Hello Beautiful
January 15, 2022
A New Dad Reports: The Things No One Tells You About Having a Baby (During a Pandemic)
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It was a pleasant Saturday morning in Anchorage when Victoria and I made a reckless diversion from our normal routine and decided to visit our city’s newest attraction: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
The franchise had just come to town and the response from the community was bordering on panic in the streets. We’d seen this trend before. When it comes to national food chains, Alaska is in a constant state of envy. If someone returns from outside it’s common to ask, “How was your trip, did you see the Grand Canyon and go to the Olive Garden?” followed immediately by, “What did you order?” When Olive Garden finally opened in Anchorage the line wrapping around the building was visible from space.
Victoria and I had fallen for this hysteria over and over again. We crammed ourselves up against a vending machine to enjoy a beer inside the crowded new Buffalo Wild Wings. It took more than an hour for us to place an order at the recently-opened Smashburger. Dinner at the Olive Garden required waiting in a parking lot for an entire evening. We lost a full day at Texas Roadhouse, hypnotized by the Siren call of warm, delicate bread.
For months, local media reports documented Krispy Kreme’s construction off of a busy street in east Anchorage. Prior to the grand opening, dozens of people camped out on a concrete sidewalk for an entire weekend to claim the first batch of doughnuts.
When we arrived at Krispy Kreme weeks later we found a line still spilling out into the parking lot. “Well, we tried,” I said to Victoria. “Maybe we should come back next year.” But we were immediately swept into a swarm of people, boxed in for a long wait.
As we inched closer toward the saccharin cloud spilling from the doors, it occurred to me that chain-restaurant food wasn’t the only thing Alaskans lusted after with an air of desperation.
This obsession comes not in the form of a thing, but a place.
In the dark depths of an Alaska winter, there is a faraway land one dreams of called Hawaii. This is not a real place, but a fantasy conjured to rationalize the subzero snow globe that is home. This Hawaii is a perfectly balanced cocktail of sunshine, sand, warmth and pineapple-tinged drinks that tickle your senses. The sun never goes down, everyone is loved, and sleep is not required. There is only constant bliss.
For Alaskans, this Hawaii, is a matter of survival.
Our first quest for paradise was in 2005. Victoria and I had recently become a couple when she insisted that we take a vacation together. We both had entry-level jobs at a local television news station in Anchorage and scraped by on frozen pizza and the kindness of strangers. But there is no motivator quite like the searing full body pain of an Alaska winter, so we pinched our pennies and booked a weeklong trip on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Dreams of ukuleles and gently swaying palm trees danced in our heads as we cut coupons.
A photojournalist at the television station caught wind of our upcoming trip. Barry was soft and pudgy with a mop of thinning blond hair. He reminded me vaguely of a gingerbread man. The day before we left, Barry stepped abruptly into my personal space in a manner suggesting he was about to confess to a crime. Instead, he leaned in, uncorked a toothy smile and whispered, “Right outside the airport on Maui, is a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. It’s so good after a long flight. Make sure you stop there.” He turned to walk away, scanning the room to make sure our little secret was safe.
We flew overnight from Anchorage and arrived at Maui’s Kahului airport, exhausted and stale. Minutes later we located the Krispy Kreme shop and the doughnut enthusiasts behind the counter immediately offered us a free taste fresh from the assembly line. “Let’s just stay here the whole time,” Victoria said, her glassy eyes reflecting rows of glistening doughnuts. But soon we were drawn outside by the warm embrace of sunshine.
By 3pm that day our skin was the color of a Maui sunset.
Nine months of a dark Alaska winter does something strange to human skin. It wasn’t so much that we were pale, but that we were translucent in the bright sun.
“I can see your entire circulatory system,” Victoria said.
“You look like you should be in a medical school textbook,” I responded.
The next two days were spent in our air conditioned room either moaning pleasurably at the delicate application of aloe lotion or issuing agonizing screams of “don’t touch me!”
