looked down at her daughter.
Rory was curled up with her head in her mama’s lap, sound asleep. The four year old had made it through a predawn departure, two layovers, and two of three flights with her eyes wide open. Finally, on the short flight from Kahului to Hilo, she had fallen asleep.
Lani gently shook her daughter’s shoulder to try and wake her, but Rory just muttered something and curled into a tighter ball. So Lani squeezed past her and pulled their carry-on down from the overhead bin, then slung her backpack over her shoulders before picking up her little girl.
Her first breath of island air smelled like home. The warm breeze moved over her skin like a balm.
All around her, tourists were wilting and panting in the mild heat.
She just breathed deeper, relishing the moisture in the air. It ran gently through her body, soaking into her every cell.
“Leilani!” Her family was waiting for her at the curb, eyes filled with tears at the joy of seeing her again. Auntie Mahina looked so much like her mom that it made her heart ache.
With Lani’s mother and Uncle John both gone, Mahina was the only Kealoha sibling left standing. She was the matriarch and the axis of her extended family. All those years away, and she still pulled Lani back into the spinning circle of their‘ohanalike no time had passed.
Alongside her relief, Lani felt a rush of shame that she had stayed away for so long, far from all of these people who loved her and welcomed her back with open arms.
“Look at you!” Mahina exclaimed. “Look at thisbaby, she’s beautiful!”
Half awake, Rory clung to her mama and stared wide-eyed at the aunties she had only ever seen through a screen. She buried her face in Lani’s shoulder as their family enveloped them with hugs and caresses.
As the love of her family washed over her, grief mixed with gratitude and released a flood of tears that she couldn’t hold back. They flowed silently down her cheeks and into her daughter’s hair.
Here in the warmth of Hawai’i, Alaska felt so far away. Like someone else’s story.
There, she had filled her house with potted plants and artificial lights to get through the maddening darkness of winter.
Here, the tropical plants that she had kept indoors grew wild. As they drove south from the airport, she stared out the window at houseplants the size of houses.
It felt like she was traveling back through time to early childhood. By the time she was a teenager, all of the marvels of this place seemed ordinary. Now, after years spent off island, the greenery and tropical air felt miraculous again.
“Mama, I need to pee.” Rory was strapped into a borrowed car seat between Lani and her cousin. She wiggled and rubbed her eyes, still fighting sleep.
Lani bit her lip and frowned. “I’m sorry, baby. I should have asked before we got in the car.”
“We’ve got another half hour to go,” Mahina said from the driver’s seat.
“It’s a pee-mergency,” Rory said in an urgent whisper.
“Take the next exit,” said Mahina’s daughter, ‘Olena. “There’s a bathroom at the park.”
“Thank you,” Lani said. “Sorry, I should know better.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” ‘Olena was beautiful, with thick black hair and glass-brown eyes. She had always been bigger than Lani, tall and strong.
With an ancestry that was more Portuguese and Japanese than Hawaiian, Lani had always felt out of place around her cousins. She felt slightly out of place wherever she went, truth be told. Ethnically ambiguous, her father had called it, always with that wry smile he had. She was rarely glaringly out of place, but she never quite fit in either.
