Our Aloha Tree

Yesterday I pulled a Scarlet O'Hara and proclaimed that I couldn't think about my aloha Christmas tree today and that I would think about it tomorrow.

Well, today is tomorrow . . . so I guess I should make good on my word and think about it. 

But, GOSH DARNIT, thinking about it makes me sweat like a Kalua pig. Especially around the eyeball area. Nevertheless, I will tell you about my aloha tree. Today.

sniff

This past Christmas was our very first one away from our island home so we wanted our tree to be special, (in that sweet-spirit, nice-personality sorta way).

I was pretty much in LUB with Christmas in Hawaii. It was the most delightful time of year, jam-packed with research papers and grading deadlines, not to mention my annual elementary school Christmas program slide shows assignment. 

For us, Christmas meant rain and flooding and soccer finals and Jack Johnson and Tennis tournaments and History Day competitions. 

It was that special time of year when I got to sabotage the neighborhood cookie exchange and passively resist my x-door neighbor, Martha's peer pressure to put up the Christmas lights before the neighborhood potluck. 

And of course there was always the annual baptism by soft scrub ritual on my house to prepare for 45 days of in-laws.

It honestly was the most wonderful time of the year so we knew we needed to put up a meaningful tree to pay homage--a tree with purpose. I usually don't care about meaning or purpose but when you live with one foot here and one foot there, (and the pacific ocean in between), the most seemingly insignificant things--like tiny grains of leftover sand on your folding soccer chairs--are like chicken soup for the soul.

Moving makes you weird that way because you had this life--this full, rich, bee-U-tiful life. And you live this life over and over, again and again, day in and out and in and out, year after year after year after year. Then one day you up and move on and start another full, rich, bee-U-tiful life and pretty soon you begin to suspect that your first life may have been just a full, rich, bee-U-tiful dream.

That makes you all kinds of crazy.

You get me?

I mean, to just stand there and watch your children's childhood slip away like water through a net . . . 

and there ain't nothin' you can do about it . . .

 except log onto Facebook and chat with their best friends . . . 

it's beyond all descriptive adverbs and adjectives.

Needless to say, our aloha tree was the proof we needed to remind us that we really did exist on an island far, far away, not so long, long ago.

We began by tying all of our aloha oe' leis together and wrapping them around the tree like a great big garland hug.

These leis were given to us with much love and aloha on our last Sunday in Hawaii by our dear, dear ward members and friends.

Next we filled glass balls with sand from our aquarium--Pupukea beach sand, which was our therapy beach because the sand magically sucks all he tension out of your body through your feet.

Then we hung all the shells I collected over the years from Melekahana beach during our early morning walks. 

Plus some of the incredible shells I found on a beach in New Zealand between Rotorua and Aukland while traveling with the History Dept. at BYU-H.

It was all very sweet and sentimental. But then one morning, we heard a crash.

As if to say, "this life is over, deal with it!" our tree came tumbling down and all of our memories were smashed and scattered across the floor.

sniff 

Wait! Don't feel sorry for me yet, peeps.  It didn't happen just once.  It happened TWICE! 

I stomped my feet and shook my fists at the tree-tipping gods, but then I went to work putting our memories back together and restoring them to their proper place on our aloha tree. 

TWICE!

(And, for the record, I would have done it again and again because those memories are MINE and no one, not even those Murphy lawyers or those gravity lawyers can take them from me!)

But that was yesterday . . . 

And I can't think that today.