touchdown kauai

This is what this raw, gar­gan­tu­an par­adise does, it brings all things bub­bling be­low to the sur­face. Like lava, so it makes sense. 

Right away when I plant my feet in this soil I feel the sick­ness of where I just came from. (Like any re­la­tion­ship – your wounds and weak­ness­es sud­den­ly re­flect­ed back at you. And you ei­ther run solo to avoid deal­ing or you af­ford your­self the op­por­tu­ni­ty to face what’s not right and grow from the push.) Away from here I live hap­py and healthy, I’m ‘thriv­ing.’

But when I touched the soil, there’s the ex­pe­ri­ence you’re sup­posed to have in a par­adise like this—the bliss, the re­lax­ation, the heal­ing. And it feels far. 

In­stead, I feel how ab­nor­mal it is to cross an ocean in a few or­gan-com­pact­ing, oxy­gen-de­prived, sen­so­ry-over­loaded hours. I feel the fast pace I’ve been on, the hus­tle for fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, the ad­dic­tion to email, what’s hap­pen­ing on In­sta­gram, texts I should send to friends, pics I should post, I’m be­hind, I’ll lose out, be buried. 

I see my mom and her torn, old, red dirt-stained farm­work clothes, I don’t know a frac­tion of what she knows, how will I do this with­out her? I catch sight of my dad’s skin, his mus­cles look dif­fer­ent this time. I think about what he looked like in 1989 to me, the same per­son, and the pas­sage of time, which ver­sion of him I’ll re­mem­ber – and the jux­ta­po­si­tion, though he’s still hand­some and strong, dizzies me, so stag­ger­ing I feel like I could drown. 

So as I’m lay­ing in bed on the first night and the sea breezes over me, there’s an un­der­cur­rent of feel­ing ter­ri­fied col­lid­ing with an­oth­er cur­rent of grat­i­tude and high­er wis­dom. I’m breath­ing, tee­ter­ing on a fine line be­tween med­i­ta­tion and pan­ic. I could have tak­en an emer­gency pill, it was time enough – the adren­a­line start­ing to seep out into my mus­cles, verg­ing, verg­ing. But I didn’t. Be­cause fear, dis­com­fort, grief, they are di­vine in­ter­ven­tions, our most prim­i­tive tools for growth. 

And be­cause this is the les­son. This is the pur­pose of this soil, this rich earth, the par­adise: To re­turn you to what lies be­neath. To make you more human.

 

—ruby roth

Flom­mist Ruby Roth is an artist, de­sign­er, cre­ative strate­gist, and the au­thor-il­lus­tra­tor of four lead­ing books for kids. Her work has been fea­tured on To­day, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC News, and oth­er ma­jor me­dia out­lets. Copy­right © 2018 Ruby Roth.‬

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