We’ve spent the last week or so hanging out in our old stomping grounds. It’s an old feeling to have been gone for a year. Some of the landscape has changed, but the familiar is still here. A fave coffee shop, a fave grocery store, dear friends with wonderful smiles all make it easy to pick up where we left off before we packed up our life and flew across the ocean.
On one of the first days back we had the team from Hawaii over to our in-laws house for a BBQ. It was odd to see these peeps sitting in my MIL’s back yard, but that was only for a moment. My family joined in with our Hawaii family (ohana) and it seemed pretty natural. We served them that family’s staple of the summer: sucking chicken, flook potato salad, tuna mac salad, and fresh fruit. After dinner they loaded up the brownies and ice cream with gummy bears and devoured it on the back patio. It was a such a blessing to have these two worlds diverge for a few hours. Our Hawaii ohana saw where we came from, and our Oregon family saw why we left.
It will be bittersweet in a week when I wake up in my new home of the last year. I have to put that aside so that I can savor every moment left here. I have a grand-nephew to hold, family-n-friends to hug and laugh with, and long-n-lazy Pac NW summer days to enjoy as they melt into the light of the moon and stars. I live between two pieces of paradise. How did that happen?
Solacegirl 
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