Reflecting on Maui, 5 Years Later

Isaac and I just got back from a trip to Maui, and I have this sudden urge to use this blog space to reflect, even though I haven’t exactly been, um, consistent with the blog over the last couple years.

We have been back to Maui 3 or 4 times since we left in 2009, but this is the first time we've stayed so long—almost 3 weeks. Our previous stays of about 10 days were just not long enough as we frantically tried to get together with people and go to every spot we had missed over the last year. But on this trip we had enough time to see friends more than once, go on lots of walks with Isaac’s parents, do projects around their house, make plenty of meals, take things at a leisurely pace, put those roots back down a little.

While helping Isaac’s mom set up a blog, I started looking back at my own blog posts and got absorbed reading about my year on Maui. Though the catalogue of my emotional highs and lows in my 22-year-old voice is a little embarrassing, it was still fascinating to think about how much has changed—and perhaps how much hasn’t changed, too.

I have to confess my cheesiness and nostalgia: the word that keeps coming to mind to define that year is “magical.” I still can’t believe the hikes and adventures and fun and crazy things Jeanie and I did that year (I can’t believe we lived through some of them, for one thing, no joke!). It comes back to me in snatches—this is the beach we camped on where the mice ran all over us, that’s the turnoff in the cane field to the abandoned mill, that shop is where our shack used to be, that park is where we lay down to look at the stars. I experienced my first love and first heartbreak and started an initially rocky relationship with the one who’s now my best friend, partner, husband. I got to know God in a new way. I experienced so much life in such deep ways, as most people do at that age.

I’m like those people who sadly talk about how college was the best time of their lives.

But there’s a shadow to it. In March 2009, I wrote:

I’m feeling another shift in my relationship with Maui—I know it’s only been three months, but there’s already tension between a strong desire to move on to grad school and a strong love for this island lifestyle…. I know I couldn’t do what I’m doing now permanently, but I want an excuse to stay connected to Maui. It’s getting harder to imagine myself pulling out my baby roots. Then again, who knows? In three more months I might be ready to leave.

Those words were prophetic—that tension between love for Maui’s culture and the feeling of being stuck is still part of what defines the island for me. Maui worked itself into my blood, from the sound of palm trees crinkling in the wind (oh, so like Kenya) to the craving for a steamed pork manapua. And I have an excuse to stay connected—more than an excuse! Parents-in-law and a crazy extended family I can hardly keep track of, and a beautiful church family for whom Maui has always been home.

When we go back, I feel like I am stepping back to that magical experience only to find that I can't fit myself into it anymore. Isaac and I are both outsiders now, though in different ways, and “home,” whatever/wherever that is, is bittersweet. The lure to belong in Maui again is powerful, yet it’s easy to struggle with wanting to have more purpose, with the feeling that you just can’t move on.

Life has moved on, and thank God for how much we have grown, even after only 5 years. We are different people now. I want to be more content with being a “real grown-up” (aging too fast already, yikes!) with a job, settled in a small, unimportant city that we love, with far fewer crazy adventures, but with bigger purpose and awareness of people around me. I want to embrace everything about the present and be at peace with my relationship with Maui, a bit of magic that will always jab at me sweetly and sharply.