March 18th fell on a Saturday this year. At 4:30 a.m., a chicken serenaded us outside our bedroom window. A crack of thunder woke our dog Penny who crawled on our bed and snuggled in the curl of my belly. Sunrise brought a few rays of color; however, morning quickly turned to rain. Bass thunder returned, reverberating over the mountains. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but we were only half-way through 40 days and nights of rain. I felt soggy, puny and, so, carried my laptop to the sofa. Under a stack of blankets, I reached for the TV remote control. I watched the movie Winn-Dixie. I transferred Eric’s clothes from the washer to the dryer. Back on the sofa, I watched Space Cowboys. I emptied the dishwasher. I read one of my favorite magazines, thinking it would inspire me to write. It didn’t. I watched The Patriot. All the while, it continued to rain. It was not your typical winter day in Hawaii.
If Mark Twain had arrived in Hawaii on March 18 of this year and not March 18 of 1866, he would not have written about the cute, little bungalows of Honolulu surrounded by blossoms. He would not have written about Kanakas or cats or mosquitoes or Diamond Head or the Pali. He would not have written about a sunny Saturday at the market. Indeed, he would have written about the rain.
The kui-‘ilima rain of Honolulu, the ililani unexpected rain, the kili fine light rain, the kili hau chilly rain, the lelehune fine windblown rain, the lu-lau-ko scattering cane leaves rain of Kaua’i, the pakaku rain with large drops, the ua hikik’i slanting rain, the ua lani pili rain downpour, and, of course, the the pipinoke continuous rain. He would have learned the over 100 words for different kinds of rain in the Hawaiian language. Rains of a certain place, angle, volume, intensity.
It’s a good thing for the Hawaiian Promotion Committee that he did not. Then, he probably never would have written that just-right combination of 10 words that delighted one Mr. Wood of said committee--recipient of a letter containing those precious 10 words--so much that he shared them. With whom, I don’t know, but obviously he passed them on, because they have appeared over and over in travel brochures, travel essays, and travel spiels over the 140 years since Twain’s visit. I still run across those 10 words today.
Twain wrote them in a letter of thanks after the Committee sent him a mantel made of the native hardwood Koa for his 73rd birthday in 1908. (One cannot help but note the irony of the Hawaii Promotion Committee's last name.)
Dear Mr. Wood,
The beautiful mantel was put in its place an hour ago, and its friendly “Aloha” was the first uttered greeting my 73rd birthday received. It is rich in color, rich in quality, and rich in decoration, therefore it exactly harmonises [sic] with the taste for such things which was born in me and which I have seldom been able to indulge to my content. It will be a great pleasure to me, daily renewed, to have under my eye this lovely reminder of [get ready: here come the 10 words] the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean, and I beg you to thank the Committee for providing me that pleasure.
Somewhere along the way, the Hawaiian Promotion Committee morphed into the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and its island-specific cohorts. At the courtesy of the Oahu Visitors Bureau, I depart Monday for Oahu and some Twain sleuthing. I'll tramp around Diamond Head, Waikiki, Honolulu. I'll stick my nose in some dusty, old papers at the Hawaiian Historical Society. I'll try to channel the young Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. I may even try to land an agent.
Thankfully, it’s not raining. Yet.
(Thanks to Kimo Perry for his help with the rainy list.)
