Moving to Hawai'i Part II

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Not sure where we left off, but last time in “Moving to Hawai'i” I believe I was explaining about my nervous breakdown on the plane ride to Hawai'i for my job interview. Well! Now it is May 10th 2024 and I have been in Hawai'i for 3 weeks and one day! Well to say it has been a journey would be an underSTATEMENT 😂 . Where should we start? Hmm. Ok, so let’s start with the day I moved away from Florida, April 18th 2024. So that day I was supposed to leave the house at 4:30am so I could get to the airport, around 5:30am for a 8am flight. Its about an hour drive but with the morning rush hour, it can be much longer, so I wanted to get there with plenty time to spare. I also wanted my parents to see me off, so the plan was, that my dad would have a friend drive him to the airport and I would drive with my mom and someone would stay with the cars at the cell-tower that way my parents could see me off at the airport and we could spend as much time as possible together before I had to leave. If you’re wondering why we couldn’t all just drive together, well for one, my parents are divorced and my dad lives about one hour south of the airport and I lived with my mom, about one hour north of the airport; so, that's the way we had to do it.

My surprise (you can't really surprise me) Go-away Party 😝

Well, my dad’s friend, wasn’t able to take him after all, although he didn’t tell me this until after I had arranged another way for him to get to the airport. Here’s how that happened. So at my surprise, you can't really surprise me, go-away party, I was causally mentioning to my Hānai sister, Jeanelle, my plan about how we're all gonna go to the airport, and she says, “Oh I can take your dad". "Ohh Uuhhhh oohhkkk," I said. I would have never thought to ask her, even though she is a dear sister who is very selfless and is always so helpful, I just wouldn’t have thought to ask her because of the inconvenience of it all. And, as I told you before, I thought my dad already had a ride. Hmm..But God would have it that I would randomly be talking to her about it and God put it in her heart to offer to take him. So when I told my dad that my friend, who lives nearby him would take him, it is THEN he informs me that his friend couldn’t take him 😂. So when were you gonna tell me this sir? Hmm ok.

Anyhoo, back to the story, so I’m driving to the airport with my mom and we're talking and then there’s a moment where there’s some silence and I suddenly just start laughing, and she’s like, “Why are you laughing”. So I tell her, I just had a memory randomly come to mind about the time that I was a little girl and I was going to my grandmother’s house in New York and I was maybe 6 or 7 years old and I was going to be traveling by myself, for the first time on a plane. So in the memory I saw myself walking through the boarding bridge and my parents were standing there watching me. At that time my dad worked at airport so he was able to get my mom a pass and they both were able to be in the passenger boarding bridge to see me get on the plane. In the memory I remember their faces looking worried and I think my mom was about to cry, who knows, I was too excited and too busy chatting away with the flight attendant...ahh the blissful innocence of youth 😂 . So I shared that memory with my mom and I told her that it made me realize that this is the same thing that's happening right now...28 years later, my parents are going to once again be seeing me off on a journey that I'm going to be taking by myself. I also told my mom, “Man, I wish my dad still worked at the airport that way you guys could see me get on the plane”. Because as it stands, my plan was for them to be with me in the airport and take me as far as they could go, which would be TSA; then we would say our goodbyes at TSA. WELL. When the Bible says, “The mind of man plans his ways, but the Lord directs or establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). Well that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth and in this case I am so grateful that the Lord directed and established my steps.

