A Status Update

Chris and I were on the beach last week. The weather was gorgeous. My best friend was visiting from NC and was in her chair next to me. The waves were crashing in front of us and my toes were buried in the sand. I looked at Chris and said, “our life is fucking awesome.”

View from our “hometown beach”, as we call it, looking to Honolulu, Waikiki, and Diamond Head.

So if you’re wondering how we’re doing, I think that pretty much answers it. I never intended to be away from this space for so long, but overall we’re doing great. We’re settling in and continue to try to enjoy everything this place has to offer.

Life is still life and it has its frustrations of course. But I will never tire of hearing people say how happy we look/sound/appear to be. Because after so many years of struggling to be happy and wondering why we weren’t, you don’t take that for granted. We are really, REALLY happy.

But like I said, it’s not without its struggles. I wrote a blog post back in November that I never published because it just felt too raw and personal. In the few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I was struggling. I had too much free time on my hands and wasn’t working yet. And with all that space to think came the grief.

Because it’s inescapable to me, and I’ve talked about it before, that we are able to live this life because we didn’t have kids. Could we still have moved here even if we had kids? Sure. But I feel 99.9% confident in saying that we wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have wanted to take such a risk or take our kids away from our families and I feel pretty confident that we would have built a life in North Carolina. So enjoying our life here automatically includes acknowledging the life we don’t have.

I told lots of people that our house in Durham was an anchor. It was a constant reminder of what we had wanted and what we didn’t have. What I didn’t expect was that Hawaii, in its own way, is also a reminder. It’s a reminder of how different our life is from what we had planned.

I have never done well with too much free time. I was a huge band nerd in high school and college (Chris and I met in the band at Clemson) and I always sank into a depression in December after marching band season was over because all of a sudden I had a lot of free time and nothing to do with it. That was pretty much the situation I found myself in around November and I started to feel its effects. Now that I’m working (more on that in a second) and don’t have quite as much free time on my hands, I’m much happier and feel better equipped to enjoy all the amazing parts of the life we have now while still keeping space for my grief over the life we thought we would have.

So what have we been doing? Here’s a run-down:

We had a lovely Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving Day with our landlords/friends/owners of the studio we lived in. We had a great time with them and a couple of their friends, and we also got to Zoom with both of our families. The day after Thanksgiving we spent on the beach and then I cooked a big Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us. It was a challenge since we only had a stovetop in the studio and not an oven, but it was an awesome meal and we loved it.

Our Thanksgiving dinner: Seared Ahi with sriracha sauce, Sage & thyme carrots, stuffing, mac& cheese, hard cider gravy, and mashed potatoes. And Hawaiian rolls, because how could we not?

I’m working! I’ve been appointed as associate counsel on a federal capital case in Hawaii. It’s pretty much the perfect gig since I get to work whenever and however much I want. I am loving the work and the ability to step back and work on a case without internalizing all the stress.
We moved into our house before closing and paid rent to the sellers for ten days before we closed on December 22nd. It’s absolutely perfect and I can’t wait to share it with you. We spent a long first week here with no couch and no chairs except very hard metal chairs so the delivery of our new couch and office chairs was a cause for celebration.

We had a lovely Christmas as well. I made a special meal just for the two of us on Christmas Eve and we had all our gifts under our Christmas palm tree. The Elves found us to bring us our pajamas on Christmas Eve (I had been very worried about this), and our families both made us feel incredibly loved by sending gifts for us to open and making time for us on Zoom. There were hard moments as well, during both Thanksgiving and Christmas, since these were our first holidays we’ve spent away from both of our families. But overall we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The owners of the studio, who are now just our friends, came over to our new house on Christmas night for dinner and we had a great time with them.

Amily, my BFF since our first day of law school, came out to visit and arrived from Raleigh after 21 hours of traveling on December 27th. We had an amazing five days with her here and have already basically planned her return trip, which we will generously allow her husband to come on as well. It was so hard saying goodbye to her, but I am so freaking grateful that she made it a priority to get here to see us. And, although my sister is pissed that Amily was officially our first visitor, it was right that she was.

What Hawaiian vacation is complete without a (socially distanced) luau??

On New Year’s Eve, I sent Chris car shopping by himself and he came back with a new toy. It is a TANK and I am still getting used to it, but Chris is beside himself and I can’t think of a better car for this adventure. He took the top off at the first opportunity, even though winter is rainy season in Hawaii. We’ve been rained on several times already, but it’s worth it.

My sister Lillie and brother in law Patrick will be here January 22nd and we cannot wait. And it’s possible we have another several guests lined up after that. Luckily Hawaii’s Covid numbers have remained very low, especially compared to the rest of the country.

Okay, I think that’s enough of a brain dump for tonight. I promise promise promise I am going to be better about being here more often. I’m not going to commit to a number, but I’m hoping to post twice a week. I have so much to share and I am so scared of forgetting some of this. We feel so incredibly grateful for where we are and what we’ve been able to do that I want to make sure we never forget it.

And here’s hoping that 2021 is so much better to all of us than 2020 was.

Living in the “And”

Reporting from Hamana Street