Ever since I was four years old, my maternal grandparents have taken my family and me to Maui every other summer. What began as a trip to Maui at my grandparents’ favorite resort, has become a cherished vacation, our now go-to spot, and dare I say, home away from home. It’s a tradition like none other.
It started with just my grandparents, my parents, my brother, my aunt and uncle, and me. The pictures hanging on the wall in our home show me in little hula skirts and rat-nested hair, running around as a kid in the sweet Hawaiian sun. But this tradition has evolved to include our growing family, with cousins and significant others that makes this bi-annual trip different and more exciting every time. The family pictures now require a wide lens and several attempts, and they usually end in one person’s eyes closed or an argument about why someone had their sunglasses on for the picture. These are the photos that now grace our walls.
While the “crew” grows and changes every year, the events on the trip do not. We still stay at the same quiet resort on Napili Bay where the staff know our names. It is run by the same woman who cooks the guests breakfast every Friday, the same woman who taught me how to make bookmarks out of ribbon and banana leaves at the communal picnic tables. We stay in the same rooms, swim with the same turtles in the same cove, and eat at the same restaurants. We use the same snorkel shop, we go to the same Costco after our same morning Alaska airline flight, we go on the same early morning walk up Pineapple Hill, past the free-roaming roosters, down past the bustling coffee crowd at the general store, and along the dewy coast lined with snails as big as your hands—the chubby hands you get from the salty humid air.
These traditions are ones that I will cherish forever, and I feel more grateful with each passing trip for my grandparents and their generosity. Napili Bay is our little treasure that remains unchanged each time we go back, the same for the last 16 years. And while there is some new construction to the little resort, and new homes in the surrounding neighborhood, it never fails to feel like the same home we established almost two decades ago.
This tradition filled with little traditions is what I look forward to time and time again. The familiarity mixed with small amounts of change brings new excitement with each trip. And I simply cannot get enough. I cannot wait to go back and experience these traditions again (and hopefully forever) with my family. My wild and fun and amazing family.