So, we met up with my dad and Jeanelle and ended up parking one of the cars at a location close by the airport and then we all drove to the airport in one car, and Jeanelle dropped us off and waited at the cell-tower. I proceeded to the airline’s section and the woman at the counter told me, “You have to check your bags at the kiosk first”. So I turned around and went to the kiosk. My parents were helping me with the luggages because I had two checked bags, one carry one luggage and one personal item. I travel often but I don’t usually have a checked bag so I completely forgot I had to go to the kiosk first to print out tags for the bags. When I got to the kiosk another airline employee saw me and she started talking me through the process. Now I don’t know why she started helping me, even before I asked for help, I don’t know if I looked confused, but then again, she didn’t even let me get confused, she was there helping me from step one, so hmm I don’t know….well, I do know 😂, it was God, but  you’ll see what I mean in a minute. So she, we will call her Angel, because that is what she was! So, Angel started helping me, telling me where to click and just basically held my hand through the whole process, and after I printed my luggage tags and got my boarding passes she said, “You can come this way, I’ll take you.” So I said, “Uh ok,” I was just gonna go back to the first lady but I followed her and she began to weigh my luggage…Oh my gosh, another thing I forgot about checked bags...they weigh them! Oh my gosh, why? And well, they were, let’s just say, OBESE, like $200 per luggage MORBIDLY OBESE. So Angel says, “Do you wanna take something out and put it in another bag?” I, who once again, had completely forgotten about “weights” with checked bags, just responded, “No, I’m moving, so all my bags are full,” so I just pulled out my card to pay. I refused to let this unexpected thing put me in a bad mood because it was already an emotionally intense morning because I was moving away from my family to the other side of the globe!

SQUIRREL

I am so sorry to do this to you, sorry not sorry, so I totally forgot to tell you about how I felt that morning, so let's take a few minute detour, ok. So, I had been fine, not really feeling any intense undesired emotions about leaving. Few times I would feel anxious about the unknown, but all normal stuff, nothing cray cray, nothing crazy, but man that morning, the morning of April 18th, the morning I was actually going to leave, I felt SOOOO ANXIOUS. I was in the bathroom getting ready and I was thinking, “OOOHHH, THIS IS REAL. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING. WE ARE REALLY DOING THIS? ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS? MOVING AWAY FROM OUR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY AND EVERYTHING WE KNOW, TO GO TO A PLACE SOOO FAR AWAY, WHERE WE HAVE NOOOBODY?” I think that morning was the time I felt the most intense “negative” emotions about this move. Now I put negative in quotations, because they are not negative really, they are just emotions that one does not desire to feel, as my auntie, Dr. Anita Philips would say, so, no emotions are negative, emotions are information…so hence the quotations. These emotions were so intense (ok so, all my emotions are, intense…but that’s another story for another day), but these emotions were so intense that I had look myself in the mirror in the bathroom and tell myself, “Yes, we're doing this,” and “Yes, we are moving to Hawai'i today,” “Yes, yes, yes, we're doing this, what else are we gon’ do? Not go? Unpack our bags, 'unsend' all the boxes we already don sent to ourselves that are currently in Hawai'i right now waiting for us? Break the contract with our employer? What else are we gonna do?” So like many things, I decided, like my sister Tasha Cobbs Leonard would say, to “Do it anyway”. Do it, in spite of the fear, the questions, the unknown, the doubt, all the legitimate concerns….I informed myself that morning, that like Uncle Tim Ross says, 'If you can't do it brave (c'mon dwellers), do it scared'. So that morning, heart beating, body trembling with fear and anticipation, I got ready and I did it anyway!

