A year ago this month, when Mike was between cancer episodes (though, of course, we thought it was "when Mike was cancer-free"), we joined 32 members of the Kohn family for a family reunion on the Big Island of Hawaii. We flew to Hawaii a few days early to meet Mike's nephew, Jeff, for some time together in Hilo, where we stayed at an airb&b called Loloma Cottage. The place charmed me from the time I walked through wet grass and past lemon, avocado, and breadfruit trees to its front porch, where a bowl of avocados and lemons sat on a small table between two bright red chairs so big and comfortable I immediately sat in one.
The house was hippy-adorable: a porch and a one-room interior with a low double bed at one end, a kitchen at the other, and an outdoor shower and bathtub. It had a tin roof, like all houses in Hilo, but it also had tin walls, a sliding screen for a front door, and, in a lot of places, screens instead of windows. The unpainted wood of the house made it look as natural as its surroundings. The bright colors of everything else—painted chair, shower curtain—took a cue from the colorful fish and flowers of Hawaii. The house nestled so tightly among the tropical vegetation it was like another natural element.
Mike, Jeff, and I sat on the porch and drank coconut water from a coconut that Joe, the airb&b host, had left for us, its top already lopped off. Little Hawaiian-colorful, neon-green geckos, called gold dust day geckos, with droplets of red on their heads, blue along their sides, and gold dust on their backs, climbed up the porch poles, the chairs, and Mike's feet. Doves cooed incessantly. At night when we came back to the cottage from hiking Waipio or bathing in the Mermaid Pools, tree frogs greeted us with a loud chorus. We went to bed with their songs chorusing in our ears.
The next morning the first rooster in the neighborhood got the jump on the others by crowing before the sun came up. Then all the birds woke up and started their morning songs. We were surrounded with birdsong, as loud in the house as outside it.
We stayed in Hilo for three days, then drove across the island to join the family reunion in Kona, where we would stay for the next six days. Our airb&b there was a large house in a suburban neighborhood, with a large kitchen and four bedrooms for the eight of us staying there. There were a large refrigerator, two bathrooms, an outdoor shower for rinsing off saltwater and sand from the beach. Every room had air-conditioning and fans. The doors could be closed and locked. During the day, if we were at the house, we were usually on the cool porch, where we watched yellow, canary-like birds and red-crested cardinals pecking in the lawn and big white cattle egrets catching bugs on branches of the bushes. Doves cooed all day.
Although the humidity, frequent rain showers, sunshine, near-by beach, colorful birds, and gorgeous flowering trees with their heavy, sweet, tropical scents assured me I was in Hawaii, in the house I felt like I could be anywhere in suburban USA. The geckos, the tree frogs, the press of tropical vegetation, the loud and incessant night sounds, the cacophonous birdsong—all the outdoors that was present in the indoors at Loloma Cottage was shut out, either by walls and windows or by asphalt and buildings. The house in Kona was comfortable and easy, but I missed the Hawaiian nature that was so much a part of the little handbuilt cottage tucked into the tropical vegetation of Hilo.
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