Copyright © 2018
By Ralph F. Couey
Tomorrow marks the end of our first week in Honolulu, and as
in all moves, this has been a time of transition. We arrived last Wednesday after a six-hour
flight from Seattle, anxious to finally get off a plane knowing that we wouldn’t
have to board another one the next day.
Our seven suitcases and one box, all carefully balanced to stay below
the 50-pound limit, arrived with us and the five boxes we had sent on ahead
were here waiting for us. Our car had
arrived on time, despite the presence of Hurricane Lane and Cheryl’s oldest
sister picked us up at the airport using our Santa Fe, and thank goodness she
did because we needed every cubic inch of space to load our stuff.
I guess the first thing I noticed was the weather. Honolulu Airport is different in that the
walkways from the gates to baggage claim are open to the outside air, which
while warm and humid, is still pleasant thanks to the northeast trade
winds. I’m pretty sure the Hawai’i
tourism folks had a say in that particular architectural choice. Of course, once I started humping luggage out
of the terminal and into the car, I sweated up pretty quickly.
When we arrived at the home of Cheryl’s mom, with whom we’ll
be staying during our sojourn here, she came out to greet us, small, thin,
fragile, but still a dynamo of stubborn energy despite her nearly 92 years. It was good to see family again, and looking
at Cheryl, I could see the joy and happiness written in her countenance. She was home.
Unloading was done in the context of differing
expectations. This wasn’t a two-week
stay. We were here to live; moving in,
as it were. Before, we just laid our
suitcases open on the extra bed in the room.
Now, we unpacked everything, storing it in some plastic container
shelves. The suitcases, once emptied,
were relegated to the back of the closet.
All the items of life we had brought with us were placed in convenient
places, and after everything was put away, I broke down the extra bed and
leaned it against the wall, which gave us a lot more space.
The days since have been spent arranging our lives and
finding some measure of routine in our new surroundings. Mom’s house is not air conditioned – not many
homes here are – and for some reason, despite all the windows, it never seems
to catch the volume of breeze that’s out there in the afternoon. Thus, inside the temperatures reach well into
the 90’s with the usual tropical humidity.
I have come to the conclusion that while I am here, I will always be hot
and sweaty, and hope nobody else minds.
Cheryl’s start date at Tripler Army Medical Center has been
pushed back twice. She goes in tomorrow
for orientation and paperwork and will find out what her schedule will be.
For me, my transfer from Target Aurora, Colorado to Target
Ala Moana Hawai’i went through with almost no problems, and I start there on
Sunday, the 9th. Now instead of being a seven-minute
drive from work, I will be an hour and a half bus ride away. I don’t really have a problem with that, as
the traffic here is guaranteed to drive anyone around the bend, even a
five-year veteran of Washington DC. The
problem I do have is that the bus I ride leaves Ala Moana for the last time at
10:15 pm, and for some reason, they have scheduled me to close five of those
first seven days, which means I can’t leave until after 11:15 pm. So on those days, either Cheryl will have to
come pick me up, or I will have to drive.
It is an enormous facility
on two floors, formerly a Nordstrom Department store, and instead of one long
line of cash registers, there are pockets of them located at all five of the
entrances. The store manager, or Executive
Team Leader in Targetspeak, took me on a tour of the store which assured me
that I will get lost just trying to find my way to my workstation.
The Target in Aurora allowed us to wear just about any shirt, as long as it was red.The Target here has only one designated shirt design for the
whole team to wear, and they won’t give anyone more than two. Since I’m working 6 out of the first seven
days, that creates a laundry problem.
Cheryl’s mom has, like most people here, a washing machine in the
carport. After the clothes are washed,
she hangs them up, which is a nice thing, but time consuming and dependent upon
the sun. Since I will have only two
shirts to wear to work, that means laundry has to happen every other night after
I come home. So with her permission,
yesterday Cheryl and I bought a dryer, which unfortunately won’t be delivered
until the 18th.
