We don’t have many wide open spaces in Hawaii, and we have been on Pacific Islands so long that we sometimes forget how big the world can be. So sometimes we take trips to remind ourselves. Sometimes we leave because we haven’t realized that we have grown accustomed to something and there is no other way to remember. Sometimes we leave to realize better what we already have.
We have the ocean, of which we are almost always on the bright blue edges, towns, people, and rocks behind us. We have the mountains, which stretch for miles. But sometimes those miles are up and down, not across a horizon. Even the parks, the big ones, the ones that reach beyond our view often would be totally within our view if the land were flat. The beauty of the indentations, little hollows, the very tops of mountains brushing the sky, and the dark hidden depths of the sea.
But it’s not like where I grew up, where the roads stretch straight for miles, until the dashing yellow lines hit the sky, until the cars in front of you disappear beyond the curve of the horizon. There’s a place in my heart for these wide open spaces; these big skies that reach past you on every side, the straight horizon lines, until you could look up and feel as if you were in a bowl painted bright blue inside, cupping you down and moving with you if you decide to run, any direction because all of the directions look the same.
And these wide open spaces in the fall are even more spectacular. Bright burnt colors against the blue, as far as the eye can see, and the cool, sudden autumn evenings as we run in the grass that has not yet turned brown, the sun’s slanting rays the same rays that touch our Hawaiian islands. But here they slant farther, longer, a whole side of the sky making room for them as the dark creeps up the other side.
And after the sun has gone down, the fragile, bright crescent moon and pinprick stars shine through the dying leaves, and the air takes on a bite, as if disappointed in the sun that has left it, again and again, night after night, sometimes still and stricken, sometimes angry, whipping against and through the windows and cooling down the whole house.
Coming back home, to the cooling air, to the spaces too big for Hawaii to hold, opened us all up a little bit. The boys saw a grain elevator for the first time (oh, the joy!), we all wore clothes we hadn’t worn in years.
We are lucky enough to have been gone from our original life long enough that it was new again, for us, and brand new for the boys. There were bonfires, chilly nights, and close toed shoes.
There were old friends and familiar places, and reminders of a world we once knew. We’ve been in the middle of the Pacific for over five years, and in the Marine Corps for over six. It’s easy to forget there are places where you do not constantly have to show ID, battle with military hospitals, and raise children half a world away from grandparents. In fact, our family attempted to show us that one with a vengeance. In 24 hours, Lincoln and Eliot had met all eight of their great-grandparents.
The world is a big place after all.