What About the Kids and Another Move so Soon?

For starters, they’re not moving to a brand new place. It’ll be old home week for Little Dog, with familiar scents and old haunts. Skinny had a couple months there and did fine. She’ll do better on a slower regimen, now that she’s pushing sixteen.

Not only that, she got the Waikiki hooker treatment leaving LA, not exactly an anal reaming, but every groupie in LA sure as hell wanted to kiss her tuchas. Okay, not every groupie—that could chap a cat’s ass—but everyone in wishing distance.

Packing up one more time is a challenge. It’s more than a couple duffels and some snacks. Now it’s boxes, crates, and kid stuff. Then again, most of it is still packed. The reasons for not fully moving into and absorbing the new home are many. The Hawaii place and the old place in upper LA are the same marble, granite, glass, and steel, and so is the context. LA sounds like traffic. Hawaii sounds like surf. Surf sounds like traffic. And shallow friendliness in LA was easier than growing pains in Hawaii.

Minna’s family tried to connect as ohana should, talking nicely to the kids, teaching them da kine, playing with the dog and admiring the cat. It went well enough, which wasn’t enough, leaving a guy recently from LA to ask his wife, “Okay. Now what?” It’s a tough question for a modern woman who loves culture, pace, and stimulation, a woman willing to adapt to the needs of her family, a woman recently burdened by a major move, lock, stock, and barrel—a woman left with no better answer than a question of her own.

“You think Tahiti would be better?”

“Yes. It’s French.”

“Why didn’t you go to France in the first place?”

He didn’t go to France because it’s not tropical. “And because. I wouldn’t have met you.”

With minimal loss on a quick resale because he bought it right, the beachfront monolith goes quick. It doesn’t feel like home. For hardly over a million they get a much smaller place on the island of their convergence, a high-ceilinged fare of native stock, lashed in primitive beauty, with two boudoirs, two salles de bains et un bureau pour Ravi. Calling it pas mal feels French and safe.

Ravi watches neighbors cooling in the shallows. He picks up trash, but they leave more, so he tells them to stop—to love their sea as if they would… swim in it. They laugh and seem to get it.

A month or so in, on a shallow bluff next door, he sees elderly Tahitians greeting men who carry clipboards and blueprints. He walks over as the elders invite the men to a feast there, later, for ia orana. The men offer opportunity in money, jobs, and security. The elders offer regrets: No, you cannot build here.

Ravi wants to offer money for legal defense or any expense but on second thought introduces himself with a pledge of support.

He stops shaving. He sets buoys to block the reef from anchoring boats and gets no complaints. He watches the coral recover as his babies turn into children, as his dog trades fear of separation for the confidence of a stable home. The cat sleeps more, plays less, and watches her man.

Old friends come again for company and comfort into next phases. Monique and Cosima are an item but live separately, to better keep the peace. Moeava works his boat and takes counsel on occasion from both women, or sometimes with Monique alone when she’s feeling uncertain, experimental, nostalgic, or lonely. Who can tell?

Hereata becomes tutu, or auntie, to share her love and balance her solitude. She cares for the children as she cared for her own. She does not pine for her chevalier to arrive but seems happy. Minna is grateful again for a babysitter and doesn’t worry if Ravi sees the sitter home.

Ravi sees more and reacts less; no vehicle proclaims Born & Raised, and nobody asks, how long have you been here? With no development or social resentment to taint the natural beauty, he wonders: now what? Now comes the more perfect shot, for starters. Minna shows him what else for finishers, with natural aptitude for intensive care. She works four shifts a week in Papeete, and they cap most weeks with a lively distraction, an outing to Taverua reef or the motus—or to the Tuamotus or Papeete for shopping and late lunch, where Ravi will go whole frog on pomme frites, une petite salade, et une bouteille du vin blanc. He’ll savor the flavors after confirming no sardines or anchovies in the salad, to spare the ocean food chain any further affront. He’ll smother the fries in ketchup and watch the kids scream among the vendor stalls, their frites and sammies half-eaten. He’ll wonder who they’ll become, and when.

He’ll catch his wife watching him, and he’ll wonder why and how and what if. She’ll rest her fingers on his arm and whisper playfully, “This is what became of us.”

He’ll lie on a bench on the ferry ride home and dream of milestones: surely he’ll dive at fifty-five and sixty and should still be fit at seventy, barring illness or weight gain. Neither seems likely.

Eighty?

He’ll ponder deep blue, sailfish, and far fewer fried foods in his vegetarian diet.

And so a story ends again on a satisfied note, with a man dreaming of who his children might grow up to be. He sees Moeava at the helm, following bubbles and birds in a frenzy over sailfish working a bait ball from below. Awaiting capture in the foray are several compositions of alertness and curiosity. A bill flashes in the electric moment, sail arched, lateral line shimmering, body aglow in a rainbow of emotion to match the electrons and sunbeams going eye-to-eye with the lens.

He’ll rise on a discordant note and take two aspirin with bubbly soda. He’ll watch and wait and consider a more prudent path.

END