I'll be seeing you.....love.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Blog revisited
I began this blog with the intention of recording my memories as a mother of two boys. I have decided to expand the coverage of this blog. As most of you know, I lost my dear, sweet Dad on March 8th of this year. It has been painful. Heartbreaking and filled with tears. I love him and miss him more than I can ever put into words. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for them) I have a husband and some close friends who have lost their dads so they know what I am dealing with and have been a tremendous support. They have told me that I am not crazy for crying at the drop of a hat. That it is normal for a song or a smell or a phrase can cause my head and heart to zoom in on my Dad and make me want to climb under my covers and cry some more. I told my husband that I feel like I have too much going on in my head that has to get out somehow. That memories of Dad or my feelings about him need to have a place. So this is going to be my avenue. This will not be completely dedicated to the boys anymore. This will be my memories overall. The boys. My Dad. My Mom. My friends. I will stop by here from time to time to write about various things that pop into my head. Here's the first:
It was a sunny Sunday on the island of Oahu. I was 5 yrs old. It was a habit of our family to go to church, go have brunch and then we would drive around the island. It was paradise so why not take in all the scenic routes? That day we stopped at the Kahala Hilton. It's a gorgeous hotel that had dolphins that lived there and would swim up to lower hotel balconies for a visit. There was a bridge that went over this lagoon filled with dolphins. There were no rails. I took off over the bridge-much to my Dad's dismay because I could not swim. I stopped in the middle and a dolphin popped out of the water. She stayed in front of me and started "talking" to me. I talked back to her, "Hello, Willie! How are you today?" Not sure where Willie came from and I obviously didn't know she was a she. I started walking around the lagoon and that dolphin followed me everywhere. She swam everywhere I went. There were other people there that could have distracted her but she never left me. She had a pink belly and her dorsal fin had a couple of knotches in it. It was like she had been bitten or in an accident. That was how we distinguished her from the other dolphins. Those were her identifying marks. We stayed about an hour and then went home, feeling like I had made a new friend.
That week in the paper my dolphin was pictured. Her name was not Willie. It was Nihoa which means "jagged" because of her fin. I was very excited that my friend was a celebrity in the paper! We went back Sunday after Sunday and Nihoa always came to me. My Dad would retell this story and he would always say, "It was like magic. Watching you with Nihoa was magical." So Dad nicknamed me after my aquatic friend. He would call me Nihoa from then on. Almost every letter or card from him was addressed to Nihoa Houston. Thinking about it now it feels like a dream. Like something magic. An unusual friendship that sparked a loving nickname that lasted long after we moved away from Oahu.
It was a sunny Sunday on the island of Oahu. I was 5 yrs old. It was a habit of our family to go to church, go have brunch and then we would drive around the island. It was paradise so why not take in all the scenic routes? That day we stopped at the Kahala Hilton. It's a gorgeous hotel that had dolphins that lived there and would swim up to lower hotel balconies for a visit. There was a bridge that went over this lagoon filled with dolphins. There were no rails. I took off over the bridge-much to my Dad's dismay because I could not swim. I stopped in the middle and a dolphin popped out of the water. She stayed in front of me and started "talking" to me. I talked back to her, "Hello, Willie! How are you today?" Not sure where Willie came from and I obviously didn't know she was a she. I started walking around the lagoon and that dolphin followed me everywhere. She swam everywhere I went. There were other people there that could have distracted her but she never left me. She had a pink belly and her dorsal fin had a couple of knotches in it. It was like she had been bitten or in an accident. That was how we distinguished her from the other dolphins. Those were her identifying marks. We stayed about an hour and then went home, feeling like I had made a new friend.
That week in the paper my dolphin was pictured. Her name was not Willie. It was Nihoa which means "jagged" because of her fin. I was very excited that my friend was a celebrity in the paper! We went back Sunday after Sunday and Nihoa always came to me. My Dad would retell this story and he would always say, "It was like magic. Watching you with Nihoa was magical." So Dad nicknamed me after my aquatic friend. He would call me Nihoa from then on. Almost every letter or card from him was addressed to Nihoa Houston. Thinking about it now it feels like a dream. Like something magic. An unusual friendship that sparked a loving nickname that lasted long after we moved away from Oahu.
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