Maui, HI: May 2019 - The First Mother's Day

My husband had been dead for four months when I saw Mother's Day on the calendar.

I knew immediately I was not staying home. I was not going to sit in San Diego and watch everyone else get celebrated by their intact families on social media while I figured out what this holiday meant now. Hawaii had been an annual spring trip before my son. I booked a flight to Maui before I could think too hard about it.

My mother decided to come. I didn't ask her to — she just said she was coming, which is the correct thing to do when your daughter's first Mother's Day is also her first without her husband. She came to take pictures and to be there. It was a good call.

My son was nine months old and almost walking. He had opinions about everything and could not be contained.

The flight was Alaska, five hours from San Diego, and we got lucky — an empty middle seat opened up and the gate agent let us bring the car seat on. Window seat only. He sat secured in his own seat while I sat next to him with two hands free. Ask at every gate on every airline. The worst they say is no.

Hawaii is five hours but it's also three time zones, and with a nine-month-old that math creates a very specific schedule: he fell asleep every night at 4pm local time and woke at 4am. I decided early in the trip not to fight it. I had quiet evenings to myself, I had early mornings, and I never had to switch back when we got home.

We rented a car and stayed in a VRBO in Kihei. No stroller — at this age, a carrier is enough and you're on beaches and rocky paths anyway. I packed masking tape to cover the outlets at the rental and set up the travel crib in the bedroom and considered the logistics solved.

His favorite beach was Ho'okipa — known locally as Turtle Beach, because the green sea turtles come in to rest on the sand. There's a swimming area set a safe distance from where they haul out, and I put my nine-month-old in it with nothing on because that is the correct choice when you are at a beach with sea turtles. There is nothing like a naked baby at the beach. He was completely in his element.

Baby Beach in Lahaina — a completely calm, protected cove that's perfect for this age — was on my list and we missed it. I'd been there before with my husband and loved it. I'm putting it here so you don't skip it.

We stopped at the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary visitor center, which sounds more impressive than it is — it's small — but there's a little play area inside and a deck with water views that would be spectacular during whale season. Worth thirty minutes with a baby who needs to get out of the car.

We drove out to the Olivine Pools and the Nakalele Blowhole early one morning while he slept in the car. The tide was too high to get to the pools safely, so we looked from above and called it enough. We made it halfway to the blowhole before it started to sprinkle and I decided that wet rocks while carrying a nine-month-old was not the move. We stopped for banana bread on the drive back. That part was correct.

Old Lahaina town was better than expected. The Banyan Tree in the square is enormous and climbable and free. The Lahaina Courthouse has a small museum upstairs where there was enough room for him to crawl around without destroying anything. We wandered the shops. We sweated through our clothes. Don't forget sunscreen on yourself when you have a baby attached to you — it's easy to forget you're also a body in direct sun.

The condo pool was, unexpectedly, one of the best decisions of the trip. It sounds absurd — you fly to Maui and swim in a pool — but at this age the pool is easier than the beach, warmer and shallower, and full of strangers who become temporary travel companions. We had started swim lessons at the YMCA back home, but they had a rule: no submersions until age two. I didn't question it at the time. Then a teenage boy working the pool mentioned he was a lifeguard. My mother — three kids of her own, zero patience for unnecessary caution — seized on this immediately. Professional credential is a professional credential. She thought I should dunk him. The lifeguard agreed. I was not immediately convinced.

She waited until I was ready. That's the part I remember. She didn't push. She just made it clear she thought he could handle it, and then she let me get there on my own. When I did it, he came up completely unbothered. Looked at me like I was the one who needed reassurance.

He ate everything we ate all week — fish tacos at Duke's, poke from the grocery store deli eaten on the beach, whatever came off anyone else's plate. The EZPZ mat came with us everywhere. He ate fish tacos before he could walk and acted like this was perfectly normal, which it was.

The flight home was different.

I had booked an afternoon departure specifically so he would sleep. We got a full row. He was cutting teeth, which I did not know until we were in the air for an hour and it became clear that no amount of nursing, bouncing, or quiet pleading was going to help. He screamed for most of six hours. I nursed him for most of six hours. He bit me. I cried. He was not the only one crying on that plane.

We made it.

I already knew, in theory, that anything that happens on a flight is temporary. This flight was the first time I understood it in my body. There is a version of you on the other side of the hard thing. It ends. You land.

Hawaii was the right call. My mother took pictures. My son went in the ocean. I drank wine on the lanai after he went to sleep at 4pm and watched the light go. It was the first Mother's Day. It was not what I expected it to be. It was enough.

A note: much of what I've described here — Old Lahaina town, the Banyan Tree, the courthouse, the shops along Front Street — was destroyed in the Maui wildfires of August 2023. The deadliest American wildfire in over a century. I wrote this from memory and from photos, and I keep stopping on the images of that Banyan Tree, still standing in the ash, and feeling something I don't have the right words for. If you're planning a trip to Maui, go. The island needs it. Just know that some of what made Lahaina what it was is gone, and it's worth a moment to hold that.

Notes for the trip: Kihei VRBO with a kitchen makes the early mornings easy. Rental car essential. Empty seat carseat policy — ask at the gate, window seat only. Ho'okipa/Turtle Beach for the protected cove and turtles. Baby Beach in Lahaina for truly calm water — don't skip it. Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Sanctuary — worth a stop. Paia Fish Market for the fish tacos. Don't skip the grocery store poke. Two swim diapers minimum — reusable preferred, disposable don't hold pee anyway.