I am looking forward
to working there. The Ala Moana store
not only has a strong local customer base, it also is the shopping destination
for tourists needing items during their stay. Part of the attraction of working
for Target is the opportunity I have to engage people as they come through my
line. As a writer and author, I am
intensely interested in people’s stories, and the opportunity to hear stories
from all over the world is priceless.
Already something significant has occurred. For several years, the family has been trying
to get mom to stop driving, something she has stubbornly resisted. But on Friday, she got confused and when
making a left turn onto a side street, she cut the turn way short and ended up
colliding with another care sitting in the oncoming lane. Nobody was hurt – the airbags didn’t even deploy
– but the incident scared her more than anything we could have said. I told her that if this went to traffic
court, she would lose her license. She
finally bowed to circumstances and decided to retire from driving.
It is one of those watershed moments of life, giving up that
last symbol of independence. I’m not so
sure I would have shown as much grace as she did if that change had been thrust
upon me. While I’m only 63, still young
by her measure, I can nonetheless see the years flying towards me much faster
than with which I am comfortable. I’m
still two years away from Social Security and Medicare, but those are two
bridges which will be difficult for me to cross.
I have started walking again. I had to cut back in the weeks before we left
the mainland because the days were so crowded with the jobs and duties we
needed to complete our preparation for moving took up all the available
time. Now that things have settled down
and a routine is taking hold, I am back to doing my daily five miles. I had hopes of being able to do some hiking
here, but my responsibilities with regards to mom will make that activity
difficult to undertake. But I am using
the streets and sidewalks, and the Pearl Harbor trail that circles that
historical five-lobed inland waterway. The
trail runs from the HPD academy in the west all the way to where a barred gate
announces the entrance to the Navy base, verboten to civilians. It’s a pretty walk, as long as you’re only
looking at the harbor. That trail has
for many years been a place for the homeless.
Authorities have moved them out and into safer places, but the area on
either side of the trail is littered with trash, abandoned vehicles, dozens of
grocery carts, and the occasional vagabond who has escaped the attention of authorities.
It is an ugly place, given the beauty of the natural part of the islands, and I’ve been told by HPD,
a dangerous one as well.
Looking around, I can’t help but be disappointed. There are way too many people living on the
bitter edge of grinding poverty, not surprising since the median price for a
home is north of $675,000. The rentals
are priced way beyond their value, and those who are lucky enough to afford a
mortgage are driven off by cruelly exorbitant HOA fees and leasehold payments. Even if you own a house, most times you don’t
own the land, so you have to pay a lease to those who do own the land. It’s not unusual to see an obligation that
starts with an $1,900 mortgage payment, adds an $1,800 per month HOA fee, all topped off by a $2,000 per month lease fee.
Thus what you thought was an affordable payment essentially triples, two
thirds of which are dollars that can’t be deducted off taxes.
Hawai’i has for longer than anyone can remember a Democrat
deep-blue state. But for all their trumpeting
about helping the poor, the politicians won’t act to break up the land monopoly
and end those leasehold payments. And
lest anyone forget, the real poison is that if the leaseholder decides to end
the lease, the homeowner is booted out with no opportunity to collect on the
equity they’ve paid into the property.
The still keep the mortgage, and now have no home. That smacks of hypocrisy, especially since I’m
pretty sure that those political campaigns are heavily financed by those very
entities receiving tens of millions every month in those lease payments.
The other thing I notice is that outside the obvious tourist
areas, this is a dirty town. There is
trash everywhere and nobody seems to care.
The sunsets are still glorious, and the ocean is still beautiful. As long as you don’t look down, I guess you’d
be alright.
Well, with all it’s outward beauty and inward warts, this is
home for the foreseeable future, and I will make the best of it. Cheryl is happy to be here, and that makes me
happy as well. And in the end, that’s
really the most important thing.
Aloha!
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