What's The Magic of a Lemonade Stand, Really?
Soul Medicine - Part Two (of what I anticipate will be many stories about home and healing)
It’s Friday afternoon, a bit after 1:30pm as I begin writing this story and I’ve just finished having lunch in (what I believe is) one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I’ve been watching the sky sea of clouds drift across the tops of the mountains. The light is extraordinary how it appears and disappears over the dark green landscape. Shadow and then light. Light and then shadow. Such is the nature of sunshine and clouds. Such is the nature of life. Because it’s been raining here quite heavily at times over the past couple of days, the mountains are crying. And I, I am sitting here in this place, in deep gratitude while also feeling the bittersweetness of how it all came to be that I now live here.
My love affair with Kauai began in May 1995 when my great grandmother gifted our entire family with a week’s vacation in Poipu. At that time, even though the island was continuing to recover from a Category 4 hurricane that had decimated it three years prior, it was still the most beautiful place I had ever been to in my young adult life. I was twenty-seven years old and had yet to get a passport and travel outside the United States. There would be many beautiful places in the world I would travel to in the future, but I didn’t know that then. I also didn’t know then that about forty miles north of where we were staying was a land called Hanalei.
When my mom, dad, sister, and I spent a day away from our extended family on the north shore of the island, I was mesmerized by the landscape we drove through, terrified by the helicopter ride we took, and captivated by something I couldn’t quite name at that time. There were no lemonade stands at the top of those mountains along the Napali coast, but there was something magical, something mystical, something that felt familiar even though this was my first trip to Hawaii.
The love affair continued when I returned to Kauai six and a half years later for my birthday in December 2001. It continued after my former spouse and I moved to Maui ten years later. It continued every time I visited the island solo, with friends, and with the former spouse. I used to have a bed and breakfast a lifetime ago and guests would ask me why I chose to live on Maui rather than another Hawaiian island. I would tell them that while I loved Maui, I was ‘in love’ with Kauai and there was a big difference between the two islands as well as the two states of experiencing love.
The truth is…I didn’t choose Maui. There were several considerations my former spouse and I took into account when we decided to move to Hawaii. We both wanted to get away from the damp and gray Oregon coast weather. We both were ready for a new chapter in our lives. We decided Maui would be best because it offered a direct flight back to Portland where James (that’s my former spouse) would return to quite frequently for work. Kauai did not offer direct flights and Honolulu layovers can be long and so Maui it was. As I look back twelve or so years ago, it was James that chose Maui and I was okay with it because we’d live somewhere warm and I’d be closer to the island I really loved. I was okay with it because I loved and trusted my husband.
Perhaps we were meant to live on Maui so I could create a beautiful dance community. I did this. The weekly event I held became an amazing experience/event for many people for several years.
Perhaps we were meant to live on that island so James could be closer to his home country of New Zealand. He did this. Hawaii is six hours closer to the Land of the Long White Cloud than the west coast of the U.S. Mainland.
Perhaps we were meant to live on that island so the two of us could create a home that welcomed in both our friends and strangers from around the world. We did this. We made magnificent magic happen together.
Perhaps Maui chose us so we could each discover who we really are and who we are not. I don’t know if I’ll ever know this.
But I do know this…I am beginning to live into a few answers with a bit of help from some magic.
When everything I thought was good suddenly turned something else, when the lightest light became the darkest dark, when the home I trusted no longer could be trusted, I returned to the places I had known that held the kind of magic that that lemonade stand had a few weeks ago. The kind of magic I’m talking about is not what you pull out of a hat or make disappear. The kind of magic I’m pointing to is that which happens over time and heals all manner of things.
The magic isn’t in the trick, in the deceiving, in the disbelieving of reality.
The magic is in the connection, in the depth of feeling, in the knowing when something is really real.
I went home to Cannon Beach, Oregon in March 2020 to the place I used to live, to the landscape I loved, and to where I had found the love of my life and married him thirteen and a half years ago. For the next fourteen months, I lived into the answer of knowing my marriage was no longer a lemonade stand. It no longer held what had been the really real for me. And so in June 2021, I moved to the only place I’d always longed to live, the place where magic might be made real again, where healing is happening.
It’s coming up on two years since I moved to Kauai and it’s only been within the last few months I’m beginning to feel this is really my home. I suspect coming home to myself after sharing my home with another for so many years might take more time to return to.
I’m grateful that lemonade stand at the top of Sleeping Giant a few weekends ago reminded me that magic is only real when the magician is real.
And that is Soul Medicine for you.
Great stories/reflections ❤️