Anyhoo, once again...again 😂 back to our story…So Angel, oh my gosh, I hope you're keeping up, So Angel looked at me and was like, “Uh I wish I could help, but my supervisor is right over there..." She says as she glances over her left shoulder. She seemingly was going back and forth in her mind about what to do about my multiple obese luggage, then she says, “You’re first class anyway, don't worry about it” then she proceeds to take my luggage, my, at this point, $400+ OBESE luggage and puts them on the carousel without another word. I who didn’t even realize what was happening, until I realized, oh she didn’t take my payment from me, so I just said, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much, wow.” Then out of no where, Angel says, “Is this mom and dad?” “Uh, Yes,” I replied. “Do you want them to go to the gate with you?” Angel asks. WAIT WHAT? That’s a thing? BUT, BUT, that’s, that's not a thing anymore, especially since 911, like WHAT DO YOU MEAN? I starred at her for what felt like 20 minutes but was probably more like 2 seconds, because I promise you time slowed down. “Oh my gosh! Are you serious, yes, oh my gosh, Yes I want them to go with me!” I replied. “You won’t believe, I was just telling my mom on the drive over here, about when I was a little girl and my parents were able to stand at the end of the passenger boarding bridge with me because my dad used to work at the airport.” I told Angel this and I started crying, and then she started crying, it was a moment. After she took my parents’ ID and printed them “Gate-Only boarding passes,” I asked Angel if I could give her a hug and she said yes. She came around the counter and I hugged and I whispered to her, “Thank you so much, you have no idea what this means to me, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then I said, “Please keep being a light in this world, because we need more light.” Needless to say, Angel and I were holding back tears and my parents, they were just standing there like two deers in headlights. Lost and lost-er, ok, I think we were all just in shock. So as planned, they walked me to TSA and NOT as planned, they came with me through TSA. We walked to the gate and sat down and just starred at each other in disbelief. I mean the fact that I randomly had this memory come to my mind and mentioned to my mom, how I wished my dad still worked at the airport so they could go with me to the gate and see me off like they did when I was 7 years old, and I would have never, ever thought to ask if that was even possible in this day and age. Like never! But God. So, few minutes later as the shock, kinda wore off, I decided to record a video, I started with my dad, and asked him, “What do you wanna say to your daughter?” Then mom, “What do you wanna say to your daughter?” I am so grateful that I was able to spend that extra time with my parents and make a video that I would have never had the time to make, had things went the way I originally planned.

My mom and I both agreed and said, if we didn’t think God was with me and behind me in this big move to Hawai'i, we are certainly confident of this now after what just happened. When I was recounting this testimony to my family, my twin (she's not my actual twin, she's like 15 years older than me, but that's not the point)...my twin said, something to the likes of, 'You wished your dad still worked at the airport, but you forgot that your DADDY owns all the airports'. C'mon somebody! Wont He did it! 😂

When it was time to go, I gave several hugs and finally went in line to board the plane, I kept looking back at my parents until I could no longer see them. Then I scanned my boarding pass and I stepped into the tunnel, and as soon as I stepped into that tunnel, a wave….no, no a tsunami of emotions hit me like a ton of bricks, or should I say, a ton of water since, you know, its a tsunami after all, and I started to cry, I started to cry… “No, no not now, hmm hmm no no, nope, we’re not doing that right now, not right now, not right here,” I told myself, “Get it together.” Now, while I am learning to accept all my emotions like auntie Anita informs I should, at that particular time, I just didn’t think it appropriate for me to be crying a river, in the boarding bridge, just not appropriate. So, I held back the tsunami and walked to my seat. When I sat down, I thought, “What if this is the last time I see my parents, and if that’s the case, I didn’t hug them long enough”. I know you must be thinking, WOAH how did we get there, that’s an extreme thought. Well one of the things, or generational curses, I've been partnering with the Holy Spirit to break is catastrophic thinking, but that is, you guessed it, yet another story for yet another day. But anyhoo, I quickly changed the radio station of my thoughts, “No, you will see your parents, alive again” and I told myself, “Don’t do that to yourself baby, the hugs could never be long enough, so it’s okay…it’s okay, you did hug them long enough”.  

On the plane, self-soothing 😂

So that’s part II 😂. Wondering if I should make part III or just call the next installation of my journey to Hawai'i something else, because man the journey has been and is a long one! Stay tuned for the drama, I mean journey...lol

Alright, catch me next time. 

Later Sons and Daughters. 

I love you. 

PS: Oh by the way if you're listening to the recording (at the top finger ☝🏾) and you are hearing my cohost in the background, the Coqui frogs, those are umm, well we'll talk about them next time in the next installation of "Moving to Hawai'i Part III: The Bug Edition! Spoiler alert!

Have you ever experienced things not going as planned and it ended up turning out better than you planned?

• Yes! God is in the details!
• Uh no, life sucks!
• Yes, but what does God have to do with it?