Memories of our years in Hawaii

After 14 years, Peter and I went back to Hawaii earlier this month and stayed for four days in a cabin at Bellows Beach. It brought back so many happy memories of our three years in Hawaii with our boys. Days at Bellows Beach were some of our favorite things to do. I remembered the boys jumping the waves, riding their boogie boards, building sand castles, drawing in the sand, and once, burying their dad in it.

We remembered taking them to get their ice cream treats at Dave's Ice Cream Parlor in Waimanalo near Bellows Beach, and the ritual stop at Bueno Nalo, a little Mexican restaurant on the beach in Waimanalo. It no longer exists, or we would have gone there. We did treat ourselves to Dave's Ice Cream.

There wasn't anything we did while we were there that didn't remind me of those days, of our sons, and most especially of Leif, who was last there when he was in middle school, sometime in the late 1980s. Sometimes they made me smile and be grateful for every one of those days. Sometimes they made me sad that he is gone and will never be with us again.

This photo was taken the day we arrived in Honolulu in July 1983. We flew in from Japan and were greeted by members of Peter's new office at Camp Smith, who brought us the traditional leis. We were exhausted after the long trip and basically being up all night and dressed for the chilly plane ride, not the summer heat of Hawaii. Peter A. was 14 and Leif was 8 years old. We were fortunate to live there for three years, until the summer of 1986.

Leif's Sixth Home - Honolulu, Hawaii - Summer 1983 to Summer 1986

In the summer of 1983 we moved from Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, where we lived in the army housing area at Red Hill, on the outside edge of Aliamanu Crater. We lived in one half of a two-story duplex. Our lanai overlooked Pearl Harbor, which was beautiful with the lights of Pearl City and Aiea at night. We spent a lot of happy hours on that lanai.

Leif attended Red Hill Elementary School for third, fourth and fifth grades. He had a black leather Members Only jacket his dad brought him from Korea, and a cloth one, too. He loved wearing them and wore them even in the 90-some degree Hawaiian heat. He played soccer all three years and began judo classes there. His best friends were Joey and Michael. With Joey he usually played GI Joe stuff and he and Michael did creative things. Michael was a talented young artist.

As a family, we loved going to the beaches, especially Bellows Beach. The routine was to go there for the afternoon, swim, walk on the beach, and then go to Bueno Nalo Mexican Restaurant for quesadillas and to Dave's Ice Cream for coconut ice cream. In those days, Bueno Nalo was near Bellows, by the shore. (Later it moved to Waimanalo.) We loved those trips together and always had a good time.

Another favorite family outing was to go to Waikiki, park at Fort DeRussy, by the Hale Koa Hotel, then go to "It's Greek to Me" restaurant and have Greek food, then to a movie at the huge theater where they had a pipe organ playing before the movies started. After that we would go to a video parlor at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and play video games, and end the evening with a walk on Waikiki beach. How I wish we could go back and have one of those magical, balmy evenings together with our two sons!

Sometimes we would go to the International Marketplace, or a Thai restaurant, or somewhere else. We visited several of the other Hawaiian islands; The Big Island of Hawaii, Maui, Kauai.

When Peter A. was 16, the summer of 1984, he was an AFS exchange student to Greece, and while he was away, Leif and I took a trip to the US mainland and made the rounds visiting relatives. He had a terrific memory and for the rest of his life he talked about that trip when he was ten years old and was impressed by the flight attendant on one United flight who had such a sense of humor. One of the jokes Leif loved to tell was this one, "Tonight's movie is 'Gone With the Wind.' Just stick your head out the window and you'll get the picture.'

For some reason, I apparently felt it was interesting enough to actually take a ohoto of our living room and computer room (and extra bedroom we used as a computer room and den upstairs) in these quarters. I wish had done this with all our homes. We were lucky enough to have a personal computer at home. In the early 1980s it was not yet common for families to have them. We all used it. I used it heavily for school work (writing papers) as I was in graduate school at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I still enjoyed playing computer games (and still do today), and so did the boys.

Peter W. would have been happy to get an extended tour of duty in Hawaii and retire there, and i think the boys would have love that, but it was not to be. However, we will always be grateful for the three wonderful years we spent there together.
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The photo of Leif was taken in Hawaii in 1984 when he was nine years old.

Peter A. & Leif - FRAVs - Bellows Beach, Hawaii - 1984 - Leif age 9

Our favorite beach in Hawaii, and probably our favorite of all the places we've been, is Bellows Beach, a strip of land on the leeward side of Oahu that is officially an air force base, and actually still has a weed covered airfield on it, which has cottages and camping spaces, but most of all, a glorious beach with a view of the mountains.

It was one of our favorite excursions to go to the beach and then afterward for quesadillas at Bueno Nalo, a great little Mexican restaurant just down the beach (which last I knew had moved to the town of Waimanalo after we moved away), and then to Dave's Ice Cream for the most terrific coconut ice cream. A wonderful afternoon!

This photo was taken sometime in 1984. Peter A. and Leif were drawing FRAVs on the beach. FRAVs were invented by Peter A. and Darren, his best friend in Japan. They were a bit like the tiny beings in the movie "Batteries Not Included" (though they came up with the FRAVs before the movie came out) and a bit like Transformers, in that they could fold themselves into a variety of shapes with a variety of uses. They each had a special one, and Peter A. designed FRAVs for me and for Leif as well. He and Darren filled notebooks with FRAV designs. Their two "personal" FRAVs were Ace and Fran.

Leif was caught up in the ideas and designs, too. They all had a lot of fun with them, but they were more than fun. They were truly imaginative and wonderful.