Nothing says twenty-five years of marriage like taking a red-eye home from an event for your children, so naturally, that’s what we did on our special day. Lucia’s college graduation was this past week, so we made the trek to Hawaii for the occasion. We watched her walk across the stage and so forth, and it was really tremendous . . . right up until the part where they read her name: “Loo-chee-uh Laws.” That’s the Italian pronunciation, but we use the Spanish. Even better, the school asked students to send them the pronunciation ahead of time to avoid that. Sigh. Lu said that it rattled her so much that her mind went blank and she forgot to do the cartwheel or whatever it was she was planning.
Then the Monday after, Lauren helped her move out of the dorms and onto base with her husband, Brayden. In the meantime, we had a number of adventures.
We brought Graham with us since he has never been to Hawaii. But vacation in paradise does not mean that the workouts can ever stop. Every morning, we had to be out the door and on our way some place to run. Two of those days had to be at the track on base where the Marine Corps trains. Brayden told me that the Marines tried to recruit Graham, but Graham says that wasn’t the case. We also observed that kids and families on base play a lot of baseball and volleyball together, which caused Graham to exclaim, “Who says kids don’t play outside anymore? They do!” Which is ironic coming from the kid who built the Titanic in Minecraft when he was five.
Two other workouts were on the bike trail near the BYU Hawaii campus. Of course, for Graham, the trail was unacceptably short—1.5 miles total. He didn’t want to run back and forth on the trail to reach five miles, so he insisted on going on the narrow two-lane road that is dotted with crosses of people killed in accidents. Naturally, I said no, naturally he ignored me, and miraculously, he survived. As well, on Sunday, he insisted that his workout had to be sprints on a beach. And the beach couldn’t just be the one near our hotel which was “too small and slanted.” So we had to drive up ten miles north to a different beach. I could not figure out the insistence on sprinting in sand until we pulled up and Graham exclaimed, “I can’t wait to enter this in Strava. For shoes, I get to put barefoot.”
If you don’t know, Strava is like Instagram but for runners. You record your runs and comment on each other’s, and so forth. So that was the motivation—to put “barefoot” in Strava. Tremendous.
I too ran on barefoot on the beach that day. While Graham sprinted, I did the slowest two miles of my life, got attacked by a dog, and then nearly got caught like a fish. Literally, I ran through someone’s fishing line, which wrapped itself around my neck. The lady sitting next to it shrugged and said, “It’s not mine!” Thanks! That helps! Also, I think you might be lying! Or covering up for your husband who is literally ten yards away with your daughter! And there’s literally not another soul within a half mile!
On Sunday, we went to Pearl Harbor. This was a particularly moving experience for me given the cousin our family lost on the USS West Virginia. When we finished, Brayden took us over to the helicopter hangar where he works, and that’s where my whole world went sideways again. The hangar and runway are active military installations but also historic locations. Dozens of fighters and bombers sat on the tarmac wingtip to wingtip and were annihilated in the first wave of attacks on December 7. The building has explanatory signs, and in the middle of the runway, an area has been cordoned off. Brayden showed us a stairwell where a machine gun bullet hole from a Japanese Zero had passed and fatally wounded a US Naval officer. He also showed us the helicopters he works on and the type of work he does—all interesting stuff; as a kid, I wanted to be a naval fighter pilot (yes, Top Gun was a heavy influence). But what shocked me was who in our party was the most riveted by the whole discussion: Lauren. She wanted to know everything about rotor blades, thrust, engine torque, the pilot joysticks, how much and what type of fuel they carried, what missions they carried out, and on and on and on. Don’t get me wrong—her interest in Brayden’s work is lovely. But I have taken Lauren to Revolutionary War sites, southern plantations, Civil War battle sites, Civil War hospitals, creepy old cemeteries with famous burials, historic churches, and numerous other places I’ve probably forgotten, and I have never, never, gotten this sort of rapt attention. She sent pictures and articles about the site to her sisters. She has called me Tour Guide Barbie for years (she won’t let me be Tour Guide Ken), and Brayden hosts one lousy tour and it’s just the greatest thing ever. EVER.
That night, Graham spent the night on base with Lucia and Brayden so he could get his second track run in. Lauren and I slept in and then got up to exercise. Lauren had two bucket items left for the trip—snorkel and see giant turtles. We were driving to the bike trail when Lauren said, “So do you plan to snorkel?”
I shrugged. “I think I’d rather sit on the beach and read the book I bought at Pearl Harbor.”
“Oh great,” said Lauren. “Then I can leave my phone, purse, keys, wallet, and diabetes monitor with you while I snorkel and don’t have to have them all the way up in the room.”
Lauren, of course, is a master at using me to do stuff she wants done. I said, “Well, it’s always a happy day when the Venn Diagram showing what you want done and what I want to do have a good overlap.”
“I mean, if you want to snorkel, . . .”
“I said it works out.”
“I feel like you’re accusing me of getting you to do stuff.”
“I absolutely am. And in this case, it works out well for you because it overlaps with what I want to do. So we can all be happy with no resentment.”
“But I feel like you’re making me out to be a bad guy.”
“Nope. Take the W. This is a good day.”
And it was a good day. She saw some lovely fish, and I got way into my book.
That evening, we walked out on the beach and saw the large, dark forms of the sea turtles moving in to rest. Lauren took this fantastic picture and declared the trip complete.
The next day was our anniversary, and she posted this photo of us together after we had worked out the day before. I’m not totally sure why she picked this picture—I mean, I look thrilled to be married obviously, right?
So here’s to another twenty-five years, and may the Venn Diagram overlap expand forevermore.
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