Hele on to Hawaii

You know when you drive down a street and it just feels like home; when the sights and smells and sounds around you are so familiar and comfortable that your heart is happy without even realizing it?

I get that feeling when my airplane descends into the Honolulu airport. I feel like the land calls to me in a tune so familiar and sweet as it welcomes me home. I feel that way again when I drive on Kam Highway as I enter the boundaries of Laie. On Oahu, the sacred Cherubs strum ukuleles and chant in an ancient Hawaiian language.

I used to live here:

The walls of this Laie home on Naupaka Street were not much stronger than a card board box. When the wind would really blow, the walls would shake. The rain would find its way through the spaces in between my louver windows and wet me while I slept. My curtains became thick towels to protect me. One time, a small gecko was climbing the rafters on the ceiling and fell into my cereal bowl at breakfast.

No, this house wasn't much. But it was my home and I loved it. It is on the famous Laie point. I could see the ocean out of every window, though sometimes I really had to work to do it. The sound of the surf lulled me to sleep at night. My husband proposed to me in the back yard on the cliff that over looks Bikini ( Clissold's) Beach.

I lived with wonderful girls and they felt like family. I could tell a hundred stories about this house and the people who lived in it. Maybe someday I will.