Beach Books

I clean books every day and ship them to cities all over the world. Sometimes a book has a thin line of sand in the crease of the cover -- then I know it's been to the beach. Lucky book. It's been on vacation! Of course, whoever dragged it across the Pacific Ocean didn't have room to cart it back home after shopping for macadamia nuts and T-shirts. I wonder if it's actually been read or if it just rode along to the bay packed in a straw basket with the towels and water bottles. I see a lot of bikini-clad women reading Janet Evanovich and Danielle Steele. But I don't sell their books. There aren't too many tourists reading Wallace Stegner or John Steinbeck. So, I'm impressed when I clean a sandy book by James Michener ("Hawaii") or Gabriel Garcia Marquez ("Love in the Time of Cholera"). And I'm glad I can send it off to someone who might just actually read it.

Flying over Wailua Beach

I live five minutes from Wailua Beach where the para-sailers have been flying and floating over the choppy waves this week. I want to do it. My sister and I used to fly bat kites at Crockett Elementary School during the summer. I wanted to be the kite. I wanted to look down over the playground and hover in a free-float with the wind whipping through my hair. So, when I wait at the stoplight at the bottom of Kuamo'o Road and watch the striped parachutes criss-cross above the ocean, I feel brave. I want to forget that I'm forty-five and scared of falling and grab the ends of the strings and let the wind pull me across the surf.