jumpingfish

Lihue is not a big city. Indeed, it’s not a city at all but just a town, albeit the largest on the island. So there was no delay catching the rental shuttle and renting a car and driving from the airport to our condo in Kapaa.

When we got to the room, day was almost done.

We walked down to the steep, sandy beach. Kapaa looks east, so the sun had already sunk behind the mountains. There was no orange globe descending into the distant water. That would have to wait for another day. But the trade winds were blowing out of the east. Coconut trees were swaying in the breeze. Tiki lamps were burning on the lawn. Waves were crashing on the beach.

We took off our shoes and waded in the surf.

The air was warm yet cool. We had twelve days ahead of us. It felt like infinity.

Wait.

When I spoke disparagingly about our seats on the flight from Honolulu to Kauai, I omitted one important point.

Yes, for most of the 30 minutes, our view out the left window offered nothing but ocean and whitecaps all the way to Tahiti. But as we turned for Lihue, the plane flew nose first into the trade winds blowing out of the east. And as we made that turn, it was the folks on the right who had the oceanside view. Ours was of the mountains. 

Green forests climbed up the slopes, disappearing into mist and dark clouds. And the clouds in the heights were dark. It was raining up there.

The late afternoon sun was behind us. And on our final approach for the airport, a rainbow appeared, reaching from the mountains down to the sea.

Welcome to Hawaii.

It was difficult to say goodbye. And it was humbling.

When I told them, some folks got a serious look on their face as if to imply, Oh what are we going to do? Some folks gasped. Others offered congratulations. They all were supportive and happy for me (at least as far as I could tell), and that made saying goodbye easier.

The hard part was answering the questions, What are you going to do? and When do you start?

The what question was hard since the new job will be C#/.net, which means that I’m going over to the dark side. The mitigating factors here are that the people and the work really seem great, and the developers do their Windows development in a virtual machine on MacBook Pros. I’ve been telling folks that this is a compromise I can live with.

The when question was hard since we were going to Hawaii. Truth be told, this was a vacation that we have planned for a long time. Indeed, it was supposed to be our fifth anniversary trip five years ago. Still, telling folks you’re going on a vacation to Hawaii the day after you quit is difficult to do: not only is he leaving, but he is running away.

I said those goodbyes in late March and early April. I sent out a suite of farewell emails. I archived all my data and tried to summarize the various loose ends and balls-in-the-air that my successors will inherit.

Then Trudy and I boarded a plane bound for the topics. In a way, we couldn’t have planned it better.

1. Tonite

“Trudy, you have to come see this,” I said, coming in from the backyard.

“Is it about the compost?” she asked.

“No,” I said and walked back outside.

“Wow,” she said, looking at the clear sky. “The stars are bright.”

2. Last Fall

Back in the fall, just as it was starting to get cool at night, Trudy and I sat on the bench in the front yard looking east with Venus setting behind us. Jupiter was rising.

We gazed at Jupiter and looked at the Galilean satellites with binoculars. I kept turning my head to the west to look at Venus, too. What an amazing light show, one in the west going down, one in the east coming up.

That was months ago. In the meantime, Jupiter has been catching up to Venus.

3. Last Week

I had just worked out at the gym. The sun had gone down a while before. Now it was mostly night.

Venus was shining bright above fading dim red memory of sunset. Jupiter was higher in the sky. The Moon was next. And now I turned to the east to see reddish Mars rising.

And I turned back to the west to find Mercury.

The reddish/pink of day’s end was still too bright, and there was nothing to see from the horizon up to Venus. So I stood out there and searched, not knowing quite where to look.

I walked around the parking lot, thinking that the glow of the streetlights might have been the problem. But there was nothing to see, no stars and certainly no Mercury.

I started walking to my car but stopped short. I turned back and headed out into a field beyond the parking lot. A man walking into the gym eyed me nervously. I smiled as we passed and kept walking.

And then I looked up and it was there: Mercury clearly visible just above the last hints of sunset.

Mercury and then Venus shining brightly and then Jupiter and then the Moon and then Mars. The plane of the ecliptic etched across the heavens above me.

4. Tonite Once More

We are standing in the backyard in the dark. Orion is directly overhead.

“Wow. The stars are bright,” Trudy says.

“Look over there,” I say.

I point to the west. And there they are, shining brightly side by side over the roof of the house: Venus to the right, Jupiter to the left and just a little bit behind.

I confess, I tend to be a cynic about celestial events, finding that the hype often eclipses the event. But this conjunction is something else. It really is quite amazing what is going on these days just after sunset.

Go out and see it if you can.

“Do you remember when your father died?”

“Yes,” my father said, looking up with wide eyes. “That was two days before my master’s results came in. He never got to see them.”

“That was May 1950,” he added. “My father was very old. In his 80s at least, perhaps more.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“My mother lived a long time after that,” he said. “She died after I came back from Saudi Arabia. That was in 1986.”

He was quiet again.

“Her father was very old. When I was in high school, he was still alive.”

Now my father’s eyes got wide again, and he held his hand in the air.

“Her father was very old … perhaps 100!”

And now he was quiet again.

“Yes … ages were long on both sides of my family.”