On a recent trip to Hawaii, a friend and I headed to the Polynesian Culture Center in Laie. Before we got there, I wanted to check out my old neighborhood but I really wasn't sure if we were going to be able to find it. I told my friend that what I remembered (and I was 7 at the time we moved) was that there was a big grass circle in the street by our house and if you stood in the middle of it, you could see the Temple up the street, the ocean in the opposite direction from it, the elementary school across the street in one direction and BYU Hawaii in the other. This is all we had to go on.
We drove by the PCC and saw a sign for the Temple and turned left and just as my friend asked "where to now?", I realized that we were there. Right in front of us was the big circle and yes indeed, if you stood in the middle of it, there was the temple, the school, BYU Hawaii, the ocean behind you...and my house. This is where my first "first day of school" photo was taken.
There was the corner where I was standing when I saw Rudolph's nose one Christmas. This was the street where I learned to ride a bike. I knew behind the walls of that house was the hallway where someone had scribbled all over the walls with crayon (I vote it was Kim or Jeff). I remember trying to catch bugs in glass jars in the middle of the circle with Craig.
I hadn't expected the punch of emotion I would experience standing in front of a house I lived in more than 30 years ago but there is was. A part of me recognized it simply as "home".
3 comments:
What a neat experience for you! The weather looked beautiful too!
When we lived there the rock wall was a hedge of hibiscus, our gardener trimmed it with a machete. The palm trees linning the road from the house to the Temple are so much prettier than the Norfolk pines that used to there, they dropped tiny pinecones that hurt your feet. Did you check out back to see if the lime and banana trees were still there?
I love the scrapbook pages from your time in Hawaii. What a fun time to remember.
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