Dear Sanna,

On my good sunday, I walked through lava fields at the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve. It was not a typical sunday activity for me, and it was one designed not to distract but to focus.

To focus on something essential, if painful. The last 13 years, my raison d’etre was the raising up of a child. Not mine, neither biologically nor by formal adoption. There’s a wonderful cultural more here in Hawaii called hanai. It is, basically, the practice of informally adopting a person, with the intent to raise, nurture or just accompany them through life.

Pono has left for college, and I am bereft. Not in the way of someone dying, obviously ::chuckle:: but in the way of someone leaving. Not for good, equally obviously, but it is a sundering nevertheless. And I have been in a modality of existential flailing, since he left, a couple months ago.

So I walk. I walked, at first trying it barefoot but the lava rocks were too cutting and I jettisoned that silly idea right quick. The colours of your raindrop-bespattered rose petals reminded me of these flowers I saw at the start of the walk. No rain here, just dusk approaching, dialing down the afternoon’s humidity.

It is hard to let go. But we do it all the time, I know… and how I am going to sense and carry the scent of this letting go will define me for the rest of my time. I know. I didn’t tug on these flowers or touch them; you can’t see it in the photograph but they were abuzz with bees, and I chose not to be stung. I let them be.