Victoria had read about the Hana Highway, a lush 60-mile road snaking through some of Maui’s most stunning coastal scenery. We set off to explore, driving the winding two-lane path, unwrapping one sun-dappled surprise after another: A blind corner led to a towering waterfall, a short climb brought a sweeping ocean view, a canopy of shade revealed a bamboo forest. Each narrow pullout offered new and exotic sights not found at home in Alaska.
We’d planned two nights at a small cabana in Hana, advertised as a bright, airy tropical hideaway in a secluded garden setting. The tiny coastal town of Hana claimed to be old Hawaii, a slower pace of life with a decidedly local vibe, away from the tourist traps of the west side. We found our cabana to be a charming little one-room cottage tucked away amid a sea of lush green growth and tropical flowers. As we settled into our retreat a torrential rain began falling. For several minutes we paused to marvel at its power as big heavy drops pounded the metal roof. Just as soon as it came, the rain shower passed and the sun returned, bringing with it a freshness as rich as the day the earth was born.
“What’s that?” Victoria said a moment later.
“What?”
“That…thing!” She pointed at a black object on the wall. It appeared to be some kind of beetle that had crawled down from the ceiling and was now perched high up on the wall near our bed. It was the size of a matchbox with a hard black shell and long coarse antennas jutting out from it’s head.
“It’s just a little beetle, that’s all,” I said attempting to strike an assured tone.
“I’m not sleeping in here with that thing,” she replied. “Kill it.”
One of the things I enjoyed most about Alaska was the lack of critters. The cold climate meant that venomous snakes, devious spiders, stinging scorpions or any other beady-eyed creature couldn’t survive the harsh environment long enough to hide in my shoe or crawl into my bed. In Alaska, critters are covered in fur and weigh around a thousand pounds—they could eviscerate you, but they would never scuttle into your clothing and secretly inject you with poison.
“Maybe we should just fly home,” I suggested. “There’s still a little bit of daylight, and the airport is only a two-hour drive.” Victoria returned a look that suggested she was reevaluating her relationship choices.
I didn’t want to crush this creature. We came here uninvited and now we were simply going to kill our way into a perfectly happy vacation environment?
“Brad, just do it. Get it over with.”
I retrieved a jacket and zipped it up tightly around my neck. I put a hat on and replaced my flip flops with shoes. I armed myself with the heaviest shoe I could find and planned my assault. I would have to climb onto the bed, lean out towards the wall and reach high above my head to accomplish the task. If I missed and startled the beetle, all bets were off. I envisioned losing my balance, crashing down to the floor, sprawling prone and vulnerable as my counterpart went in for the kill. Then what, hand-to-hand combat?
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“C’mon. Do it. Go. Go. Go. Do it. You got this!” Victoria was clapping and cheering from across the room.
I stepped onto the bed and moved into position. I focused in on my target and took a deep breath. I reared back and with all my might lunged at the wall toward the doomed little critter that dared to ruin our perfect vacation bliss. Everything slowed down. In the background I heard Victoria’s rally cry: “Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”
It struck me at that moment, with the windows of our cottage covered only by screens, that a passerby or neighbor might at this very minute be dialing the police.
Then, just as I heard the loud BANG! of the shoe against the wall, I was back in the moment, realizing I had missed my nemesis by at least a foot, the beetle now nowhere in sight.
“Where is it? Where is it?!?” I yelled.
“Nooooooooo!” Victoria replied.
Moments later, we located the critter clinging to the side of our bed. I silently apologized to the Hawaiian Gods and made my final approach, shoe in hand. Moments later, I announced to Victoria that it was indeed deceased. After a cautious visual inspection, she pronounced the time of death, and we dispatched of the remains down the toilet.
After a sleepless night, we retreated from our oasis in the garden for the entire day, lounging drowsily on a nearby black sand beach. As the sun set that evening we returned nervously to the cottage for our final night. We pulled the car up to the cabana and as the headlights slowly illuminated the front porch a beetle twice the size of our previous nemesis suddenly planted itself next to the front door. It was larger than a baseball and appeared to be interested only in vengeance. Victoria and I sat motionless in the car, our mouths hanging open in silence.
