Page 11 of Big Island Neighbors
“That’s wonderful.”
“I have to get going.” She stood and brushed the dirt from her dress. “Or I won’t have time to make the soup.”
“Let me carry this to your car,” Emma offered. She hefted the oversized pot and just barely managed to squeeze it through one of the doors and onto the back seat. “I’ll get the gate.”
Mrs. Rasmussen nodded in acknowledgement and climbed into her car. Emma opened the long gate to the driveway and stood aside, then closed and latched it after Mrs. Rasmussen drove out. Then she stretched her shoulders and walked slowly back to her own gate.
She and Kai had hardly left this property since they had arrived, and for a while she’d relished the ability to retreat so completely while still being out on the land under the warm Hawaiian sun. But as the tasks of garden maintenance and animal husbandry faded from a fresh challenge into everyday chores, she found herself scanning the horizon for her next task.
Back in Redwood Grove, before her husband died, she had been so fully immersed in small-town life that she had been surrounded by other people all of the time. There werehomeschool meetups, farmers markets, knitting classes, fire station fundraisers… even walking down the hill to the grocery store was a social outing.
In her grief, she had pulled back from all of that. And when she and Kai first came to the Big Island, she had thought that they would only stay a short while before returning to their life in California. But the island had saved them from the worst of their grief. She felt closer to Adam here, in the place where he had grown up, than she did in their too-empty home in Redwood Grove.
So she had decided to stay. She’d reconnected with Adam’s cousin Lani and thrown herself into managing the land that Adam’s father had left to Kai.
And now she was ready for something more, some kind of involvement in the wider community that would give her a sense of purpose and connection.
She didn’t know what that would look like yet, but she felt sure that she would figure it out.
4
Lani
The truck’s engine coughed and sputtered as Lani turned towards the coast, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled into an empty parking spot.
She had inherited the old pickup truck from her uncle, and in the short time she’d owned it, she’d already replaced a broken belt and two other parts. The rest was held together with rust, electrical tape, and hope.
“I want to swim.” Rory wrestled with the buckles of her booster seat. The moment she was free, she pushed open the door and climbed down from the truck.
“Let’s see what Auntie ‘Olena had planned for–”
“I want to swim!” She sprinted across the lawn and practically leapt over the low lava rock wall that separated the grassy picnic area from the sandy lagoon.
Glancing at her daughter every four seconds, Lani pulled their food and water and towels out of the truck. She walked overto the picnic tables that ‘Olena had claimed, noting how busy the beach park was for a weekday morning.
“Are these kids all here for the co-op?” Lani asked her cousin.
‘Olena nodded. “We had three more families join last week, and two new families today.”
“Wow.” She looked out over the kids that were milling around on the lawn. Most were chasing each other in circles, climbing trees, or clinging tearfully to their parents. A few were already in the water; at least two had jumped in without putting their bathing suits on first.
Lani had learned her lesson on that one. On days that they headed to thekeikibeach, Rory went straight from pajamas to her swimsuit.
“We’ll have to split them into two groups,” ‘Olena said. “Georgia and I will do art and science with the big kids while you and the other parents watch the littles. Then after lunch, the big kids can play in the water while we do art with the three, four, and fives.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Get these shirts on everybody before the park gets busy. With this many kids in the water, we need to make it easier to keep track.”
She handed Lani a cardboard box filled with lime-green swim shirts. Each one was emblazoned with the wordsPualena Playschool.
“Those are for the littles,” ‘Olena added. “I have orange shirts for the big kids.”
Lani picked up the box and walked around handing shirts out to the parents. She left it to them to wrestle their kids into the neon-colored things. When every family had what they needed, she called Rory in from the water and put an oversized shirt on her too.
The box was still half full when she carried it back to the picnic tables. ‘Olena wasn’t done growing her homeschool co-op, but Lani wasn’t sure how many more kids they could reasonably watch at the beach park every day. Especially on rainy days, when they all crowded around the picnic tables under the tall metal roofs that shaded them.
“One of our parents couldn’t make it today,” ‘Olena said, “so I called Tenn in for backup. I hope you don’t mind?”
