Kuhio Day at Mokuleia

I REMEMBER BEACH DAYS as a kid - after school, Saturdays, and all summer long!!  We would frequent Castles (close to home) and would venture further to Shark's Cove and Waimea on weekends, holidays and summertime.  We'd go early in the morning to beat the crowds and get our parking spot of choice.  We came prepared with snorkel gear, fins, and a cooler full of lunch, fruit and water.  It would be an all-day event.  Sometimes we'd stay 'til the sun set.  It was great!  We'd take soap and shampoo when we were younger and would bathe in the beach showers with our swimsuits on -- mom's idea, pretty smart one, too, considering there were six of us and who wants to fight trying to get tired kids to take a bath once we got home?  We also made sure to rinse all our beach gear - boards, snorkels, fins - otherwise that salt will ruin em.  If we happened to go to a beach without a shower, we'd refill gallon-sized jugs with water and keep some on-hand in the car trunk; they'd be nice and warm from the sun and we'd use them to rinse off the salt.  We kept huge, empty garbage bags in the car to use as 'waterproof' seat covers.  Us kids usually knocked out on the car ride home - even on the short drive from Castles or Temple beach!  Ah, gotta love the beach!  What a great, free playground to enjoy and explore! 

WHEN WE WERE REALLY LITTLE, we'd park at my aunty's house in Laie and walk across the highway to Clissolds (some of you call it 'Bikini beach') -- it's also where I was baptized early one morning and confirmed at the beach house with window-walls that's no longer there -- and we'd make our way down to bathtub beach.  When we started getting tired, we'd walk back and hose off at aunty's.  I still remember that one day we were swimming in the evening at Clissolds, near the point, and Makana and Ailona went further out with their masks and three-prongs.  They came back with a huge ulua, mom and aunty didn't believe they actually speared it because it was so big and thought that it was already dead when they got it.  But they swore they did.  And grandpa cooked that fish right up when we got back for all to enjoy.  

WE'D SET UP in the middle dry section at Shark's Cove, you have to wade through water to get there.  Older kids would help the younger ones to cross.  The little ones would play in the shallow, sandy spot and the older ones would venture over the rocks into deeper waters.  Sometimes we would explore the tide pools on the rock shelf.  Dad would collect intact urchin shells.  Being with cousins always made it more enjoyable.  The boys would go cave diving/exploring and have competitions on who could bring the biggest, heaviest rock up to the surface.  I remember one time when someone got bit by an eel on the finger in their attempt to grab a rock.  It was pretty funny!  Of course the adults didn't think so.  We'd also go and jump from the rock into the deep, middle section of water where all the scuba divers explored.  Sometimes we'd bask in their bubbles floating up to the surface, it felt like we were swimming in soda!   And that one time when we tried to coax Alohi into swimming through the cave.  She didn't want to, but we talked her into it and she ended up bonking her head real good and the ginormous bump on her forehead appeared within seconds, along with her wailing.  Mom wasn't too happy about that one, either.   

AT WAIMEA, our spot would be right past the jumping rock, at the far end of the beach near the "toilet bowl", as we called it.  We would swim out to the various rock islands and warm up laying on the sun-soaked black lava rocks.  My dad would swim far, far out with us, and sometimes there would be pods of dolphins.  Sometimes there were kona crab on the ocean floor and he would dive way down and grab them.  Certain times of the year the water would be black from huge schools of oama.  If you slapped down hard on the surface with your palm while looking underwater with a mask, the whole school would split and you could see the sandy ocean floor.  I remember nothing tasting sweeter or better than juicy, ripe oranges after hours in the salty ocean.  We'd swim 'til our lips were purple and our fingers and toes were wrinkly.  We'd swim until the sun started dipping below the horizon, leaving our little bodies with no heat source.  That's when it was time to head home.

MY DAD AND BROTHER would go on night dives.  That was one of their hobbies.  Nothing like fresh fish and lobster.  I miss their catches!  Especially the mouth-watering lobster omelets my dad would cook up!  

WHEN I WAS PREGNANT, one of my favorite things was going swimming in the ocean.  That weightlessness in cool water kept my very pregnant self sane in the sizzling summer months.  Me and Doug would go swimming and snorkeling whenever we got the chance.  I remember one of our snorkels on the reef near Kahana Bay yielded us a large 7-11 crab.  I spotted it tangled in an old net stuck on the reef.  We had nothing to cut it out with, so we got creative using coral and rocks to get it untangled.  Then we walked home and cooked it up and it was ono!  

I LOVE THE OCEAN.  Everything about it.  I have come to respect it.  I've come to know the tides, its moods.  Being in it is therapeutic for me.  I think if I ever had to move away, it's what I'd miss most about Hawaii, aside from the family and friends that reside here.  It's great to watch my kids come to know and enjoy it, too.