Hawaiʻi was never a place for me. It was a vaguely perceptible dot in the ocean of my awareness. It was a place where rich people lived. Where the privileged vacationed. Where pineapples grew.

It was blonde-haired blue-eyed Wendy Watkins from my Sunday school class when I was ten, going every year with her family and coming back all suntanned, hair-bleached, and full of all the reasons why Kauai was the only island worth going to anymore. Too many cheap tourists everywhere else, you know.

Ronald twisted the gold band from his finger and let it clink into the cupholder in the center console of his car. He flipped the visor down and gave himself a final once over in the tiny mirror. Laura hadn’t noticed his new haircut yesterday, hadn’t noticed his new shirt or new cologne this morning as they both had dressed. It had been some time since she had noticed anything about him at all, it seemed.

Parenthood, they say is the highest of callings, the noblest of professions. I always thought that was true and maybe it is. After all, there are not many other jobs for which a person would willingly wipe noses and other moist and stinky body parts, for a boss who never stops demanding and from whom a paycheck never comes; a job where the only room for advancement comes at the cost of sagging body parts, graying hairs, depleted bank accounts, and adult children who, (hopefully) finally start to appreciate you when you have one foot in the grave.

But then, there are also few careers that can give a person the boost that two little arms can, when they are thrown open wide and wrapped around your knees after a long day of work. Or the sense of pride and fulfillment that seeing a child excel can give; when they ace the test, or get the part, when they get the date, or fess up to the mistake, the swellings of parental pride bubble up like hot cocoa on an icy Colorado night. And in what other forum can a person preach all they want to an audience who has no choice but to listen and adore you, (at least for the first ten or so, years of their lives)?

I’m not against parenting, I am a mom and it’s one of the things that defines me. But that’s part of the problems: I am defined by my children and their choices.  That’s a problem because I have learned from my first seventeen years of chasing after these kids, that there are no guarantees. That no amount of doing it ‘by the book,’ or even by my gut will ensure anything about the future or the choices of the children I’m raising.

I’m not against parenting, but I do however, reject the general idea that good parenting results in good children.

The hum of the airplane engine vibrates the floor beneath my feet. The fog of white noise from the same fills my ears. I strain over the passenger sitting next to me, trying to look out the window and am able to catch only a glimpse of the green land below. From this height, the landmass is an alligator head submerged in the blue-blue sea. The large man in the window seat shifts and his massive body blocks the tiny portlike window of the plane.

The bird’s face came to me in a dream, although I didn’t tell anyone that when I booked my trip.

The first time I dreamed its face, that’s all I saw. The head of this blue bird with this fancy crown of feathers pluming out. Almost like a peacock’s fan but smaller and sticking out in every direction, like electrical wires, or a crown. Like wiry roots on a plant that’s been pulled from its dirt. The bird’s face had this yellow beak that pointed at me in the dream, and those red eyes, with pupils like arrowheads, shining like pomegranate seeds in its silky blue face. When I awoke, I rolled over to ask Roger what kind of bird it was. It had felt so real. But of course, Roger wasn’t there anymore.

Yellow is Mom’s favorite color.

When we were little, she once stayed up all night painting an entire wall of our living room yellow.

Just one wall.

When Mark and I awoke the next morning, Mom was sitting lotus style in her paint-splattered coveralls on the living room floor. Her back to us, she stared at the wall. She had gathered Mark into the cocoon of her lap and wrapped an arm around my legs. Pulling me close to her side, she kept her eyes on the wall even while she buried a kiss in Mark’s dark curls.

It was after the streetlamps had popped to life, after my newly broken-in sled was stowed against the house behind Mom’s burlap-wrapped rose bushes. After the no school day, the meet me and Joe and Frank on Baker’s Hill day. After snowball fights and forts. Long after my nose grew too cold to sting any longer, my feet and hands had stopped tingling and felt heavy with the warmth that followed the wet cold.

It was when I stood on the shadowed porch outside our front door, snow clinging to my boots, my breath swirling in veils of white around my face. When my mittened hand slipped against the knob, I clenched the soaking wool between my teeth and freed my stiff pink fingers from the sodden glove. It was in that moment that I looked through the frosted glass of the front window and saw them dancing.