Honeymoon memories

Found this little reminder of our honeymoon after the California wedding.  28 days in Hawaii on Maui, Kauai and Oahu.  What a beautiful trip.  Only one brief mention of the trip to the emergency room.

It’s a really funny story... and I need funny right now.  However it is long... just saying...

Sometime between the wedding and the week later when we left for Hawaii, I strained my rotator cuff.  For the first 10 days on Maui I walked around with my arm hurting.  Pascual carries my hot pink purse everywhere for me... and kept suggesting we go to the Dr.  finally I agreed that I would go when we got to Kauai.  I call Kaiser to get pre-approval for an ER visit and they tell me there is a hospital on Maui.  Great.  We just left Maui and are now in Kauai.  They tell me to go to the nearest ER and they will cover it.  I call to get directions to the hospital.  The lady answering the phone says.. “when you come out of airport you go Burger King way or Kentucky Fried Chicken way to Poipu?”  Huh?  “Honey do you remember seeing a BK or a KFC when we turned on the highway? “ He says “No, I don’t recall... “. I tell her we came down highway number blah blah because I couldn’t pronounce the Hawaiian name.  “Well, I need to know if you come da KFC or BK way cause Hawaiian people doan read da numbahs.”  So we figure our we came the BK way..  She tells me to go back to the BK and past the Hilo Hatties and behind that parking lot is the hospital.  Sounds perfectly logical to me and is exactly the way I give directions.  We head off to the ER.  Yes, strained rotator cuff... here is a sling.  Don’t use your arm for the rest of the trip, follow up with your doctor when you are on the mainland.  Ok.  Got it.

Scratch the canoeing trip and zip line tour we had booked, cause I can’t do them now...

The next morning, I wake up and put in my contact lenses... and one tears and rolls up under my eyelid.  There are Louvered doors on the bungalow we are in to let in the trade winds.  I’m shouting “oh my god, it hurts, pull it out!”  Then when he tries to help me I scream “Ow it’s hurting me, don’t touch me, get away.. “  I finally get both pieces out of my eye, and I can’t see anything out of my eye.  Pascual says, “let’s go back to the hospital and have them look at it.”  I start crying.  “No, I’m not going back to the f-ing hospital.”  We are going to our luau we booked.

Mind you we have a snorkel trip booked in 2 days and I needed contacts to see in a mask... so I call home and have them overnight me another pair of lenses, hoping my eye will be ok enough to snorkel in 2 days.  As we leave the bungalow, people are staring at us... and when we come back from the drug store and I’m wearing an eyepatch, they stare even more.

That night, I get up in the middle of the night to pee... an eyepatch on one eye, no glasses on in a dark unfamiliar room.  I walk into the bathroom... Bam!  Straight into the bathroom door that my new husband has courteously shut after using.  I break my pinkie toe.  As I’m hopping around screaming again hollering that it hurts and why would you do that?...  “I was being a gentleman” he says apologetically as I’m tripping over furniture and making another noisy ruckus that the neighbors around us hear...  he offers to take me to the hospital again.  I cry and tell him no because I’d broken my pinkie toe before and all they did was tape it to the next toe.  “We’ll go to the pharmacy in the morning and get tape.”

In the morning when we are walking to the car, I’m limping with a sling and an eyepatch..  the people next door to us ask me if I’m all right.  I’m crying as I tell them what has happened and how jinxed I am on our honeymoon.  They smile but still look suspiciously at Pascual as they walk away.  This is our third day on Kauai.  We canceled everything we had booked except the helicopter tour and a snorkel trip.  I couldn’t walk on the beach because I couldn’t bend my toe on the sand.  Couldn’t swim for the same reason, along with the shoulder.  Pascual teases I could swim in a circle since it was my left side that was affected, I could use the right arm and leg.  I don’t think it’s very funny.

We rented videos and watched movies in the room for 2 days, sweltering in the heat with no AC because most people are out at the beach during the day when it’s hot, the rooms don’t have AC.  Then he said “To Hell with this... let’s go baby, we can still go shopping.”  I hobbled around with him to every store... a sling, an eyepatch, sock on my hurt toe foot and a flip flop on the other, limping like Quasimodo.  He was carrying my pink purse.  We bought stuff for me to make a scrapbook of the trip.

On the way back he wanted to stop and check out the pool.  We figured out that I could go in the pool if I wrapped my good arm around his neck and shoulders from behind and he just towed me around the pool everywhere. So that’s what we did for most of the days.

I was able to hobble out to the beach for sunsets with tennis shoes on, so we saw sunsets.  We went to a replica Hawaiian village where they filmed the movie Outbreak.  We saw the falls from Fantasy Island and the Fern Grotto... and had lots of beautiful dinners eating fresh Pan Pacific cuisine.

Every night I cried that I was ruining our honeymoon... and he would smile and say... “I know you are sad now baby, but one day we will tell the story of this trip and we will laugh our asses off.”  He was so great about things like that.  He saw the humor in everything... even the shitty stuff.  And he was right.  We did laugh every time we told the story.  It was one of our favorites.  I’m reminded of all of our special moments in what I thought was a crappy trip at the time.  Now I see the gifts.  Lots of time together.  Him taking tender care of me.  Being in our favorite place in the world.  He said to me once with his sweet accent when I was crying... “Hey, we are together.  I love you...  can’t you find it in your heart to smile at your new husband?”  And I did.  He brought out the best in me.  Even when I was at my worst.  He always found a way to make everything special.