The second time Victoria and I pursued our Hawaiian paradise was more than seven years later. In the interim, we had gotten down to the business of life: Marriage, higher education, new jobs, homeownership and the acquisition of a cat. But after seven cold Alaskan winters, our desperation for warmth was stronger than ever.
Friends of ours had recently returned from Hawaii, bronzed and glowing, speaking wistfully of time spent roaming Maui in a rented Volkswagen camper van. Their photos were of pure happiness, a bohemian adventure in a tropical land, as self-reliant as sea turtles in their little mobile home.
“Let’s do it,” Victoria said. Once one reaches a certain stage of adulthood, adventures must be shopped for and purchased. We were not the type to rappel into an active volcano, but passing up a cozy hotel with continental breakfast for a camper van felt dangerous enough.
We arrived on Maui, instructing our taxi driver to speed past the Krispy Kreme shop and directly to the VW rental lot. Boiling with anticipation, we craned our necks with every turn until we stopped in front of a gated junkyard. Inside, we walked among half-finished repairs and dirty car parts peeking out from underneath old tarps.
“Have you ever driven one of these?” the rental agent asked, gesturing to a maroon VW Vanagon, built around the time of my birth in the late-70’s. We were not surprised to find her vaguely reminiscent of a hippie.
“Nope, sure haven’t,” I responded tentatively.
“What about permits?” she asked. “Did you get camping permits for the National Parks?”
“No, where do we get those?”
“It’s too late now if you haven’t already done it. You can’t camp anywhere on Maui ‘legally.’ Well, there’s one campground but I’ll tell ya, it’s pretty much just all squatters, so don’t bother.”
“Okay, so where can we camp?” I asked.
“Basically, I’m not telling you this, but you want to go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap fishing pole. You can setup near the beaches and if anyone bothers you just tell ‘em you’re subsistence fishing. That’s the only way to camp legally near a beach. Or, you can just chance it.”
I was fairly certain that no one would mistake Victoria and me for Hawaiian subsistence fishermen so it seemed as if that lie wouldn’t be worth a $9.99 fishing pole.
One thing was immediately clear, driving a VW camper van across a sunny Hawaiian island was immeasurably freeing. But as the sun set, our anxiety invariably ramped up. One evening the best spot we could find was on the side of a road next to a “No Camping” sign. What kept us alert through the night was the worry that we had parked below the tide line and might wake up floating somewhere near the Philippines. Another night, we were awakened by what appeared to be a large cockroach crawling across the bedding near our feet, convulsing us immediately into flashbacks of Hana. Yet another night we cruised through the island’s main campground and found our rental agent’s description to be quite flattering. Had I been advising inexperienced tourists I might have described the campground with words like former inmates and feral dogs and imminent dismemberment.
One upside to life on the road was that sleepless nights led to very early mornings. While the island slept, we quietly soaked in its beauty. We watched the sun rise over Maui and before the island could be fully engulfed we planted ourselves on an empty beach, alone in paradise, listening only to the sleepy waves and scanning the surf for places to explore.
The first time we visited Hawaii we discovered snorkeling and I was suddenly hypnotized by a vivid new world.
“There are actually fish in the water!” I shouted a bit too loud when I surfaced. “They’re like, right here!”
“Says the person who was surprised to find bugs in the rainforest,” Victoria mumbled.
On this second trip, we rented equipment for the entire week and I immediately became obsessed, making it my personal mission to snorkel every inch of the island.
“What about this spot?” Victoria might say as we pulled up to a new beach.
“Well, if I can edge around those rocks and beyond the waves I think I can get into some nice coral,” I would respond straining to see all the angles. “But, I might be better off hiking up through the trees—I think I can make it work!”
“I meant the parking spot. Should I park the VW in the shade here?”
“Oh, good. Looks good,” I would say without taking my eyes off the water.
