Because It’s Home

Some twelve yars ago, my sister and brother in law, my brother, and myself vacationed together on the island of Kaua‘i. Karen and Michael had been before and made the arrangements for lodging, and invited Matt and me to join them for a week.

I had last been to Hawai‘i more than fifteen years previously—a couple of days of liberty on Oah‘u when my ship made port call in Pearl Harbor—so I had few expectations. The company would be good, I knew, and that was good enough for me. Karen and Michael flew in an hour or two ahead of Matt and me, and Matt and I flew together.

On this trip, the Kaua‘i airport in Lihue didn’t have jetways; instead passengers debarked right onto the taxiway. As I stepped off the gangway onto the macadam, the very moment my foot hit the asphalt (not even the rich red clay characteristic of much of the island, but ordinary asphalt), I had an experience both mystical and ineffable.

It was as if I’d been doused in cool, refreshing water, from head to heel. Muscles I hadn’even known were tense unknotted, my pulse rate dropped five beats per minute, and I had an overwhelming sense that I was, finally, home.

A place I’d never been, home? A strange, in important ways foreign place, more “home” than the place I grew up and lived and worked most of my life?

It didn’t make any sense at all. And yet...

And yet, the sensation was unmistakable. The feeling was undeniable.

That didn’t stop me from questioning it, from doubting it, from attempting to deny it.

I am (or at least, I imagine myself to be) a rational man. I value skepticism. I question everything, doubt most things, and view the world not with a confident eye but a wondering (not “wandering”) one. This experience was transrational; it didn’t fit within the bounds of reason. It didn’t make sense, and so I couldn’t take it at face value. I filed it and went on vacation...

And everything, everything, reinforced the sense of that first transcendent moment: from the lush beauty of the landscape and its people through the value-driven local culture to the people themselves and their spirit of aloha, everything seemed at once both familiar and intriguingly mysterious, and everything tugged at my heart strings, laying claim to my allegiance.

Before the week was half over, I was ready to jump. I bought a book titled So You Want to Live in Hawaii and pored over it. I researched teaching jobs. I asked every local what I could do to make it easier. I was converted.

Everywhere I turned, I found receptive hearts ready to receive me. The guy who handled the poolside hut told me that if I would come and teach, I would stay with him “for a year, maybe two.” Locals encouraged me (actually, us; all four of us fell in love with Hawai‘i and together we plotted our lives in Paradise) and suggested ways to adjust, adapt, and assimilate.

At the end of that fist week, it was with heavy heart that I crutched onto the plane for the return flight (and the crutches are another story). I didn’t want to go, but I had “promises to keep.”

When I got back to the Mainland, I took stock of my life—family, friends, students, a well-paying job that I loved, respect and purposes—and weighed it against the risks and uncertainties of following my new dream to Hawai‘i. It was a titanic battle, but in the end the comfortable, familiar, safe life I already had defeated (just barely) the adventure I craved. I decided that Hawai‘i would be my retirement plan and set about living the life that was in front of me.

Yet every time I visited Hawai‘i—something I did almost every year—the same sensations, emotions, and desires recurred. Whether it was Kaua‘i (which swiftly became “home base”), Maui, or The Big Island, I always felt more at home there than I did at home. I began joking that I lived in Hawai‘i one week a year, and took a fifty-one week working vacation on the Mainland.

Those “working vacations” were good, by the way; what with my awesome family, my amazing theatre family, my fantastic friends, my beloved students, and a job that (mostly) just got better and better, I loved my “working vacations.” Nevertheless, every year it got harder and harder to board the plane and leave “home.”

Then in February of this year, one of the elements that made staying on the Mainland seem wiser than moving to Hawai‘i changed. My job, which I loved and found immensely personally rewarding (despite sometines significant frustrations and setbacks) became radically different.

I don’t want to go into detail; suffice to say, while I still love what I do and love those I do it with and for and respect many of my colleagues, I no longer loved where I did it. On the contrary, just going to work became dreadful. It became clear it was time for a change.

After a couple of weeks, my brother in law sent me a link to the Hawai‘i teacher recruitment page. In the email he wrote just one sentence: “Maybe it’s time.” That started the gears turning.

Maybe it’s time to roll the dice. Maybe it’s time to suit myself. Maybe it’s time to go for broke. Maybe it’s time to go home.

That’s my long answer to yesterday’s interviewer, who asked, “All your professional experience is in California, so why Hawai‘i?”

“Why Hawai‘i? Because it’s home.”