We were out of town most of last month and the trip back took three separate flights, all the hassle of traveling by plane, and more than 24 hours from leaving my wife’s cousin to walking into our front door. We’re still recovering from the time difference, the lack of sleep and the heat wave in heaven.
Yes, I’ve been to heaven and back and made interesting discoveries. First, some locals call it HaVaii – no W in the sound. In heaven, there are people from all over the world, down under and up top, east and west, all the continents and colors, many of whom speak six languages and everybody smiles. Yes it’s possible to pull a muscle even in heaven but when I fell two men rushed to help me – one had ancestors in Africa, the other in Europe – and both were lovely, wonderful men, determined to get me back on my feet.
Strange things happen in heaven. Mark Twain thought it very strange that human beings assume that everyone will play the harp in heaven though most wouldn’t be caught near one on earth. Perhaps equally strange, my wife got me into the ocean. I hadn’t done that in decades since our children were small. I had good memories of the Atlantic near West Palm but I forgot about the surf in Jones Beach and it played with me like I was a toy. When my wife tried to help me, it knocked us both down. One more thing an aging reader and sitter like me has to relearn – how to face the ocean, stare it down and charge.
Life is so different in Hawaii from the constant patter from Washington about race, color, ancestry and who the heck is better than everybody else. Hawaii is proof that life can be lovely. Except that so many people, and worse, builders and hotel magnates, have made that discovery that they have changed the climate. One of our taxi drivers told us how lovely the climate was on the hill behind Honolulu. And my wife remembered it from a trip half a century ago – though we were clearly a couple by then we came home from Iran at different times and by different routes so I missed seeing Hawaii before there were clouds in heaven.
A photo of my wife was taken in D.C. with a frame that said “citizen of the world.” That is what peace means – that we are citizens of the world and recognize the same in others, treating others, all others, like we ourselves would like to be treated, the Golden Rule, or loving our neighbors as ourselves, another biblical formulation.
I’ve had that pleasure before – on the mall in Washington the day Martin Luther King told us about his dream, or in the offices of the NAACP or the legal services program, in the company of many of this area’s great folk singers, former Peace Corps Volunteers, or sometimes just on the streets of New York where people have learned to live and love together, and among other dear family, friends, colleagues and neighbors – I’ve been lucky enough to live and work largely in supportive environments. It’s a wonderful feeling, to see the love without having to watch your back. It spells peace in many languages, and heaven too.
Even heaven isn’t perfect. There are justified complaints about the way those with native Hawaiian ancestry have been dispossessed of some of what should be theirs but it’s still a joy to see the way people live and work together. On the way out, I had a chance to interview two African-American women who’ve been working there, one a military officer, and they confirmed the rewarding pleasures of living and working with people there.
There’s so much more to enjoy in the islands than beaches and breezes, luaus and leis. You’ll find great examples there of the spirit that made America great.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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