Today we went to try to see the whales. Over to the Eastern side, down the long, slow two lane road through Waimanalo. We went to see the humpbacks, who swam the whole Pacific to end here, their choice of all their options that span the world.
The strong winds whipped over the water and through our hair, so forcefully that Lincoln was scared to walk alone. The dog’s tail was down too, and she slunk beside us as we went up the paths on the steep, steep cliffs.
Some days, despite the wind, the rush hour traffic, and the long walk with a grumpy baby, you have to go anyway. For the whales. And after all the walking and the wind, the crying and the running, there were no whales. Just a spout of water in the same place a couple of times.
It’d be nice to say that we stood there and contemplated the vast body moving smoothly through the water, just out of sight in a world that is so foreign to us, but we didn’t.
We grabbed the toddler who was about to fall off the edge of the cliff, gave the baby a graham cracker to stop his whining, put the dog on a short leash because she kept trying to chase the other dogs, and went back to our car.
Sometimes that’s all that you can do.