Romantic Memories in the Car Rental Queue

✏️January 10, 2024 | Kona, Hawaii, Payless Car Rental, Back of the Line

Stomach is digesting poke and a Mai Tai. Smell the sunscreen on my skin. Pink freediving fins peek out from my bright yellow dry bag. At the bottom of the bag half a bar of hibiscus 54% dark chocolate is melting. Open my iPhone — ten pins stick into Google maps; the “sickest” snorkeling spots on the island are wondering when I’ll splash in. But wait….50 other tourists need to sign paperwork for their rental cars.

Before all this — Tropical rain tapped me awake. 4am. Yoga in the darkness. Green tea at a colorless sunrise. I walked to the beach with my love but immediately I turned my body upside down, pressing myself into the smell of grass. Rolling waves smash into the lava rocks. Hello, mama ocean.

I dig in, both hands slide under white sand. My eyes pick up all the crushed shells. I am full of a whole world down there in the tide pools. Lay down my happy limbs. I didn’t even notice the water floating off my body towards the sun. I’m in repose. Home again beneath the swaying palms and their puffy, wispy, sweeping, moving sky. The wind runs her soft fingers through my hair, pulls silk across my skin.

Once, long ago and far away, I felt this way. I came here for this feeling. I never lost my love of the feeling. I just had to go find it somewhere new. I’ve stepped into the dream and now, I rest and remember the dreaming with this smile. AirPods in. That song. It all comes back; a flying flock of memories migrating between the present and past. Somewhere in the past they wait for me to summon them with smooth sounds and sweet smells.

— That was my morning and now we are here, at the car rental shop. How can I feel anything but bliss as I waddle forward in this long line of traveling humans?

Love & Rainbows, Cha in the Wilde