It wasn’t as if I’d become especially proficient at identifying tropical fish. They came in all sizes, some were yellow, others had stripes or dots and when it came to the placement of fins there appeared to be no pattern whatsoever. But for me snorkeling wasn’t so much a scientific endeavor as it was the pursuit of a feeling. To float weightlessly and silent in the water, watching tropical fish swim in an impossibly colorful natural habitat seemed to be as serene and peaceful as it got. Yet, for some reason I shrouded this tranquility in the chaos of obsession. It was as if my mind, when faced with the possibility of relaxation, decided to shackle itself with the anxious pursuit of a single, insatiable focus.
And just as my obsession began drawing groans from Victoria, I saw my first sea turtle.
“Get your gear Victoria, we’re going out,” I announced breathlessly as I stormed back to the beach and found her lazily sunbathing. “I just saw a sea turtle and it was amazing. Huge! Swimming right next to me!”
Victoria would admit that she isn’t a natural born swimmer. As an adult, she enrolled in a beginners swimming class to help get over her fear of the water and it took an entire semester for her to venture into the deep end. That I was able to get her into the ocean to snorkel was nothing short of monumental. Here I was coaxing her out off shore, promising to stay close and offering the added comfort of a body board to cling to.
“It will be worth it, I promise. We can’t do this in Alaska!” I said as I raced back toward the water.
We swam around the rocky edge of the beach and forged out into deeper water. In my singular focus, I cheered us on, brushing aside Victoria’s concerns and assuring her that a treasure trove of sea turtles awaited us just a little further out. Moments later I saw a dark circular figure flash through the deep blue water. “I see one!” I shouted. We moved closer and watched as it dove more than forty feet down and nibbled the coral, the fractured light dancing off of its coarse green shell. Soon another turtle the size of a coffee table surfaced nearby. Here we were, swimming among these magnificent docile creatures and living, however briefly, in that perfect paradise we had imagined.
“They really do look like they’re smiling!” Victoria said.
Just as our joy was peaking, Victoria glanced back toward the beach, stunned to see that we’d drifted so far from shore. And just like that our serene swim with the sea turtles turned to panic. For a brief moment, there in the deep water, I paused to consider just how we got to this point. Living in a place like Alaska—which required accepting the denial of many common comforts—seemed to push us toward some type of manic obsession, whether is was sunshine or baked lasagna from Olive Garden. When we located a release valve, logic was cast aside.
We made it back to the safety of the beach, reduced to a pulp by an arduous swim. Victoria quickly coined the term “turtle crazy” and has wielded it regularly since, as in “take it easy on the thin mints, you’re getting turtle crazy,” or “Yes, for the tenth time, I closed the garage door, stop being turtle crazy!” It was her way of reminding me that we were heading too far out into the deep water.
The third time we pursued paradise in Hawaii we were determined to get it right. More than two years had passed since our previous trip and we had saved enough money to rent a modest condo on the Big Island.
Things would be different this time, we were certain.
At the time, it happened that storms off the coast had stirred up powerful and intimidating surf conditions. On two occasions we watched as lifeguards rescued hapless swimmers. One woman was pinned against the rocks as she attempted to snorkel in what appeared to be medium-sized tsunami waves. She was yanked out of the water bloodied, but alive. Another man slowly drifted farther out in a riptide despite posted signs warning him of such risks.
Even I was amazed how quickly our compassion waned.
“Ugh, please don’t die and ruin our beach day,” I heard myself say to Victoria as I watched the man shrink into the distance while lifeguards danced nervously on the beach.
“It’s so rude of them to put everybody through this,” Victoria added.
“I know, right? We’re on vacation for God’s sake. We can do without the tension.”
“They’re probably from Alaska.”
“Yep, can’t handle the sunshine,” I said with a condescending tone.
