Big Island Courage

I’m driving in an open air jeep with four wheel drive on the dreamy roads of Big Island. It’s my Hawaii honeymoon and I’m supposed to get my bride some extra strength Tylenol! She’s back in our luxury hut by the Pacific Ocean. 

The wedding pressure was too much: her father brought in on a medical transport, guests running to the bar to see game six of the Lakers during our first dance, her own brother threatening to sue her for not giving him some mail pertaining to an Indiana Property they co-own…she’d lost so much weight to fit into her dress, this is what wears a bride down.

“Relax, Enjoy” the Hawaiian people say, putting flower leis around our necks.

Me, I’m just psyched to be married. I’m the first born son and the last to get married, of my sisters and friends, people who’ve left New Jersey, it feels like everyone in the world is more mature than me, until now! 

I know about Hawaii from a double episode of the Brady Bunch where all the kids get locked in a cave, an innocent seventies kidnapping!!! So I know there is danger in paradise. 

Somehow driving this sporty jeep with no roof, just black bars looping around the frame, intoxicated by the cross winds, giddy at how the bright green trees with twisty bark make me feel wild myself. Maybe my wife doesn’t actually need Tylenol. She needs me to evolve into the heroic man lurking within me. 

I knew we shouldn’t have lingered around San Diego after the reception, so my wife’s condition was partly my fault. I should have insisted we leave for our honeymoon after the reception, but her family paid for everything. My wife cried in my arms, Why can’t my brother be happy for me? I went to both of his weddings. 

The car drove itself to an entrance to a giant valley with a big sign: Danger. Do not enter (unless you have four wheel drive.)

So, I think, Oh well, I’ll make a u-turn, you’re supposed to take care of your wife, taking care of women is what I’m good at…At the precipice of turning away from danger, my normal path, my hands turn the wheel to the left, down into the valley. 

I’m the same age as Mike Brady when he married Carol and they both had three children. My hands have free will. This white jeep has four wheel drive!

Ready or not, I’m going down the steepest hill possible, steeper than the streets of San Francisco. My leg is pressing on the brakes with all my force, to save my life, but when I lift off the pedal to inch forward it feels like I’m sprinting. I  see all of the tree tops passing with white in the branches and for a split second I think that other men in white jeeps have fallen off the road into the trees. 

Please God, let me return to my bride. 

My adrenaline is racing just like when I walked down the aisle, on a magical grass field by a twisty tree in Del Mar with Rabbi Dosick waiting for me under the chuppah. 

I replay everything that happened on the wedding weekend, the rehearsal dinner with the mariachi band escorting us to the Mexican restaurant and my wife’s corporate lawyer brother mumbling you have got to be kidding me, and the beach party with the support our love towels and visors, and suddenly I’m at the bottom of the Hawaiian valley.

The road is calm and I see the high waterfalls, the kind of majestic, tall thin waterfalls you’d see with rainbows in rom-coms.  It feels like I’m cheating. I should be sharing this with my bride. After drifting along the open valley for a few miles I turn around, bracing myself for what I have to do to get back up the steep hill. At the turn to go back up is a woman just standing on a little grass island within the road. She doesn’t seem to be wearing any clothes. Only her thick thick shiny brown hair cascading over her breasts, like a hair blouse. 

I try to look away, but somehow in my jeep our eyes meet. It’s rude to look away from a stranded woman. Maybe she needs help…

I pull over. This Hawaiian woman is as stunning as the never ending waterfalls I can see unicorns grazing at.  I get out of my jeep and the woman’s eyes lock with mine. I’ll have to talk to her. What would Greg Brady, the oldest son say? 

I just got married. Isn’t that swell? Can I give you a newlywed hug because I heard what happens in Hawaii stays in Hawaii.  

Or I’ll be Mike Brady, the dad: young lady, I have a sweatshirt in the back of my jeep, you shouldn’t stand in the road without any clothes on. 

The hotel mantra pops into my consciousness: Relax. Enjoy. 

She smiles at me, a friendly accepting look, like she’d like to read my journals. As I inch forward to start a conversation a giant tour bus pulls up in front of her.

As I imagine all the tourists filing out to take selfies with the Hawaiian goddess as beautiful as the waterfalls, hired by a bus company, I jump in my jeep and head back up. It’s just as scary going up as down. I press my foot on the gas, down to the floor, and I’m going so slowly I’m scared I might tumble off the road into the trees, like the other cars in the trees driven by the other bad husbands.  

I am so relieved to make it to the top. I just want to get back to my wife and tell her all that happened. Coasting on the road I pull into a local store. They have Tylenol and postcards. I actually found a postcard of a woman just like the one I saw in the valley. 

I’m so excited, the Jersey boy, coming back to his bride on his honeymoon, capable of spontaneous bravery. I hand my wife the medicine and the postcard of what I’d just seen. 

She rips the post card in half. Rips those halves in half. 

I will never bring up the woman with the hair falling over breasts ever again. I learned there are some things a husband keeps on his side of the bed. It is time to officially start my marriage. 

My bride on the white jeep.