My week in Hawaii was not a vacation, I can tell you that. I went to see if I might be an apprenticed to an inventor named Dean after graduation, but it turned out that he had an agenda for the week we (my dad and I) were there. I never quite figured out what the agenda was, but I learned a few things about his past (among other things, he invented a way to turn black-and-white video into color for the Apollo missions) and some tricks to use in my future (such as doing ‘externships’ with companies I like). We also ate yummy foods like plantain fries and tortilla soup, with Dean’s own fresh-picked plantains and prickly pears.

Everyone kept telling me how expensive it is to live in Hawaii, but by the end of my week I had a plan — and it involved a beautiful bamboo house with barely a wall to block the trade winds, and a tropical garden full of bananas, coconuts, strawberry guavas, and avocados. Every morning I would walk along the shore, like Papa and I did that week, and in the evening I would count the infinitude of stars in the Hawaiian sky.

Here Joannie would call me naive and impractical, Joannie being my Grandmom’s first cousin who graciously offered her guest-rooms to us. The payment was only lively debates with a 93-year-old Republican at breakfast and dinner, and she ended up wearing me out — she would then put me out of my misery by pulling the “I lived through the Great Depression and/or World War II” card, and my commie Obama dreams were kaput. She managed to be indignant that the Hawaiian school district would let homeless children attend class, since education is obviously wasted on the lazy and ill-bred. And then she would regale us with stories about Uncle George (George Patton, that is, or “the tank guy” as I know him), or the silly commanders who, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, told everyone to “hold everything” until they arrived.

But never fear, Joannie, for my plan is a bit more concrete than I let on in the above paragraph! Just in case the Dean thing didn’t work out, I had scheduled an appointment with the head of the Architecture department at the University of Hawaii. One would not expect the UH to have a top-notch architecture program, nor would one expect me to become an architect, but by the end of the tour my heart was in it. They seem to focus on sustainability, design appropriate to historical and cultural contexts, the inclusion of emotional and functional aspects in aesthetics, and teaching a strong base of design and material understanding so that I could do something besides design houses (though I’d like to do that, too) — I could in fact do this three year program, get an Architectural Doctorate, and then become an industrial designer — all without going to art school! Max, my prodigal architect brother, had even heard of UH’s program, so it’s got to be some kind of good — though he was surprised by my interest in it.

There are so many other things I love about Hawaii. Meeting family, finding roots — meeting my distant cousins at the Mission House, where I was embraced in warm reunion, though we were really strangers — hearing about the world of my grandmother’s childhood, with all the glamour of nostalgia — the brilliant idea of connecting up Ellen, Joannie’s daughter who works with special-ed kids, with Thomas, who’s so darn good at it — and of course the seductive greens and inviting blues of the islandscape. I always claimed my Hawaiian blood (1/32 Pacific Islander) was calling me home, and right now my best-laid post-graduate plan leads me straight there.

Aloha!