At home there’s little doubt we would have been clambering to assist the rescue, fumbling for our phones to call the appropriate authorities, hustling to retrieve blankets and water to help comfort the victim. But we weren’t real people here, we were vacation people and for vacation people, unpleasant things are simply annoying, like commercial breaks. And I could tell we weren’t alone. I looked around and saw old men angrily returning to their naps in too-small bathing suits and silver-haired ladies rolling their eyes at being forced to look up from their Sue Grafton mysteries. Yes, these were our people, not a shadow of anxiety, obsession or desire for anything more exciting than a cool breeze. Finally, we’d found them.
With the waves raging on the beaches, Victoria looked for entertainment inland. She found a guided group tour of Mauna Kea, a nearly fourteen-thousand-foot dormant volcano, the highest point in Hawaii. The half-day package offered a comfortable, scenic ride to the summit for sunset views followed by stargazing and hot cocoa.
We boarded a small bus and were immediately pleased to find a sea of silver hair and bright, newly-purchased Hawaiian shirts. Our tour mates, our people. We stood back grinning while retirees lumbered up and down the vehicle stairs complaining about sciatica and sore feet, certain that we were in for a terrible day, that those wispy clouds would ruin our views, that the ride would be positively too bumpy and that it was, by God, already mercilessly hot. There was little chance of drama, we thought, in the company of these prickly seniors, as risk-averse as newborns.
“This is perfect,” Victoria whispered. “I love old people.”
But just before our driver could close the doors, two unfamiliar faces raced up the stairs and claimed open seats behind us.
“I’m Doreen,” I heard the dark-haired one say.
“Oh, so nice to meet you Doreen. Won’t this be fun!” the young plucky one replied.
“Are you from Australia?”
“Yep!”
“Wow, I bet it took a long time to get here.”
“There was a fifteen-hour flight, yeah, and then a layover and then another flight, but I took a little sleep and I’m raring to go.”
Back in the darker, more remote reaches of the bus, lost in the cacophony of this perfect, budding friendship, the soothing groans and snores of the retirees suddenly seemed desperately far away.
Doreen was in her mid-forties and, we easily guessed, from New York City. As our bus snaked through the low country toward the slopes of Mauna Kea, she took the liberty of updating the Australian girl—and by default, the rest of us—on her entire life. “And then we just said, that’s it, let’s go to Hawaii for a vacation. The husband is off again golfing who-knows-where—I haven’t seen him all week. What about you?”
“Mostly, I just came to work on my photography, yeah.” The Australian girl lifted up an impressive looking digital camera.
“Oh, the husband bought me one like that, but I can’t work it. I’m like, c’mon with this thing? You can teach me.” Doreen produced an equally impressive camera and just as the Australian girl began explaining the nuances of ISO settings, it became clear that Doreen was referring to things like the “ON” switch and focusing the lens.
We turned our attention forward. Our bus driver was a laid back Hawaiian named Maka and he dazzled us with factoids about lava tubes and volcanic fog. As the terrain steepened, Maka pulled the bus over to the side and slipped on a pair of leather driving gloves. “Here comes the fun part!”
The road to the top of Mauna Kea was rugged with the kind of bottomless drop-offs that made me grip the seat and watch Maka’s every move. One slip and we’d all be on the front page of the local paper in a pile of rubble. I suspected that the retirees would be in the back forecasting our doom, but I turned to see most of them asleep or staring ahead blankly. Doreen was throwing her hands in the air and gesturing to her camera about some mysterious waddayacallit that she would never understand when she abruptly became interested in learning about Maka.
“Where do you live Maka?” she asked as he navigated a hairpin turn atop what appeared to be a thousand-foot cliff. I inhaled audibly when he looked back to answer.
“I have some land south of Hilo,” he said.
“Oh, isn’t that near the lava flows we’ve been hearing about?” Doreen asked. At the time lava from Kilauea had been in the news for threatening homes on the eastern side of the island.
“I’m in the same area, but the lava is pretty far off for now,” he answered. The bus shook violently from the graded gravel road and Maka slowed instinctively, while I dug my nails into the window ledge and silently bemoaned our imminent demise.
