Stream of Consciousness

My thoughts are always all over the place...and I'm always thinking about something. I can't keep a thought in my head for more than a minute and if I don't write it down, I forget whatever it is that you want me to do. It's just how I've become. Since having kids I guess. I've also become somewhat of a sap. I cry in kids movies, commercials, and when my kid looks at me just so.

I know, where am I going with this? Well, last night Brian and I watched The Descendants. I knew nothing about the movie other than that it was filmed partly on Kauai and it was sad. As we were watching it I began thinking about how great it is that Brian and I actually live in Hawaii. When I saw the scene at the Lihue airport I got mushy because it is where I live. When they were driving in the Jeep past Kealia I felt excited because this is where my children were born. When they were walking on Hanalei beach I was thinking about all the little waves my kids will surf by the pier. While I'm watching the movie I begin to think about how Brian and I ended up here. How our children came to be from Hawaii.

Brian and I lived in Santa Cruz for a few years. We wanted to be near the ocean and the mountains. We liked it a lot for a while. Then, we were ready to find a place to set down some roots. We went back and forth about Hawaii. I was sick of scraping ice off my windshield and fighting off raccoons when I got in my car in the morning. When we got married we went to Fiji for our honeymoon. I remember taking a boat to Frigates with a guy named Dan. He and his wife Sharon ran a surf camp where we would honeymoon. He told us how he used to live in Hawaii and that when he decided to leave California he basically asked himself whether he wanted to be poor in California or poor in Hawaii. In that one moment. The decision was made. A year later we gave each other one-way plane tickets for our first wedding anniversary. Twelve years later I'm blogging about it. History.

So, as my mind is thinking of all this while I watch the movie- George Clooney is racing up the highway toward Hanalei. Across the room from me I see a tiny little hand print on the window. The hand print makes me cry. At first I can't figure out why. I'm watching a movie thinking about Kauai and this hand print is a tiny reminder for me about what this is all about. It made me think about a tiny painting I made my mom ages ago. It is in a little red frame. It is a picture of a rainbow and says, "Rainbows are apologies for angry skies." This hand print was an apology. I know it was. It was a small tap on my heart. Life is really challenging right now and this hand print was a reminder for me to think about my children. To remember how little they are. My girls' hand prints won't always be on my windows and that makes me little bit sad.

It is funny how one thing can lead to so many different thoughts. I like that about my sappy craziness. I like that I am able to notice a hand print on a window and instead of feeling the need to clean it, I am able to find a reason for it to be there. I should put the same effort into figuring out the reason for the piles of paper on my counter. Nah.