“Now what does that do to your property value? Do you have lava insurance?” Doreen’s inquest continued as we climbed into the clouds. Soon she was asking about Maka’s living quarters and then remarking that his yurt may not, in the eyes of an insurance company, be seen as an improvement to the land, a point Maka clearly disagreed with.
Just when I was about to politely request that Doreen shut up and let the man drive for crying out loud, Maka cut her off to announce that we had arrived on the summit of Mauna Kea.
“Wow, it’s positively magic up here,” the Australian girl chimed in. And she was right.
Maka instructed us to explore the summit and gave a precise deadline for our return to the bus after sunset. He handed out heavy parkas, explaining that as it got dark the temperature would plunge well below freezing at our high altitude. We shuffled off the bus, the older crowd staying close and grumbling about being chilled while Victoria and I looked for a quiet spot to take in the expansive views. We stood above an otherworldly blanket of high clouds and watched as a crimson ball of fire slowly disappeared into a sea of orange. Soft amber light stretched across the landscape and the only reaction we could muster was to be perfectly silent with awe.
Here we were, two Alaskans seeking refuge from a cold winter, standing in parkas atop a fourteen thousand-foot Hawaiian volcano, following a decade-long pursuit of some place more perfect than home. There was nothing left to do, except smile at the absurdity.
As the last sliver of sunshine disappeared, darkness took hold. We piled into the bus and Maka counted heads. We were all there except for one. The Australian girl was missing.
“Let’s just give her a few minutes,” Maka said.
“I hope nothing bad happened,” Victoria whispered to me. Working local news in Alaska conditioned us to assume the worst. At home, people were always falling off of mountains or getting hopelessly lost trying to locate Bigfoot—the outcome was never good. Here on Mauna Kea, it was easy to see how a plucky Australian photographer might stumble down a steep slope in the pitch black darkness.
“I know, it’s cold out there,” I whispered back to Victoria. “I’m not sure anyone could survive the night.”
We sat in awkward silence for several minutes. Maka positioned the bus so the lights shone into a black void and then stepped outside to yell for the Australian girl. What could we do? If she had disappeared, were we stranded here while a search was organized? When Maka returned a voice from inside the bus emerged.
“Maka, maybe she just got on another tour bus. I’m sure she’s fine. We’re probably good.” It was Doreen suggesting that we needed to get on with it, we had stargazing to do after all, with or without her new friend.
“I’m going to go talk to the ranger and see what we can do,” Maka said as he leapt out of the running vehicle.
“Well,” Doreen said to no one in particular, “she knew when to be back. I mean, what else are we supposed to do?”
“What if she’s hurt?” Victoria spoke up.
“I’d feel bad about that but, you know, we’ve got to get going. It’s not fair to us paying customers,” Doreen said looking out the window. “I think the stars are coming out!” Doreen stood up and rushed to the front of the bus to look through the windshield. She braced her hand on the steering wheel and leaned her body over the driver’s seat and the dashboard, craning erratically to see the stars. I envisioned Doreen dislodging the parking break, sending us all careening over the edge and into the abyss. I glanced back to the seniors and they simply stared forward like owls, as if they always knew it would end like this.
I thought back to the beach rescues we’d witnessed just days ago and our indifference toward the people in harm’s way. Is this what paradise is all about? Maybe instead of being a temporary state of mind that we lust after, vacation simply reveals who we really are—purely self-consumed, too busy perfecting our own happiness to be bothered by someone else’s tragedy. I was sickened by the very thought. Just as I rose to mobilize a search party for this poor doomed Australian girl, the bus door flung open. “So sorry guys! Lost track of time. It’s so amazing out there!”
“Didn’t you hear us yelling?” Doreen said. “We were going to leave you. Time for stargazing, let’s go.”
The ride down the mountain was dark and quiet. The rhythmic snores of the retirees once again filled the bus cabin. Doreen stared outside searching for constellations while the Australian girl quietly reviewed her photos. I looked over at Victoria and she was content, smiling. Suddenly, I was relaxed, ready to be mesmerized by the stars, to wake to one final Hawaiian sunrise, to collect our things and to go home.
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